The BBC and Shaun Bailey: Part One

Catching up again....

There was a very important post from Pugnazious at Biased BBC on Friday looking at the BBC's treatment of Tory London Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey. 

Here, as an example of the BBC's coverage, is the start of the report on the BBC News website:

Now, as Pugnazious says, if you read that 2005 pamphlet you find that Shaun Bailey wasn't saying what either his critics are accusing him of saying or what the BBC have been reporting him as saying. 

"The comments in the pamphlet have been taken, twisted, misquoted and distorted in order to portray Bailey as some kind of racist and Islamophobe", Pugnazious wrote. "Needless to say his meaning and intent, obvious to any reader, is not to say any such things."

Pugnazious is entirely correct about that. Mr Bailey's actual meaning and intent is very obvious.

This is what Shaun Bailey wrote:

As Pugnazious writes:

As you can see he does not say Islam and Hinduism ‘robs Britain of its community’, what he is saying is not teaching those black youths their own Christian, western culture robs them of a sense of community, identity and unity which is needed for any successful society. He is not in any way blaming Muslims and Hindus for this, he is not criticising teaching ethnic cultures but criticising the lack of teaching of the British culture….as if we are ashamed of it….as the BBC is of course. Hence people don’t want to identify as ‘British’, or maybe cannot as they have no idea what being ‘British’ means….always told it is a bad thing to be British.

So when the BBC captions its image of Shaun Bailey with the words 'In 2005, Shaun Bailey warned accommodating Muslim and Hindu cultures "robs Britain of its community"' and then repeats that claim in the report's second paragraph they are misreporting what he said. 

They are also misreporting what he said when they go on to say that he said that 'accommodating Muslim and Hindu cultures...could lead the country into a "crime-riddled cesspool"' (literally joining the dots). 

His opponents are trying to smear him and the BBC is simply parroting those smears as facts. That seems very clear to me. 

Please read the BBC report for yourselves and then read the Multiculturalism section of the 2005 pamphlet and see if you agree that this is a particularly poor piece of BBC reporting. 

Poor chap, he's very worried(!)

Andrew, with Claire Foy and Ryan Gosling 

Hmm. I think Andrew Marr was after something here, and wasn't above adding his own hints and opinions either:

Andrew Marr: Now I have to ask you both about one criticism of the film. Donald Trump, no less, has criticised the fact you don't actually see The Stars and Stripes going up on the moon as making the film anti-American. What can you say to him? Poor chap, he's very worried(!)
Ryan Gosling: Erm...I think that the conversation around this particular issue is happening almost entirely amongst people who haven't seen the film, and...
Andrew Marr: It's not as if you don't see The Stars and Stripes in the film. It's there a lot of the time.
Ryan Gosling: The flag is represented on the moon and throughout the film, and I think it's a very patriotic film, and I'm looking forward to the film coming out so that people can see it.

Green with Envy

This one didn't quite come off for Rob:

Why to vote Green #FBPE: Sad but not surprising that #Marr has no-one from The Green Party on the weekend of the Green Party conferance? Andy, don't you think the brilliant Sian Berry, Jonathan Bartley or Caroline Lucas would have brought a bit more zing than a protracted interview with the dismally dull Brandon Lewis?

Jonathan Bartley: Pretty sure I’ve never been interviewed by Andrew Marr. Does that make me the only party leader in the country that hasn’t?

Rob Burley: It was obviously a memorable experience for you Jonathan. You have been on Marr. As leader. And you were interviewed!

Andrew Marr: It wasn’t Andrew Marr who interviewed - or have I got that wrong?

Rob Burley: Oh was it Eddie Mair? Does that ring a bell?

Minnie Rolfe: So for clarity, Jonathan Bartley has been interviewed on #Marr once but never interviewed by #Marr himself. It's a long time since Eddie Marr covered for #Marr, isn't an interview with Jonathan Bartley over due? 

Rob is yet to reply.

Generals on Parade

Cheltenham Town Hall

This morning's Broadcasting House took us to Cheltenham town hall for an audience with Peter Hennessy and former BBC political editor John Sergeant, umpired by Paddy O'Connell and focused squarely on Brexit. 

And very interesting it was too. (I do like listening to the pair of them.) 

They'd been the programme's referendum 'generals', as well as its election 'generals, giving their weekly takes on the progress of the campaign. I was intrigued but not surprised that they both said they'd voted Remain, and that Lord Hennessy remains a Remainer. John Sergeant, however, has changed his mind. He said that because of the behaviour of the EU's politicians over the Brexit negotiations he's now moved to the Leave side of the argument. An interesting development.

The audience in Cheltenham was meant to be balanced between Remainers, Leavers and Don't Knows, though - as is the way of such things - those who asked questions all sounded like Remainers. It's that 'BBC audience thing' again. 

Anyhow, it's well worth a listen. 

Soon after came Mark Mardell, previewing The World This Weekend. I smiled when he said, "And we'll add to the mood of pessimism you've been creating in Cheltenham by looking at the future of Brexit talks, which are coming to a really critical point in Brussels this week, and we'll be talking to a former Finnish prime minister about where he thinks we're going". 

When did Mark Mardell's The World This Weekend ever not seek to "add  to the mood of pessimism" over Brexit? 

Further Reading

Other BBC-related reading, if you've got the time:

Mike Dowd: Chiles is one to watch – with suspicion 

Kathy Gyngell: The feminists’ Project Fear

Mail on Sunday: Woman's Hour presenter Dame Jenni Murray heading for a tax tribunal showdown as officials ask her for a 'very significant' sum of money

Oh, and:

The Guardian: John Simpson says ex-BBC boss was pushing him out for being old

The last item features this, which made me laugh (especially the last paragraph quoted):

Simpson was so bruised that his novel became all about the “foul BBC” and its machinations and he was looking forward to causing trouble. 

Then he heard Harding was leaving and being replaced by a “blessed friend … a wonderful, wonderful” woman who saved him. 

The appointment of Fran Unsworth led to some rewriting. “It doesn’t take place at the BBC, it takes place more or less at Sky News.”

Nice!

The Big Questions

There have been 97 Archbishops of York so far. I learned that from this morning's Sunday. No.97, John Sentamu, has recently announced that he will retire in June 2020. William Crawley discussed the matter with the Bishop of Norwich Graham Jones - and, no, he didn't introduce him with the words, "And now from Norwich, it's the bishop of the week". (That's for anyone who remembers Sale Of The Century). William asked the 'very BBC' questions: Has John Sentamu been "a trailblazer for other BAME clerics"? And is it time for a woman next? 

Controversial

That kind of thing drew this comment from our Laura:

BBC Brexit report based on dubious maths

Catching up with things...

Newsnight's policy editor Chris Cook took on one of those right-wing think tanks so hated by left-leaning, pro-EU #FBPE types on Twitter - namely, the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The article's original headline was IEA Brexit report based on dubious maths. It began:

Much has been written in the past few months about the Institute of Economic Affairs, the right-wing think tank. But there is one element of its work that could do with more scrutiny: its maths. 

Unfortunately for Chris, he also got his maths wrong!

I'm guessing he was attempting to play to the #FBPE gallery but he got some figures mixed up and his fingers burnt. 

So what happened next? 

Well, I read his original would-be hatchet job on the BBC News website. 

And then I saw him insert a very short correction grudgingly admitting to mathematical mistakes on his part, but doing so in two throwaway sentences in the middle of the piece [placed in square parentheses]. The headline by this time had changed to IEA Brexit report pulls up a few questions about methodology. 

Then he got the BBC to delete the whole post [and they've done such a thorough job that even the Wayback Machine can't retrieve it]...

Now you see it. Now you don't.

... and published a fresh piece headed 'Mea Culpa' (beginning "I am not, it transpires, infallible....") which reads as a considerably-less-than-entirely-apologetic mixture of admission and defiance.

Surprisingly, unlike in that short correction to the original piece, he didn't make it clear what his mistake had been - i.e. that he'd messed up the maths. 

And in a short piece of just 126 words I count four (possibly five) fresh digs at the IEA. 

So it's a very 'BBC' apology. 

I've got some things spectacularly wrong myself over the years. I think the thing to do when that happens is to properly apologise and give yourself a good Medieval-style self-scourging. Don't keep lashing out. 

And I learn from a loyal reader that Chris Cook has actually been blocking people on Twitter who have taken him to task over his half-apology. 

Also very 'BBC'...(well, for the time being anyhow). 

Is it a dolphin in a bathtub?

There's been much talk hereabouts about the new series of Have I Got News For You.

For this new series Ian and Paul both have old-fashioned landline telephones on the desks in front of them and speak through them at all times. This is so they can dial it in each week, just as they've been doing for years now. (Boom! Boom!)

If you missed it, here's a sample of it at its funniest. (Spoiler: That's me being sarcastic - though the punchline at the end isn't bad).

Picture spin quiz

Ian Hislop: This is a physicist at CERN who said that the history of physics was largely created by men. He implied that women weren't very good at physics, but nowadays there are so many women getting jobs in physics that men couldn't get a job. I didn't really follow his argument. 

Alexander Armstrong: Do you remember what his name was, the professor? 

Naga Munchetty: Idiot. 

Alexander Armstrong: He was Professor Alessandro Strumia from the CERN laboratory project. That's part of the Large Hadron Collider, isn't it? He's upset female scientists and womenkind. One of his claims is that Oxford University has lengthened its science exams by 15 minutes specifically to help women. Why is this so shocking? 

Josh Widdecombe: Because it's not true?

Alexander Armstrong: No. Because it is true. According to the Telegraph: "Students taking maths and computer science examinations in the summer of 2017 were given an extra 15 minutes to complete their papers, after dons ruled that 'female candidates might be more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure.'" 

Naga Munchetty: Have we got much longer? I'm feeling a bit faint. 

Ian Hislop: I'm going up to get more paper. 

Alexander Armstrong: This is the Italian scientist who told a group of female physicists that physics was invented by men. Professor Anne-Christine Davis, a physicist at Cambridge University said, "I just don't know what planet he lives on." I'm afraid you've rather played right into his hands. 

The 'crimes' of that "idiot" professor, as BBC Breakfast's right-on, oh-so-impartial Naga so charmingly called him, were first exposed to the world by the BBC. He's now been censored, to the point that it's no wonder that Ian Hislop can't follow his original argument. (Wonder if Ian's bothered to look into that?).But is Professor Strumia actuially a very modern 'heretic' and more sinned against than sinning? (Links abound).

After all that, we probably need a laugh, so here's a funny joke:

I have a bumper sticker that says, "Honk if you think I'm sexy". I just sit at green lights until I feel good about myself.

When Emily Met Stormy

Emily Maitlis (l); Stormy Daniels (r)

On Twitter at least, last night's Newsnight went down like a lead balloon strapped to the back of an overweight rhinoceros that's just leaped out of an aeroplane with a concrete parachute.

Hundreds upon hundreds of tweets chirruped forth slamming the programme for "tabloid gossip", "disgusting journalism", "salacious gutter press nonsense" "drivel", "trash", etc. 

The most commonly-asked question was, "How low can the BBC go?". 

Why? Because the programme interviewed 'adult film star' Stormy Daniels (who has a book out) about Mr Trump and his penis. 

The programme began:

Evan Davis: Is it just salacious or far more serious? It's the case of the adult film star versus a President. He denies her allegation they had an affair but admits paying money to her. Tonight, we hear why she felt she needed to reveal some very intimate details about President Trump.

Stormy: It was that he attacked me first. I was called a liar, that it never happened. And unless he's had a penis transplant then I'm pretty sure that's a checkmate. 

The President inadvertently lost some dignity today, boarding Air Force One seemingly with toilet paper on his shoe. The ripple effects of the payment to Stormy Daniels may be far more serious.

And, yes, the programme really did chose to include a clip of President Trump 'losing some dignity' by boarding Air Force One' "seemingly with toilet paper on his shoe" during its introductory sequence, alongside that 'penis' comment from Stormy.

The next feature - also on US politics - was an interview with a journalist from the left-wing Vox website about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination leading others to wonder if Newsnight is being targeted at an American market, aiming to become a second MSNBC, or whether the programme is simply manifesting the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Vox pop Laura McGann

What struck me thoughout was the framing of the issues by Newsnight. Take this from Evan Davis, for example:

Over the last two weeks, sex and politics have been in a spectacular collision in the US. Respect for the testimony of women versus the presumption of innocence for a man. 

That already overloads things in a feminist direction. He could just have said:

Over the last two weeks, sex and politics have been in a spectacular collision in the US. Respect for the testimony of women versus the presumption of innocence.

And note the use of 'henchman' here from Emily Maitlis (to Stormy Daniels):

So it was a decade or so later - 2015, 2016 - his [ie. Mr Trump's] lawyers, his henchmen, arrived to ask you to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Did you understand what that was about then? 

(At least she didn't call them 'hired goons'.)

Or this loaded question from Emily (also to Miss Daniels):

If you look at the Brett Kavanaugh scenario that is being played out as we speak, there's this whole saga where a woman has come forward to offer her testimony of sexual abuse and the President has chosen to mock her. Do you think it has emboldened more women to come forward or do you think it has made men feel that they will be protected? 

And what do you make of Evan's 'theory' here about the Kavanaugh nomination, essentially blaming the President for the nomination controversy?

Here is a theory. You get a glimpse of how Trump works. He escalates the issue and makes it about the culture war, the bigger culture war, and that encourages everybody to behave around which tribal allegiance they have in that war, rather than to look at the merits of the judge and the way he behaved.  

I felt like King Tut last night watching this, I was tutting so much. (As you might be at that play on words).

Bully-boy tactics

Most nights BBC Newsdesk and Planning editor Neil Henderson tweets out the newspaper front pages under the hashtag #tomorrowspaperstoday. Or occasionally his colleague Helena Lee does it, if he's off. 

All they do is to tweet the front page of every newspaper without comment. 

Most people appreciate their nocturnal activity but, of course, you can't please everyone - especially those who object to the paper or the headline being tweeted.

(Quite a lot think the BBC shouldn't be tweeting papers like the Express and the Mail for example).

With surprising regularity, many such people then yell 'BBC bias!' back at the BBC, even when - to anyone who uses their brain as something other than insulation for their skull - this daily service is quite obviously no such thing. 

But some of the complainants, who obviously know what Neil and Helena are really doing, aren't idiots. They do it in a calculating, dishonest way, evidently in order to bully the BBC.

Take, for example, a certain Alastair Campbell who sent out this tweet overnight:

Thankfully, the sensible part of Twitter has responded along with the insensible rabble and given the old propagandist a ticking-off. 

He knows exactly what he's up to with tweets like this.

To block or not to block?

I can't find any news coverage of the background to this but, if so, it's an interesting development:

Cat Among the Pigeons

A Guido Fawkes post yesterday has raised a few hackles at the BBC:

BBC FLAGSHIP SHOWS STILL HAVE REMAIN PANEL BIAS

Brexiteers always like to complain about Brexit bias on the BBC, so Guido has crunched the numbers on the BBC’s three flagship panel shows, Question Time, Politics Live and Any Questions to see if they have a point. They certainly do…

Since the start of the political season in September, 72% of the official panel guests across the three shows have been Remainers, while a mere 28% have been Leavers. A whopping 87% of the panels had a Remainer majority – only 13% of shows had a panel equally balanced between Leavers and Remainers. Not once have Leavers outnumbered Remainers.

Eight shows since the start of September have seen Brexiteers outnumbered 4 to 1 by Remainers, while two shows in the last two weeks managed to feature four Remainers and no Brexiteers at all. No-one is disputing that the Remainer elite are the majority in the Westminster politico-media bubble, the Beeb should try however to reflect the majority of the country…

As you might expect the BBC's head of live political programmes has had something to say in response.

Here's a flavour of what's been going on:

Media Guido: BBC Flagship Shows Still Have Remain Panel Bias.

Rob Burley: Am I right to assume that you are counting as Leave or Remain based on where a guest stood over two years ago on 23/06/16? You do know that political programmes have to by law reflect party support not the position of guests on a vote in 2016?

Media Guido: We do know Rob. We also know that you don't have any role in #BBCqt or #BBCaq. All we would like to see from you is that when say #PoliticsLive discusses Brexit related issues that there is a balanced panel. Is that too hard for BBC current affairs to manage? Just once?

Rob Burley: You ask just once. So let’s take today for example: 2 pro-Brexit and 2 Remain. #facts

Media Guido: It wasn't Rob, as a matter of #facts John Bird supports a second referendum, the Baroness and Shakira were Remainers as was Chris Philp (until recently). Brendan was your only Leaver. 4-1 or 3-2 to Remain allowing for Chris Philp's recent change of mind.

Rob Burley: This just shows the nonsense of your position. Bird was talking about businesses in railway arches and didn’t utter a word about Brexit. And whenever Philp became a Brexit supporter he is one now. So it was 2-2 as I said. Still awaiting your methodology.

******* 

Gw: Well here is one to answer. You had Greening, Morgan and Wollaston round the table at the Tory conf over 3 consecutive days, all support a 2nd ref yet only about 7 of 316 Tory MPs do. Bias much.
Rob Burley: If you tallied up all of the others on those days those 3 would be minority. But we aren't working towards the impractical numerical balancing of a range of nuanced positions on Brexit. We credit our viewers with more intelligence, not us playing daft numbers game. 

*******

Rob Burley

Media Guido: BBC Flagship Shows Still Have Remain Panel Bias.
Rob Burley: Claptrap. No methodology provided but almost certainly counts guests as “Leave” or “Remain” based on where they stood on 23/6/16. Result: all Lab front bench and most of Con one - including the PM - will count as “Remain” despite both parties pledged to carry through Brexit. Daft.
BBC Waste: The problem is @RobBurl this flawed methodology Ken Clarke who will actively speak as a Remainer against the government on BBC political output will be classed as as Brexit supporting column in BBC stats as that is his party's position. You can't deny that is bonkers.
Rob Burley: Fair point BUT if we were counting - and I think that’s both impossible and undesirable - I’d count Clarke as Remain. My point is that this “research” counts May, Javid, Hunt etc as Remain despite the fact that, unlike Clarke, they have changed their minds since the referendum. To be clear I’m not suggesting a methodology that attempts to capture the truth of people’s myriad and evolving positions on Brexit - e.g Gove backs Chequers, Johnson doesn’t, May does, Greening doesn’t - I’m just pointing out the glaring inadequacy of the GF methodology.
BBC Waste: I am in violent agreement. The BBC should make this argument:
1. We follow the rules.
2. The rules are inadequate.
Instead BBC makes strategic error of saying, our output is balanced, without that essential context.

Ooh, and here's a lovely 'complaints from both sides' comment (what post would be complete without one of those!):

Steven Kettle: This is simple for me. I see the right complain of BBC bias towards the left and the left complain of BBC bias towards the right. Result = BBC is doing an excellent job of being balanced, I apply the same logic to brexit and arrive at the same conclusion. Keep up the good work.

Rob Burley: Thanks Steven.

I hope Rob was just thanking Steven for the best wishes there and not for his main point - which remains, as ever, a fallacy.

Well, all in all, I take Rob Burley's point that the balancing of Remain/Leave guests by labelling them simply from their public positions in June 2016, if that's what Guido Fawkes did, is too crude a measure and that consideration needs giving to their public positions now, such as on whether they want to stop Brexit or go through with Brexit. You do get into obvious difficulties with, say, Labour Sir Keir Starmer and Barry Gardiner, both Remainers in 2016 but both saying that they will respect the referendum result - the added complication being that Mr Gardiner really sounds as if he means it and Sir Keir sounds as if he doesn't really mean it. And, yes, only people who talked about Brexit should have been included in the stats. So Guido's methodology does needed spelling out - especially when you see how he reacted to the Chris Philp question. 

But as the BBC follows its legal obligations to balance party political guests by counting (yes, by "playing a daft numbers game") and is obsessive about 'playing a number's game' when it comes to promoting diversity in its workforce and across its output, then surely it isn't right to dismiss 'counting' per se? 

However imperfect, counting remains one of the best ways to check if balance is being achieved, whether that be on Question Time, Any Questions on the one Rob has responsibility for, Politics Live. Unless you count (to some consistent degree) how can you really be sure you're 'getting it about right'?

And I don't think Rob properly answered Gw's point either.

Am I missing something?

I have to boast that I lead such a busy life that I don’t have time for reading the books I should be reading. Although I did have a quiet hour or two to sit out in the warm October sun this afternoon, reading the actual Times newspaper, when a seagull shat on my head with such a splat that I had to abandon the Times and wash my hair.

Anyway, certain things have passed me by, one of which is a book called Easy Meat by Peter McLoughlin. Now I come to think of it, Jack Straw used that phrase many years ago, when he got a whole load of flak for characterising Pakistani men in an uncharacteristically (for him) politically incorrect way. Did he read this book?

Anyway, it brings me to Tommy Robinson, and, since the comments on Harry’s Place are routinely deleted after a week, I’ll save this one from the author of the aforementioned book, which popped up a couple of days ago below the line on that enigmatic Tommy Robinson thread. Why the mysterious “Lucy Lips” posted the piece, which consisted solely of an anti-TR video made by Hope not Hate, no-one seems quite sure. Was it a talking point - like, a ‘serving suggestion?’ Or was it supposed to be a straightforward expression of the kind of Tommy-bashing that is usually found on the ‘far left’? 

So here’s the comment.

Peter McLoughlin • a day ago
Never ceases to amaze me how staggeringly ignorant people are. 

1. EDL Mission Statement (circa 2011) reads like it was written by liberals. http://gatesofvienna.blogsp... Yet morons continue to describe it as a fascist or racist organisation.
2. Tommy Robinson's first appearance with the EDL on TV was on BBC Newsnight in 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/... Notice the banners promoting racial unity, notice the burning of the Swastika and denunciation of Nazism. Do you even notice the black men surrounding Tommy Robinson? When I first saw this in 2009 it was clear to me that this was not a racist or fascist organisation. Further investigation of photographs and videos of EDL protests in 2009 showed that signs about women's rights and opposing Muslim homophobia were to be found peppered in those early protests. Thus the appearance on Newsnight was not an outlier, and the Mission Statement of 2011 was in keeping with the statements of the previous two years. 

3. The trumped-up "mortgage fraud" case came back-to-back with a 3 year long "tax evasion" case, where a jury found Tommy not guilty. The next week the "mortgage fraud" case began, where Tommy was enjoined to plead guilty if he wanted to keep his mother (who had cancer) out of the dock. Cf. Mandelson and Geoffrey Robertson - Mandelson was "ennobled" after that became public. https://www.theguardian.com... One report in The Telegraph concluded that 1 million people in in Britain had committed this kind of mortgage fraud, but only Tommy Robinson was imprisoned. As with contempt of court, when the law is only applied to one man, it's not the rule of law anywhere except in a tyranny. 

4. When the mortgage fraud case was taken to appeal, the High Court judged agreed that what was done to Tommy was unlawful, but decided that having been imprisoned and fined unlawfully, this was not sufficiently serious for him to rule in Tommy's favour and compensate him. 

5. Hope Not Hate have done nothing about the systemic hatred that Muslim men have for non-Muslim schoolgirls. HNH could have taken a stance on this industrial scale rape before the EDL even existed. http://www.blowe.org.uk/200... Nearly a decade on, and to the extent that these gangs have faced any punishment, there is nothing but the presence of EDL marching across England that can claim responsibility for this eventuality.

6. The man who Tommy attacked at an EDL demo was in fact a neo-Nazi, sent to plague an organisation which had denounced Nazism from its inception. Such Nazis and racists would turn up at EDL protests precisely because organisations like UAF and HNH would tell them that such protests were the place for them. 

7. When the police Domestic Extremism Unit investigated EDL, they concluded that EDL was not a far-right organisation. But HNH profits from promoting the idea that the UK suffers from a burgeoning threat from "the far right". If there is a rise in Nazism and Jew-hatred in Britain, give the thanks to the Left. 

8. Tommy Robinson has more support than Theresa May and is fast catching up on Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, Corbyn's support is almost certainly inflated by the lunatic Left making multiple sock puppet accounts just to pretend that Corbyn is not unpopular. 

9. My book with Tommy (Mohammed's Koran) went straight to No.1 on Amazon and stayed there until the entire print run ran out. Care to tell me of another book on the politics and terrorism of Islam which achieved that? 

10. The media have lied about EDL and Tommy Robinson for the best part of a decade. Tommy exposed this week how they will edit together his words to take the answer from question and put it as the answer to another. Active deception.

More here:

I am specifically including this info to counteract some of the reflexive demonizations of TR that come from all and sundry, including some surprising names.  Feel free to criticise, as always.

************

Another casualty of my hectic lifestyle is that I thought I’d heard (some years previously) of the false-flag type of escapade, wherein some audacious academics submit jargon-filled parodies of academic papers for peer review and the like, and manage to have them taken seriously. 

As I said, I’m sure I read about this ages ago, but it has surfaced again - or maybe it’s a new one. 

Douglas Murray has written about it here, and its message has been adopted by EoZ and appropriately applied to Middle East studies here. 

One has to ask if ‘Education’ is imploding. Lookout,  Melvin, and careful what you wish for.

“Now that millions of people have gone to university, but have focused on a couple of subjects, the idea of getting a spread of knowledge is attractive.” 

Nearly half of Britons can now expect to attend university by the time they are 30, compared with less than 10 per cent in the 1960s.

Voices matter

Whispering wanker

Is Barry Gardiner’s voice silv’ry, slithery or silken? This debate was raised earlier on this blog below the line, and so was the state of the English language via Dawkins on Twitter.  

Unless there is something intrinsically wrong with Barry Gardiner’s vocal chords, the muted volume effect must be there for a purpose. ‘Sinister whispering wanker’, someone on Guido called him.

The Scottish burr is normally an asset (for clarity of diction think BBC announcer Susan Rae) and your normal Scottish and Irish speaker will enunciate that  “wh” gently as if lightly puffing away a feather. However, the whoosh of Barry Gardiner’s ‘whh’ is expelled forcefully, as if to snuff out a candle, and each word is articulated with pained precision; a meaningful pause separates each one, allowing time for the profundity of his message to sink in because the audience is a bit thick.

*******

The ’t’ sound.

Of course, most Labour MPs habitually use the glottal stop as well as the silent ’t’ at the end of a word. Take Faiza Shaheen on Politics Live. Yes, do.

A bizarre perversion of the missing ’t' occurs in the accent spoken by folks that hail from the region somewhere up north, (wherever it is that Michelle Dewberry comes from) (Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. )

'T' gone awry

Do you watch The Pledge?  I’m not worried about the weird vowels, but those ’t’ endings are fascinating. See how the final ’t’ has gone awry when Michelle Dewberry articulates the word “want”. It comes out as “won-ugh” (That’s ‘won’ as in ‘wonky’, and not as in wonderful.) I rather like Michelle Dewberry’s carefully enunciated delivery but that distorted  ’t’ thing is mad.

The worst voice abomination is vocal-fry aka throat-fry. It’s really really, like, annoying, but as it’s largely American (unless we follow the Kardashians) we don’t have to put up with it so much. There’s also that two-tone thing that some people have all the time, even when they’re not suffering from tonsillitis or laryngitis. There’s probably a medical name for it, but you hear it as a kind of duet as if two voices of a slightly different pitch are speaking at once; a cappella - harmonising in unison.

Here we have Christine Blasey Ford. Her extreme vocal-fry voice and what’s known as “Valley Girl” manner sabotaged her testimony. For me at least, it completely undermined her credibility. 

Some people insist that they were profoundly moved by her testimony, but not I. Not #meToo. I bet they were motivated by PC. My motivation, on the other hand, may have been a tad political, but  I really think her trauma would be a lot more credible if she had actually been raped, and not merely “laughed at”. I’m not a ‘Trump firster’ and I wasn’t overly won over by Brett Kavanaugh either.

Just imagine being ambushed in a lift by a posse of sobbing sexual assault  ‘survivors’; Senator Flake is the most aptly named character in the whole pantomime.

Pitch for new BBC drama.

Jed Mercurio has sufficient material to base a six-part series on an FBI investigation into the inebriated sexually perverted antics of Ivy League undergraduate year-book alumni dating back to the days before radical misandry began in nineteen seventy-three (Between the introduction of the Contraceptive pill and the Beatles’ last LP.)  

The general idea will be that no-one will be able to make head nor tail of the plot, the cast or the outcome unless they consult the explanatory recap on the Guardian. The privilege of being guilty is reserved for the stale, pale white guy, and the lead character, based on Dr Ford, will be played by a mixed-race transgender actor who will do a pitch-perfect, Bafta-winning  performance, recreating the vocal fry and “Valley-girl” mannerisms, which will later prove to have been mimed and covertly voiced by a white, voice-gymnast who will hire eminent QC Michael Mansfield to sue the BBC for ‘uman rights.

Jason Farrell will appear in a cameo performance as ‘himself’ interviewing a BAME suspect, introduced purely as a ‘double-bluff’ red-herring. (BAMEs are inherently innocent. Fact.)

Rob Burley and Gabriel Gatehouse will tune in for that bit, but no-one else will be watching TV by then.

Who needs elocution?

mellifluous

Well, one person has charmed us all with his rich, olden-day voice. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox. We do still value a nice voice. Mellifluous, meaning sweet-sounding, honeyed, mellow and dulcet. Having an attractive voice used to be a primary requisite for the radio, and perhaps a secondary requisite for TV. 

Now, anything goes. The more incomprehensible and unintelligible the accent and diction the better. Suffering from one of the most serious cases of fashion victimhood on the box, that and her slurred, nasal, adenoidal diction and harsh-toned voice hasn’t held Kirsty Wark back.  Voice like a bark. Woof! Ruff! A contender for next chair-person of Question Time.

where did you get that dress

Of Habeas Corpus and Emily Maitlis

Under the greatest of England's medieval kings, Henry II, England gave birth to the concept of Habeas Corpus. And English common law enshrined the presumption that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. 

Both concepts crossed the Atlantic and were adopted by the United States of America.

Is all that long-fought-for progress starting to slip? 

Here's Newsnight's honourable but ambitious Emily:

As several respondents have pointed out, the missing word here is "alleged". 

Which leads me to another tweet:

Marked by Bias

As noted by Monkey Brains on the open thread...

Mark Easton in a suit and looking serious in  Bournemouth

Mark Easton gave BBC One viewers another heavy dose of one-sided alarmist reporting on the subject of immigration last night.

(His report appeared on both the BBC's News at Six and News at Ten.)

He was bewailing the impact of the Government's migration system proposals on the UK economy, particularly with regards to the UK care and hospitality sectors. 

As ever, his report prejudged the argument by loading it with sly editorialising (such as "the very people who currently keep this local area functioning"). 

And, after the clip from Mrs May, we got three 'talking heads' in a row, all of whom backed up Mark's case. 

Contrary views didn't get a look-in. 

Mark Easton has long been one of the BBC's main propagandists for mass immigration. This report is par for the course for him. 

Here, for the record and to confirm the bias, is a transcript:

Pulchritudo et Salubritas

Mark Easton: Regaining control of our borders is a fundamental aim of the Government after Brexit. Among those who will be made less welcome, arriving here in Dorset for example, are low-skilled migrant workers. But what is a low-skilled migrant? Today, Government ministers suggested it might mean a minimum salary, and the official advisers to the Government have said that after Brexit, a new immigration system should describe any job that pays less than £30,000 a year as low skilled. So, that would include many care workers, health workers, farm workers, construction workers, hospitality workers, the very people who currently keep this local area functioning. But the Prime Minister is clear, after Brexit she wants the UK to become a low migration economy, with greater emphasis on British workers. 

Theresa May: We will be bringing an end to free movement once and for all, so we'll be able to decide the basis on which people come to the UK. That has not been possible many years, for people coming from the EU. That will change. 

The Government says the new immigration strategy will prioritise high skilled workers, with no preferential treatment for EU citizens, and a minimum salary requirement to keep out lower skilled migrants. But in Leave-voting retirement haven Bournemouth, what might that mean for the care sector, for example? Half of the staff at this care home are immigrants. The manager, herself from Slovakia, says without foreign staff the situation would be bleak. 

Jana Pomotiova, Manager, Seacliff Care Home: I think most of the care homes will be shut down because they take in European people who work for them here. 

But why can't Bournemouth's care sector employ more local people? 

Lee-Ann Fenge, Professor of Social Care, Bournemouth University: We haven't had much success to date in recruiting new workers to find interest in a career in social care. 

Tourism and hospitality adds almost £1 billion to Bournemouth's economy, and employs close to 15,000 people. Without staff like Lilian from Spain, it has warned many businesses will close. 

Andrew Woodland, Bournemouth Tourism and Hotels Association: Service would be reduced considerably. It would have to come down to you carrying your own bags, you not having a restaurant in many of the hotels, and I'm afraid that the service levels would be down to almost zero.
Mark Easton: It's the same question I'm asking everybody, why can't you get British people to do these jobs?
Andrew Woodland: I'm afraid the British people do not want to work in hospitality. 

The Prime Minister wants control of our borders, an end to free movement and a big fall in net migration, but she also wants to negotiate what's best for Britain, and that's where the debate will rage.

Something for the BBC to Bragg about

Melvyn in the 'In Our Time' studio just prior to going on air each week

As regular readers will probably know I'm a massive fan of Melvin Bragg's magnificent In Our Time (with or without the mumbling). 

His Lordship is quoted in The Times today (via The Radio Times) ascribing the popularity of his programme (including with the young) to our becoming "a more serious country", partly thanks to the recent huge spread of university education...

...a contention which might well call for that most traditional of university essay question closing commands: "Discuss". 

The Times goes on:

Of course, it's not "a week" from Friday to Monday, and In Our Time isn't a "Monday morning live show", being broadcast on Thursday, but otherwise The Times is (probably) spot-on. 

Long may 78-year-old Lord Bragg of Wigton continue to spend less than a week boning up on Bonhoeffer, Brunel, Bruegel, bird migration, black holes, Beowulf,  blogs about BBC bias, behavioural ecology, and the Boxer Rebellion, among other B-related topics (not yet including Billy Bragg) - and all subjects under every other letter of the alphabet too!

Untitled post, or Two for the price of one

Besides the Tory conference, there are two current topics of interest to this blog. One is the Christine Blasey Ford / Brett Kavanaugh affair. 

There is so much material online about the credibility of both individuals concerned that it's hard for anyone, especially me, to add anything helpful.  So I'll just ramble a bit.

I immediately took a dislike to he good Doctor Ford when I first heard her testify in that scratchy, vocal-fry, so-called “valley girl” voice. The more times you hear it the more farcical it sounds. Can that really be her voice? Is she having us on? Can she be a college lecturer with that voice? 

Vocal fry aside, how much credibility could there be in the utterances of a 50-year-old woman pretending to be a baby?  Numerous analyses of her body language, her alleged psychological problems and the supposed lies and holes in her testimony are available online. It’s easy to forget that she wasn’t raped. 

But on the other hand, various statements are appearing all over the www - from former class-mates and uni-buddies of the good judge, accusing him of all sorts of drunkenness and debauchery and falling over each other to cast the first stone.

From the unique vantage point of an ignorant keyboard warrior, I’m inclined to dismiss the whole thing as ‘plague on both their houses’ until further notice, or unless something relevant comes up.

I guess it all boils down to who you prefer to back? Trump, or everyone else.. Here’s an interesting take on Trump by Theodore Dalrymple, which I present for your consideration. 

As for the aptly named. senator Flake, oy vey.

*******

The other topic is the Tommy Robinson / Jason Farrell debacle. I’ve seen numerous bits and pieces about that online, too. There’s the video, filmed “on the way to the interview’ where TR correctly predicts an imminent stitch-up. I think it’s available on one of Biased-BBC’s open threads. He knows what they’re likely to get up to, and true to form, they do.

Sky’s malicious edit must be potentially litigious (suitable to become the subject of a lawsuit). Jason Farrell and whoever colluded with him in manipulating the footage must be properly reprimanded, surely.

I saw yet another video, recorded some time ago by his cousin Kevin I think, also involving Sky News, in which another manipulative interviewer tries to trick TR into taking responsibility for Darren Osbourne’s crime. Sky’s general idea is that TR’s warnings about the dangers (associated with Islam) are more inflammatory than the dangers themselves. (systematic sexual grooming, terrorism, etc) The premise is that if everyone agrees to keep quiet, the nasty things will go away.

There’s an online article, penned by Jason Farrell, promoting his interview here. It may or may not have been amended in response to Tommy Robinson’s exposé, which ‘went viral’.

Incidentally, Gabriel Gatehouse seemed to think it was a good interview.  Will he back-track now the trickery has been revealed, I wonder?

The article even uses the misreported quote as a headline:

’Tommy Robinson: I don't care if I incite fear of Muslims’ 

We now know that he didn’t say that at all. The article looks like a “how-to” lesson in biased reporting. The strapline includes the obligatory label: “The far-right activist‘ The rest of the copy sets off with a whopper; in bold.

Tommy Robinson has told Sky News he does not care whether his message "incites fear" of Muslims as long as it "prevents children from getting raped”. 

Not “his message”, though, eh? The message in question occurred within a public information / educational film - intended as a warning to potential victims. In Holland. 

Another label follows: “The English Defence League founder‘ and, for the third time, the misquote reappears, with “I” suddenly amended to “it”.

Challenged over whether he (!) was attempting to demonise the Muslim community, he said: (referring to the Dutch educational  film) ”To be honest with you, I don't care if it incites fear as long as it educates the children and prevents them from being raped.”

Rob Burley didn’t do himself any favours with his unpleasantly snobbish sneer at the very idea that the BBC would be ‘interested’ in anything Tommy Robinson might have to say, as noted by Craig here. 

I wonder if the BBC will be equally uninterested when and if the TR team succeed in prosecuting Sky for their malicious conduct. 

Practice and ethics of the press?   Leveson inquiry all forgotten already?

Systematic Reporting Failures

Notorious Israel-haters “Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Prof Greg Philo, Jenny Manson, Lindsey German, Mike Cushman,” (these are just the ones I’ve actually heard of) and numerous others have signed a piece in the Guardian complaining that the media has been less than impartial in reporting “allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. “  The phrase they use is “systematic reporting failures”.  

The alleged motive for such “systematic reporting failures” is “to weaken the Labour leadership and to bolster its opponents within and outside of the party.”

Naturally, as staunch, lifelong opponents of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms, they concede that:

“It is of course entirely appropriate and necessary for our major news outlets to report on the horrors of antisemitism, but wrong to present it as an issue specific to the Labour party.” 

They conclude:

“We believe that significant parts of the UK media have failed their audiences by producing flawed reports that have contributed to an undeserved witch-hunt against the Labour leader and misdirected public attention away from antisemitism elsewhere, including on the far right, which is ascendant in much of Europe.”

As Eve Gerard points out in her piece on Harry’s Place,  What’s good for the Goose …

“I trust that the signatories to this letter also object to the production of flawed reports about Israel’s conduct, reports which contain inaccuracies, clear distortions, and revealing omissions that have contributed to an undeserved witch-hunt against the Jewish state”. 

Everyone can agree it would be hypocritical of them not to. Of course, there is a small flaw in that logic. The media hasn’t, in fact,  been backward in coming forward about the Corbynistas’ interpretation of the whole business of antisemitism in the Labour Party. It has been widely reported that Corbyn’s acolytes and apostles see the accusation of antisemitism in the Labour Party as nothing but a smear. “to weaken the Labour leadership and to bolster its opponents within and outside of the party” The media has faithfully reported this all along; countless times.

Whereas throughout the BBC’s Israel-related reporting - the omissions and distortions are quite real, and have been (and are still being) regularly and painstakingly recorded on relatively low-key websites such as BBC Watch (and this one.)

Andrew Marr v Theresa May

An awkward moment

Well, well, well! With the exception of a few irreconcilable still talking about Mr Marr being "a Tory shill", the vast bulk of Left and the #FBPE crowd on Twitter have been positively brimming with praise for Andrew Marr this morning - though many of their comments have been caveat-laden variations on the theme of "For a change Marr did a good job. Surprised". 

They obviously really enjoyed Mr Marr's Paxmanesque questioning, Theresa May's car crash performance and the very awkward icy silence between her and Andrew as the credits rolled. 

I have no objections to any of that but I do object to the way Andrew Marr brought the interview to a close by making a loaded point of his own about a no-deal Brexit:

Andrew Marr: But per-pupil funding has fallen over the last two years. It's now been frozen. And that's why they're so upset. Lots of your MPs think this country has had enough of the lean years and it's time to change direction radically.
Theresa May: Well, if we look back at what's happened over the last few years, of course when we came into government in 2010 it was necessary for us to take some tough decisions to deal with the public finances because of the mess that he Labour Party had left them in and people have made sacrifices as a result of that. Now...
Andrew Marr: (interrupting) And they may have to make a lot more if we go for no-deal, but I'm afraid we are out of time, Prime Minister. 

Why did he say that? Not very impartial was it?