Britannia Radio

BIASED BBC

>> THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

I wanted to bring you up to date with where my thinking is on the topic of the "Biased BBC" Book. I seek to have the manuscript completed by the end of this year!

That's a lot of work to do so I have a few requests to make;

1. To get the book completed, I HAVE to ease off on the blogging, esp at weekends. But I want the site to keep on moving, as S Club 7 would say! So, that means it would be helpful if existing writers could produce a bit more and if there are any other people who would like to post here, please please contact me. Best use the email me on A Tangled Web feature! Don't hold back if you think you could post some copy - the more the merrier.

2. Once I have completed the book, I need help in terms of how I should then go about getting it designed and published, marketed and supported. I want this to be the definitive book on BBC bias and there is just SO much material that it's a bit overwhelming but I want the final book to get as much distribution and profile as possible. If anyone thinks they could help here, again please drop me a line. If we could launch in Spring 2010 - before the GE - that might be good. My experience is that publishing books takes quite a long time however, so I am not tying myself down to a given schedule. My priority is to do as good a job as I can in writing it and beyond that, I will need help. I trust you can all advise and direct me.

That's it on this for the moment but please get in touch directly with me if you want to help on either point raised!

CUT AND TRUST....

Former BBC employee and NuLabour talking head Ben Bradshaw believes the License tax should be cut a little and the BBC trust scrapped. I disagree. The License tax should be scrapped and then they can do whatever they want with their management team, they'll be paying for it, not me. There was a debate on this earlier this morning on Today with John Whittingdale MP and the thing that struck me was Humphyrs recantation that regardless of changes to the Trust and "top-slicing" the essential structure of the BBC would stay the same. That's the problem. Sir Michael Lyons is on later but I have better things to do than listen to him.

MORE ON THOSE RACIST AMERICANS...

Well, the Lightworker has generously declared that those who oppose him are not raving racists despite the insistence of Jimmy Carter to the contrary, But can Mark Mardell bring himself to really believe that criticism of the first "post-racial" President is not ...erm...racist. You decide.

SOMALI UPDATE

OK, I'm hooked on the exciting series of reports on Today from Mike Thomson as he travels around Somalia at our expense. Today Mike asks the question that I am sure we were all wondering; Was life better when the Islamic Courts ran Mogadishu? Answer, yes - for a while. Gotta love it.

PYMS, ANYONE?

>> WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

Just watched Hugh Pym on the BBC 10 News doing everything possible to ameliorate the latest shocking unemployment increases whilst claiming that the recession is now behind us. Why not just cut to the chase Hugh and hold up a sign saying Vote Labour? At least there would be some honesty in that.....

COMPARE AND CONTRAST...

So, Radio 4 has replaced a continuity announcer known as the "voice of the Shipping Forecast" a month after he accidentally swore on air. Peter Jefferson, who worked for the BBC for 45 years, swore after mixing up his words as he tried to complete a sentence before the famous "pips" at the top of the hour on Radio 4. The 64-year-old has been told by BBC managers that his services are no longer needed. Meanwhile, Wossy swears as if he suffers from tourettes and he is a star in the BBC firmament. Hypocrisy?

ALL VIEWS WELCOME

I thought this was quite telling from John Redwood...

This afternoon I was asked to appear this evening on the World Tonight to do an interview on spending cuts. I agreed. I was asked if I preferred a pre-record or live. I said I preferred live. They agreed and made the arrangements.

I was then telephoned and asked in detail about my views. (They are on the website anyway). When I said they should ask the government where their cuts were coming, as I was happy to set out my proposals and Conservative proposals, there seemed a hesitation. I said if they did not want to do that I would naturally raise the question. They then confirmed the interview.

A few hours later they left a phone message to say they did not want to do the interview after all! Clearly they did not want me asking on air for Labour to explain where their cuts were coming under the new headings the PM has so wisely set out.

Inflammatory Matters

The TUC conference in Liverpool is to vote on yet another call to boycott Israel. As Sarah Jane put it on another thread “My opinion of Afghanistan is derived entirely from the news I receive about it.” 
I suspect this also applies to members of the Fire Brigade union, Unite and Unison vis-à-vis the Middle East.
Today’s interview between James Naughtie and Israeli Deputy Ambassador Talya Lador-Fresher did little to enlighten the listener. The BBC’s theory that the settlements are the only obstacle to peace was put forward to justify the boycott using the “What else could they do?” argument, as in Cherie Blair’s empathetic defence of suicide bombers. Talya Lador-Fresher was only able to squeeze in, just at the end, a reference to the forgotten obligation, the other side of the requirement for peace- ‘some sort of gesture from the Arab world.’

The logic of boycotting Israel escapes me, but coming from people who are continually accusing Israel of collective punishment it is hypocritical in the extreme. Naughtie suggested boycotts are justifiable if you decide a government has failed, or “failed to convince people that its policy is reasonable.” (By that token we should be boycotting....never mind)
Whose fault is it that Israel has failed to convince people anything about its policies? For years the BBC has done its utmost to unconvince them.

A whitewash here, a smear there and half truths everywhere. It seems that the necessity to sustain cordial relations with oil-rich countries is reaching the the point of no return, and the BBC grooms us with its unrelenting campaign to sanitise Islam, vilify Israel, and erode the British identity in a seemingly unstoppable multi pronged onslaught.

Something slipped through the net on BBC World Service.

“Our reporter Mat Heywood has visited the site of a new biocluster that’s being built in Israel. This is a specially designed massive science park, where institutions like universities and hospitals stand alongside small start up companies and even investment banks. The idea is that they can then talk and do business with each other.”

A report so effusively admiring that you had to wonder how it escaped.

“Claire Skentelbery from the Council of European BioRegions joins us on the programme to explain why this set up is vital for the biotechnology industry.”

She was so enthusiastic about bioclusters in general it begged the question - whether, in the long term, Israel’s cutting edge science would not be even more valuable to this country than the Arab oil we’re bending over backwards to be allowed to acquire.

And if we don’t want Israel’s expertise, or if the brains in UK academia do plump for their academic boycotts, I’m sure plenty of other countries will be only too glad to take advantage. So go on Liverpool, boycott everything from Israel and shoot yourself in the foot.

Suppressio Veri (again)

While the BBC did find space to report the sentencing of 20 year old Robert Tozer for the brutal murder of 85 year old Joan Charlton, uniquely among media outlets they forgot to mention that he'd been released from prison only weeks before. 

In fact he'd served only 5 months of a fifteen-month sentence for assaulting a man with a pool cue before he was released "on licence". He's just one ofhundreds who kill under probation service "supervision". 

Why the BBC report should omit this fact I really can't imagine. They're terribly keen to amplify calls for "corporate manslaughter" charges to be brought when private organisations - or prisons for that matter - are implicated in avoidable deaths. I think it'll be a long time before we hear Helena Kennedy, Marcel Berlins or Michael Mansfield (he's just on R4 now) being interviewed on the BBC about the need for the Probation Service to be included in corporate manslaughter law.

SHILLING FOR ISLAMOFASCISM

BBC correspondent Mike Thomson travels to Somalia and here is the first in what the BBC threatens will be a series of reports. Oh god. Within a few minutes, Thomson cuts to the chase and asks the US Ambassador Mike Ranneberger why the US refuses to enter into negotiations with the Al Shabaab Islamic killing gangs. When the US ambassador says it is wrong to talk to terrorists, Thomson shoots back that this is what the UN "special representative" has told him is necessary. In every situation, the BBC seeks to advance the idea that talking to terrorists is always the right thing to do. In a typical BBC flourish the piece finishes with a woman singing, Lennon-esque, for peace. Yes, that's going work real well with the Islamic hordes that seek to slaughter in the name of their faith. The real story in Somalia is the unspeakable violence carried out in the name of Islam - but I suggest Mr Thomson will do everything possible to occlude this central reality.

GLOBAL COOLING IS WARMING UP!

You almost have to admire the brass-neck of it all. Listen to this item on Today this morning. "Science" Correspondent Tom Feilden explains that new research suggests that we could in for decades of global cooling but that does not mean the Earth is going to have unprecedented global warming. Just not yet. Feilden discusses research which suggests that the global climate is cooling and this is to do with the Earth's natural oscillations. Humphyrs and Feilden discuss "the fear" that climate change sceptics may use this to undermine the AGW hysteria - surely not? Do these alarmists ever take the time to reflect on their sheer unscientific quality of their "debates"?

WHOLLY FOOL..

In today's narrative, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is thrown into the mix condemning the banks for "not repenting" of their evil ways. Druid Williams plays into the BBC leftist agenda by insisting that Government should have intervened to limit how Banks reward their employees. It's an all-out assault on the Banking sector at the moment with the culpability of government entirely obscured. I can think of a certain self-proclaimed "son of the manse" who should also be doing a bit of repenting but the Archbishop, conveniently, has nothing to say about that. Is it any wonder that the BBC gives Williams the kid gloves treatment?