Biased BBC

UNDERMINING OUR MILITARY

2009-07-13T19:23:00.005+01:00

It's not really that subtle, is it? BBC lead story is McDoom defending his strategy of under-equipping our military in Afghanistan. In McDoom-speak this means claiming our military are better equipped than they have been for decades. All fantasy, of course. The BBC then segues into a story concerning alleged abuse carried out by a British soldier in Iraq. Simple equation; British Army = bad. The beat is always the same - pretend to be concerned about our Armed Forces then do everything possible to undermine them in order to get the desired result - withdrawal from Afghanistan.

OPEN THREAD

2009-07-13T16:59:00.000+01:00

Here's a bumped thread for your BBC observations. The floor is yours!

A sharp report

2009-07-13T15:25:00.004+01:00

Praise is due to the BBC for allowing the other side of the story for once. It doesn't equalise their consistent favouring of the criminal over the victim, but here it is, a least this:

Splash!

2009-07-12T21:37:00.005+01:00

That's the sound of the BBC going way overboard in covering what they seem to think is a big scandal of Dick Cheney's doing- some secret "plan" concocted with the CIA without Senate knowledge. Last week it was phone-tapping of public figures in the UK by the News of the World, this week Dick Dastardly and his Mutley CIA. Well just as last week's soft scoop has turned into a damp squib, so will this one, probably. The thing that gets me about this "plan" is that as the BBC admit, "even now its nature is not known". Wouldn't it be better to wait until it was before screaming blue murder? Especially as this is midway through a partisan spat focussing on whether House Speaker Pelosi lied about briefings from the CIA. I'm not sure if the BBC is trying to influence anybody (as if, eh?), but this storm in a teacup strongly suggests to me that Aunty's bias is showing.

ON THE HUNT....

2009-07-12T14:35:00.002+01:00

I see that the Sunday Times reveals how judging by the Golden Globe television awards, the prize for best free trip and luxury hotel stay should go to . . . the BBC!

It has emerged that the corporation spent tens of thousands of pounds flying directors, producers and stars from one of its leading costume dramas to Hollywood so that they could lobby for prizes at award festivals. A seven-strong contingent from the BBC1 series Cranford – including Dame Judi Dench, Dame Eileen Atkins and Imelda Staunton – flew business-class to lobby for nominations to the Emmys and Golden Globe awards last year. They and the BBC production team stayed at luxury hotels favoured by some of Hollywood’s biggest names. A second trip was made to the Golden Globe ceremony itself.

This strikes me as a criminal waste of our cash in order that the BBC can lobby for awards for itself. It's narcissistic,indulgent and evidence of how the BBC promotes itself using our money.

FALLING STANDARDS?

2009-07-12T14:28:00.002+01:00

Wonder what you think of the comments by Peter Sissons, the veteran newsreader who announced his retirement last month, claiming and accusing producers of being too mired in political correctness to do anything about it?

Writing in The Mail on Sunday today, he says: 'At today's BBC, a complaint I often heard from senior producers was that they dared not reprimand their subordinates for basic journalistic mistakes - such as getting ages, dates, titles and even football scores wrong - it being politically incorrect to risk offending them.'

I think this in less than half the story. It is not the sheer amateurish of much of the current output, it is the visceral leftist bias that lies behind it. Not so sure Sissons can see that aspect of the problem. Thoughts?

THE BBC - FAIR AND BALANCED

2009-07-12T14:20:00.002+01:00

Yes, the headline you thought you would never see! Sort of. I comment the following compilation by G.O.T. of those key moments when the BBC could be trusted - enjoy.

No BBC News
Uploaded by GrumpyOldTwat. - News videos from around the world.

T for 324?

2009-07-11T21:55:00.003+01:00

So, you thought the BBC indulgence fest at Glastonbury was an excess?

The BBC has sent 324 people to cover this year's T in the Park music festival, it was disclosed today. The corporation came under fire last month after it emerged that it had sent more than 400 staff to the Glastonbury music festival. Today the BBC confirmed 139 staff, with 158 freelance contractors, and 27 people from Radio 1, were all working at the three-day event - which is Scotland biggest music festival.

Well worth your mandatory license tax? A vast bloated monstrosity that needs reduced to rubble.

The legal approach

2009-07-11T17:50:00.005+01:00

Charles Moore writes about his decision not to pay the licence fee. He's taken every precaution- a donation to charity of the sum in question; an equivalent sum set aside in case the BBC accept his case that they are in breach of their Charter, and amend accordingly.

Of course I think he's right that the BBC are in breach, but more precisely I think the concept of a Charter such as the BBC have (and updated just a couple of years ago) an absurdity, a political charade, a conceit played upon the conscience of the public. Moore grounds his case on the failure to remove Jonathan Ross from his post following RossyBrandSachsgate. Fair enough, I would say, yet as Moore also points out, there are many reasons to wish not to pay the BBC for the use of your television. John Kelly for example has been summoned to court to answer for his non-payment, and grounds his case on the BBC's lack of balance in coverage of the EU.

Obviously we should watch both cases carefully. I note that the BBC renewed their charter a couple of years ago. In the new Charter I believe there is no reference to impartiality, which was one of the Labour Government's friendly touches for the BBC; removing the impartiality clause really left sites like this one in a changed situation. Therefore John Kelly may have a problem since the BBC's partiality is central to his complaint. Instead, the Charter talks of the BBC's "public purposes", which are,

(a)sustaining citizenship and civil society;(b)promoting education and learning;(c)stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;(d)representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities; (e)bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK; (plus the promotion of digital telly)

Charles Moore is evidently basing his prospective case on the failure in "sustaining citizenship and civil society" exampled by the Ross-Brand-Sachs scandal. I think it's a good idea to keep this little bunch of purposes in mind in all our considerations of the BBC. I have to say the new Charter was a rotten document from the beginning. The bit I quote is the most substantive part of it concerning the BBC's responsibilities, yet where does "news" fit in to the above list? Is is "education"? Or "citizenship"? It's hard to see where to fit the BBC's coverage of "Global Warming" into this. Bringing the world to the UK and the UK to the world is a nice soundbyte, but how does it differentiate between a tourist slot for Brazil and a report on Israel?

If I was arguing the case for either Mr Kelly or Mr Moore I would want to point out that the current Charter is utterly inadequate as a moral foundation for a compulsory tax on British-based TV owners. Then I would argue that its education is false, its citizenship flawed, its culture impoverished and its mission in the world ill-conceived and superfluous. After ten minutes of that, I would apologise for going on (as I am now, in fact), and say that the amount of rational criticism that one can make of the foundation of the BBC is evidence of the injustice by which it is sustained. The BBC's ring-fenced status outside the democratic ebb and flow is entirely unjustified. The only comfort from the terrible inadequacy of the BBC's charter is that it arose from the friendship between the BBC and an overwhelming Labour majority in Parliament. Therefore logically if the majority is overturned, so can be the BBC Charter, and the institution itself.

Little White Lies

2009-07-10T22:47:00.003+01:00

“I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are.”
I’m not sure what the purpose of the ‘also’ is in that little gem, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s the oft-quoted soundbite from a man named Ben White who has written a book entitled “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.”

According to reviews this book really lives up to its title, brimming as it is, with fabricated quotations and half-truths. Critics say the author misunderstands and misrepresents everything about Israel, using quotes selectively and out of context; in fact performing a perfect imitation of the antisemite he doesn’t consider himself to be.

The charity War on Want is helping Mr. White promote this book to show their solidarity with suffering Palestinians and spread the word about their contempt for Israel and Jews.

Organisers of the publicity event that was held in East London’s Toynbee Hall were so afraid of an outbreak of aggression from violent self-detonating Zionist militants that they banned Jonathan Hoffman from attending altogether, and alerted the police, who remained on stand-by just in case he should initiate a disturbance by lurking outside threateningly with leaflets, which he duly did. The sight of him standing there with his leaflets must have been terrifying.

The Guardian gives Ben White a platform to proclaim the evils of the Apartheid Wall, inform the eager reader that Oxfam, Amnesty and likeminded charitable organisations agree with him, and to publicise the meeting so that all Zionist hating Guardianistas will come along to cheer him on, buy a copy of his book and protect him from Jonathan Hoffman.

What has all this got to do with the BBC? In line with their forty year hate campaign against Israel, they are doing something uncannily similar. They tell us all about Oxfam, another charitable organisation demanding the dismantling of the illegal barrier. The barrier which “Israel says is for security.”
Very concerning to them is the fact that Palestinian children have been separated from their playground and have to play in the streets. More concerning obviously than the 200 Israeli lives that were lost in 2002 before the barrier was put there to protect them.

Ben White does not mention such things at all in his “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.” Moreover, he also cannot seem to understand why some people do.

PUSHING AGW AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY

2009-07-10T09:15:00.004+01:00

Fascinating to see here that even when the BBC is salivating over the G8 conference (aka fashionable posturing for already over sized political egos) it cannot resist the temptation to shill for AGW. Note the convenient link in the G8 story that presumes to show us how "global temperatures have risen" so reinforcing the narrative that demands we must obey Obama and the rest of the eco-loons. When it comes to climate, the BBC does not allow any debate. The starting point is that AGW is a fact, and the only issue is how much should we pay in the form of raised taxes and reduced liberties. With Robert Harrabin there to help lead the unholy (geek) chorus, is it any wonder that so many people are so spectacularly uninformed on this issue?

THE BEAT OF DEFEAT...

2009-07-10T09:00:00.003+01:00

Ever since the US and UK led the operation to liberate (or "occupy" in BBC-speak) to Iraq from the Saddam thuggocracy the BBC were constantly seeking to undermine the operation, demanding that we "get out" of Iran, Each military death was treated as an opportunity to advance that defeatist agenda and so it is that with the focus of military action in Afghanistan the same dreary beat of defeat sounds again on the BBC. What sickens me is the way that the tragic death of each British soldier is turned into a mechanism to advance the defeatist agenda so a week that has seen seven British soldiers lose their lives is a real bumper week. On today there was an exchange between former defence minster Lord Moonie and Sir Jeremy Greenstock (not linked yet) and it reeks of the narrative. Greenstock is a particularly pusillanimous personality. The only time we ever here positive news is when the military get to speak - and that is a rare event on the BBC. The BBC opposes the UK taking part in any form of military action and it shows through in their biased and dismal reporting.

OPERATION - GET COULSON, part two!

2009-07-10T08:53:00.003+01:00

The hand of Mandy is all over the concerted attack on Andy Coulson and the BBC continued to LEAD it's prime time 8am news headline with the latest "update" on this non-story. My take on it is that whilst I have no time for the most of the media, including NOTW, the greater danger here lies with how the State broadcaster becomes a willing accomplice in Labour's games. Clearly the comments by Met Asst Commissioner Yates have popped their bubble but already the narrative has shifted to suggest that Yates spoke too quickly and may be forced to eat his words. It's a disgrace the way this sudden attack on the Conservatives - for that is what it is - has been so clearly advanced by the BBC. Some impartiality!

MORE ALARISM!

2009-07-09T15:37:00.002+01:00

Meant to ask if anyone else heard Ed Milipede being allowed to waffle on about the doomsday effects of global warming and why it is vital that the UK coughs up loadsamoney to compensate the less developed world to its bit to save the planet. I just LOVED the unspoken assumption from the BBC that "the debate is over" when it comes to AGW and now the only question is how much shall we pay?

QUESTION TIME LIVEBLOG

2009-07-09T15:35:00.003+01:00

QUESTION TIME LIVEBLOG
Well, we're back this evening with the Student Grant produced Question Time. I will be helped by David Mosque as guest co-moderator and am looking forward to it. Please make sure you turn up, if only for the laughs!

OPERATION - GET COULSON!

2009-07-09T09:13:00.003+01:00

Anyone catch the Toady programme this morning? From 8am onwards, the ENTIRE prime time period was devoted the story concerning whether the News of the World had used private investigators to hack into the mobile phones of celebs and politicos. It was amazing to have this entire 8.10 -8.28am time slot allocated to attacking News International and repeatedly demanding the resignation of David Cameron's Communication's Director, Andy Coulson. Total bias - out of all proportion to the merits of this story.

"we don't often talk directly about demographics...in the UK"

2009-07-08T23:07:00.004+01:00

Evan Davis was being a bit economical with the actualite the other day when he said that 'we don't often talk directly about demographics'. The BBC is quite happy to discuss them - not only that, but to discuss them in a context of conflict or civil disorder - as long as they're a long way away.

Here's Jim Muir's famous 'I saw it coming all along' Iraq piece.

Iraq is a patchwork country, an ethnic and confessional cocktail, of Arabs and Kurds, Turkomans and Chaldaeans, Sunnis and Shiites.

Such countries are usually held together by a strong centralised dictatorship, which could be benign or tyrannical.

I don't understand. Why isn't he celebrating the diversity ?

Same with the troubles in Urumchi - about as far away at the back of Central Asia as one can get.

The violence in Xinjiang has not occurred completely out of the blue.

Its root cause is ethnic tension between the Turkic Muslim Uighurs and the Han Chinese. It can be traced back for decades ...

Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
They make up about 45% of the region's population. 40% are Han Chinese
China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture

Large scale immigration into the capital, ethnic tension, fears of erosion of culture ? These Uighurs sound like terrible racists, ill at ease, failing to come to terms with their new multicultural capital and harking back to some Golden Age that never was. I'm surprised the BBC are publicising their scare-mongering and myths when they should be refuting them. Certainly not the kind of thing you'd find the BBC reporting, about, say, London.

UPDATE - it's also interesting to compare the Chinese state media coverage of the rioting in Urumchi (admittedly far more destructive of human life than anything here) with the British state media coverage of rioting in the UK.

THE RETURN OF QUESTION TIME...

2009-07-08T17:30:00.003+01:00

Hi all! Just to let you know that I have decided to liveblog Question Time tomorrow night. You will be aware I stopped this when my esteemed colleague on the QT liveblog Geoff was taken seriously unwell and I was very concerned for his very survival. His condition continues to show small improvements although he is still hospitalised and the road to recovery will be long and arduous.

However I reckon that Geoff would not want me to stop - so it is for him that I am returning to the fray on this. Plus, it livens up a very dull programme when we get to comment on it! And what a gem tomorrow night brings. It's the "Student Grant" edition and features the return of Universal Shami! Yes, doe-eyed Ms Chakrabrti is back! She is joined by Andy Burham, the human guinea pig Sarah Teather and Jeremy Hunt. So, this is just a heads-up for you and hope you can make an effort to come along.

As a point, if there is someone out there who would like to help me moderate the event - drop me a mail via the contact on A Tangled Web.

THE BROWN BROADCASTING CORPORATION...

2009-07-08T17:13:00.002+01:00

Co-conpirator over on The All Seeing Eye, G.OT. picked up on this little gem from last week's Question Time. Have a look at the interplay between La Harperson and Dimblebore. Then please click here to read G.O.T's take on this instance of BBC bias - well worth your time. The good thing is that there are more than enough of US spotting THEIR bias.

LOVELY SARAH..

2009-07-08T17:05:00.003+01:00

No, I'm not talking about Sarah Palin - though she is lovely! I'm talking about the generosity the BBC extends here to McDoom's wife, Sarah and her new blog on the risible G8 conference. I recall the BBC desperately spinning the tall tale that 'twas the intrepid Sarah that came to save her husband at the last Labour conference, as she added humanity to her husband's profile. Looks like Sarah is back on the BBC narrative...

NOT ANOTHER WEDDING PARTY?

2009-07-08T16:54:00.003+01:00

Oh no - looks like those bad Americans have "killed dozens" in north-west Pakistan. Any bets it is another wedding party? Love the way the BBC leaves the nature of the "dozens" allegedly killed vague in the headline. I suppose "killed dozens of our enemies" would be too judgemental?
God forbid the US has taken out dozens of Jihadi vermin before they could try and kill our soldiers...

Amnesty Report Debunked

2009-07-08T10:21:00.002+01:00

The BBC got more than they bargained for when they interviewed Colonel Richard Kemp on BBC News 24 during Operation Cast Lead, so nobody should hold their breath waiting for them to report this.

If the BBC gave half as much publicity to this speech as they did to the Amnesty report even the flying pigs might suffer an apoplectic fit.

THE RECESSION IS OVER!

2009-07-07T15:39:00.004+01:00

One of the reasons I like to tune into the BBC is to hear the mad delusions from leftworld as it tries to spin for McDoom when we ALL know that it's over bar the shouting until he is prised out of Number 10 next June with a crowbar. This morning on Today the BBC was pushing the idea that the recession is over. Or so says the Chamber of Commerce. No room for dissent, alas. Mind you, unemployment may rise to 3.2m so not all exactly green shoots but at least they are trying to give poor Gordon some hope.

7/7 - FOUR YEARS ON

2009-07-07T08:42:00.007+01:00

So, on this day four years ago, around this time, four Islamic Jihadists travelled from the north of England and then detonated themselves on the London transport system, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds of others. This was an act of war by militant Islam against the British people and since that time our security forces have averted many other attempted acts by other Islamic killers.

And yet, when I review the coverage of the event on the BBC today, I note that the word "Islam" is missing from the story. These were just "bombings", apparently. And the reason for this coyness is that the REALITY of Islam in Britain is wildly divergent from the narrative put forward by Al Beeb. If you want an insight into that, why not read Konnie Huq's drivel here. Financed by the government, (natch) lovely Konnie wants you to know that Muslims are just like us. Well, some are. But then there are some - like those who struck on 7/7 - who are not in any way like us and yet they are protected and given succour from their own community. Maybe there are harder questions that need asked? Rather than going to Bangladesh, perhaps Konnie should try Leeds?

The BBC, just like the government and the rest of the political hard left, are trying to erase the Islamic component to what happened in London those years ago. Reading the Guardian this morning I see a Police Commander - addressing a group of Muslims, naturally - suggests that the main terror threat comes from the "extreme right". In this way, the focus of the war against militant Islam becomes diffused and we are no longer clear on who the enemy actually is. Like it or not - and the BBC does not - this date marks a fundamental challenge to our way of life by a dark ages pathology and cotton-wool obfuscation from the State Broadcaster is a poor substitute for facing into the issue. In my view.

Hat-tip to Philip and George R.

"we don't often talk directly about demographics..."

2009-07-07T00:07:00.002+01:00

... says Evan Davies on the Today programme, treading delicately on eggshells as he interviews Richard Ehrman, author of 'The Power of Numbers' . Funny that.

"Partly, perhaps, because it all tends to change rather slowly, and partly perhaps because we have an aversion to any kind of population control"

I wonder who the 'we' is ? And aversion to population control ? You wouldn't get that impression from the BBC. Evan's back on the eggshells again ...

"We very much .. um .. (unintelligible) relied, either explicitly, you know, deliberately, or by default - on rising immigration, if you like, to keep the labour force growing, haven't we"

We may well have done - but the BBC certainly didn't tell us that. You'd be better off reading Charles Moore if you want to know what the problem is. He doesn't agree that the changes are slow, either :

Each day, a small number of people walk up from the station and past our house on their way to work. It is quite a long walk – perhaps a mile and a half – but I imagine they walk because they do not earn enough to own cars. They are virtually all foreign. They are on their way to serve as carers and nurses in an old people's home, whose inmates are virtually all British...

...the change is not marginal, but drastic. In 1960, OECD countries had a fertility rate of 3.2 children. Today, they have one of 1.6, well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1. So the rate has halved in my lifetime, moving from fast increase to steady decline. We in the West are collectively deciding not to bestow on others the gift which we most value for ourselves – life.

... the welfare state as we know it is essentially the creation of the post-war baby boom, and cannot survive a baby bust. In 1950, there were 5.5 million people in Britain aged over 65. There are 10.5 million today. If I am still alive in 2035, I shall be one of 15.25 million pensioners, while the number of those working, and therefore paying for me and the other 15,249,999, will have fallen steeply.

The problem for the BBC is that the factors which have caused the demographic collapse - the Pill, the sexual revolution, easily available abortion (one baby in four - six million plus since 1967) , women putting career before children, the glorification of extended adolescence - are part of the cultural revolution in which the BBC played a supporting role and which the BBC celebrate to this day. Alas, in those days of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll no one mentioned pensions or the care of the elderly. No one told us ideas had unintended consequences. The writer Lionel Shriver describes the mindset with great insight and honesty in this Guardian piece.

The timebomb is serious, and makes the Government's current credit crunch deficit look like small change. You can see a 'population pyramid' here - note the immediate post-war 'blip' of babies, then the great bulge born in the 50s and 60s. As that bulge moves into retirement over the next 25 years, the ratio of taxpayers to tax consumers (elderly people need more care and particularly more medical care) will fall. Where will the money come from to pay for their care ?

There's another issue too. Public sector pensions - which are funded, not by investments squirreled away, but by current tax receipts. A larger number of pensioners plus a smaller number of taxpayers is not a sustainable situation - unless the government either raises taxes significantly, cuts public spending significantly, or prints money.

A private pension provider who paid existing pensioners out of current receipts, and who therefore needed a continual inflow of new clients to pay the existing ones, would be guilty of a criminal offence.

There's a word for financial schemes which take in money, promising a good return in the future, and use the new money coming in to pay existing investors. They're called Ponzi schemes. A characteristic is that they need to recruit more and more new investors to pay the outgoings to the current investors. When the supply of new investors dries up, the scheme cannot continue to pay out and collapses.

For 'new investors' in the Ponzi scheme, read 'new taxpayers' paying for some old chap's pension and NHS treatment, or for some quangocrat's inflation-proofed pension - maybe even a BBC one. You can see why they haven't given the subject much coverage.

(A nasty thought occurs to me. I hope the BBC's continual plugging of euthanasia isn't softening us up for the inevitable tax-saving cull of the aged and infirm. We wouldn't want to be a burden on the state, would we now ?)