STUDENT GRANT IN THE RED
>> TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2009
Did you catch this interview on Today which debates the claim that the average student leaves University with £23,000 debt. The discussion was between one of the architects of the student loan system Nicholas Barr from the LSE and NUS President Wes Streeting.
The interview manages to entirely miss the essential fact that a Labour government, ideologically driven by radical egalitarianism, is pushing far too many young people into debt in the first place by encouraging them to go to University when other avenues may be more appropriate for them. Streeting managed a get a sly dig in at the Conservatives and of course there was the usual class warfare angle from Student Grant. It's sad to see the important area of university education used as just one more battle-field by the radical left since this now means that a degree is increasingly worthless, that the chance of an academically bright kid from a working class background getting into a University is reduced, and that Universities themselves have become bastions of left wing orthodoxy. Labour must be pleased that they have gotten away with this and all the BBC wants to talk about is the level of debt and terms of repayment. Based on this interview, so long as a graduate avoids work for 25 years, all will be well!
THE BEAT SURRENDER
It must be awful to be a UK military family listening to the BBC for news of the campaign in Afghanistan. Radio Taliban would be less depressing than the State Broadcaster. The meme concerning Afghanistan has now morphed into the same one that prevailed when we were in Iraq. The cause is hopeless, we cannot win, UK lives are being sacrificed for no reason, we must get out. It's defeatism, of course, and it is something the BBC excels at promoting. This morning Today was cultivating the idea that there is electoral corruption in parts of Afghanistan. Surely not! Listen, there is PLENTY of electoral corruption in the UK and we have a government that bribes, lies and cheats to try and buy votes here so the BBC need not travel half ways around the world if it wants to locate such behaviour! Heaven forbid that we have not created a functioning Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan. (Who cares? We should be there to kill Islamic terrorists and prevent AQ reorganising - end of story.)
But, of course, the BBC is doing this to ensure that the results of the Afghanistan election are seen to be compromised. In this way, those British soldiers who lose their lives trying to bring freedom and democracy to this distant land can be seen to have died in vain. However I was thinking that given how many millions gave their lives to defeat the Nazis in WW2, and when we now look at the corruption of the EU, the same argument that BBC seek to employ in Afghanistan could be equally applied here. Human beings will often behave corruptly, that does not mean it is wrong to try and do what is right.
Iraq was the bad war. We were berated by the likes of the BBC for years that we had to get out of Iraq. And now we are out, the spotlight of defeatism switches to Afghanistan. The BBC seems to take an editorial line derived from John Lennon's "Imagine" - nice tune, nothing to do with reality. Was there ever a war of which the BBC approved? Maybe that waged by the IRA against the UK? Thoughts?
Human Wrongs
>> MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009
Defending Israel is not the same as preaching *Israel right or wrong.*
We have a tough time making our case especially when Israel does things we find hard to defend. But facing what Israel faces, we accept that it generally behaves with considerable restraint. As yet, we in the UK are not up against what Israel is up against, and who knows what we would do if we were.
What we “apologists” can do is point out the unfair way Israel is portrayed by the BBC. The recent hoohah about the ‘ white flag killings’ that are the subject of a report by Human Rights Watch is typical of one-sided reporting by the BBC. One-sided reporting of a one-sided report.
Even though near the end of the BBC article they allow: “an Israeli spokesman said the report lacked credibility because it was based on evidence from an area under Hamas control,” the general impression one gets is that the BBC does give the Human Rights Watch report considerable credibility.
Is this fair, thorough, or impartial, considering that it seems HRW did capitalise on their reputation for anti-Israel bias when currying favour with Saudi Arabia in a funding bid.
Saudi Arabia!
Not to mention the reputation of a certain Joe Stork a virulent Israel hater.
Even if that was not relevant, the evidence used in the report largely consists of eyewitness accounts extracted from interviews with interested parties and comprises little more than emotive tales of individual tragedies. Shocking, yes, but it can hardly be considered definitive data.
Does Human Rights Watch detail human rights violations perpetrated by Hamas in this emotive way? Do they forensically probe Hamas’s ploy of hiding behind the white flag to exploit the IDF’s tendency to obey the rules? If they did, their report might have some credibility. Even if all eleven ‘white flag’ incidents were cavalier war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers, and it could be proved that none were due to accidents, misunderstandings, exaggerations or embellishments in the reporting, does the perfunctory paragraph that pays lip-servivce to Human Rights Watch’s accusation that Hamas committed war crimes as well, constitute “proportionate” counterbalancing information?
If the BBC examined HRW’s reputation and scrutinised their methodology, it might add a little something to its claims of impartiality. What about a little interest in the paper from the Israel Ministry of foreign Affairs “The Operation in Gaza - Factual and Legal Aspects
Maybe even go the whole hog and give it similar prominence to that given to the Human Rights Watch report?
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