Curious report here from the BBC suggesting that the CIA was in fact to blame for the "mass hysteria" that erupted in the small town of Pont Saint Espirit in south east France in 1951. Wonder why the BBC felt obliged to indulge Mike Thomson in this regard? Interesting interview here concerning the decision by Eric Pickles to remove the Audit Commission on the basis it has become costly and inefficient and by axing it the taxpayer can be saved at least some cash Compare the treatment handed out to Michael O'Higgins of the Audit Commission with that dished out to Bob Neill from the Government. I wonder what it could be about the idea of Government axing a large bloated expensive public sector body that offends the BBC so much? Wonder has Eric Pickles apologised yet.... Just when you think the world can't get any madder, or crueller... Have a read of this report from the BBC. It concerns the latest efforts from the Mad Mullahs to upgrade their killing potential and perhaps it is just mebut the BBC seems almost giddy with excitement at the potential. I also like the pay-off line "The US said it saw no "proliferation risk" from the plant, though Israel condemned the move." Damn Jews, right? The modern BBC would have admired the build up of arms by Hitler. There seems to be consensus at the BBC that the peace talks will fail solely because of obstacles put up by a Mr Net’n’Yahoo. Something to do with the interweb? The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign has set about summoning the masses to rise up in anger in the form of an Action Alert about the Panorama programme 'Death on the Med'. I missed this and am indebted to the wonderful Ozzie blog Greenie Watchfor pointing it out. Don't faint, but the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit has actually upheld a complaint against Roger Harrabin. Here it is: (Further to Robin's observations) As an experiment, I thought I'd pick a single story from yesterday's news and follow it throughout the course of the day on the BBC News Channel. I thought I'd choose whatever was the BBC's 'Cuts Story of the Day'. Yesterday it was the government's proposal in a consultation paper to cut the benefits of any drug addict who refuses treatment. A sensible-sounding idea you might think. Well, I'm not so sure now. Why? Because I watched every interview on the subject on the News Channel between 7.00am and 11.00pm and, with just one exception, they all said it was a big mistake. This week’s Any Questions and its loony appendage Any Answers.NEVER TRUST THE CIA..
>> MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2010
CORPORATE = BAD
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
>> SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010
Saudi man 'faces spine-op punishment'
We've been waiting days now for the BBC to report this story - another instance of commenters here and elsewhere on the internet breaking stories long before the BBC!
A Saudi judge is reported to have asked hospitals if it is possible to cut the spinal cord of the man, found guilty of paralysing another man in a fight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11045848
NotaSheep also spotted the low-key, late-on-parade BBC article, which for the most part is a straightforward factual account. He draws our attention though to the "incredible" final paragraph :'Correspondents say the case highlights attempts by Saudi Arabia to balance
religious traditions with a push to modernise the country.'
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/08/bbc-and-how-they-report-on-hated-israel.html
I bet you never thought of it that way! I suspect you were thinking something more like 'How barbaric!' or 'How disgusting!'
What goes on in the minds of BBC 'correspondents'?LOVING THE MULLAHS
Israel/BBC Conflict
As ever, the obstacles they constantly posit are: Settlements, 1967 borders and Jerusalem. Oh yes, and the right of return. Oh yes, and the necessity of talking to Hamas which Israel regards as a terrorist organisation. Oh yes, and the newly conceived theory that Israel’s existence endangers the lives of the US military.
All obligations on the part of the Palestinians that were formerly included in the roadmap have been airbrushed out like the model’s arse in a photoshoot.
So notwithstanding the inconvenient fact that they have been indoctrinated from the cradle to the grave with a murderous antipathy towards Jews, the Palestinians will submit obediently, with the proviso that Israel has rolled over and acceded to all requisite concessions as demanded by the majority. For example people like Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University who was consulted by Jane Little on the Sunday programme R4, for his expertise on peacemaking.
Professor Rogers has come to Peace Studies via climate science and environmentalism and he wears a leather gilet over a sweater for lecturing duties. His analysis of the incorrect way the West deals with terrorism relates to a theory he calls lidism, that is suppressing insurgencies rather than understanding their fundamental causes. That’s a superficial summary on my part, you understand.
Equally superficially, I’d say implementing a strategy informed by his own analysis of the M/E peace process would itself provide a perfect example of lidism, ie ignoring the aforementioned underlying causes of Arab resistance to Israel, and putting a lid on the lot of it by forcing Israel to give in, while not troubling the Palestinians to do some similar fundamental rethinking.
On Friday’s Any Questions programme, Alex Von Tunzelmann, batting for the BBC, kept reiterating that Muslims were not ‘other’ but were just like us. They do indeed arrive just like us in their birthday suits, Ms Von Tunzelperson, but are henceforth hot-housed into a belief system that is anything but just like ours, and wishing it weren’t so is not enough, by a long chalk, to make your wish come true.Islamobiquity
Revised: ‘Death on the Med’ – taking your complaint to the BBC further
Following feedback from members to our email ‘Death on the Med - The Next Steps’; we encourage you to write back to the BBC and go through the three stages mentioned below. (Ofcom has written to members saying it is unable to hold the BBC accountable on issues of ‘accuracy and impartiality’).
With admirable efficiency they have compiled a step-by-step guide about how to complain about the BBC’s complaints procedure which up to now hasn’t been very responsive to their original objections. Deepest sympathy about that.
The PSC appears to be primarily concerned with a multitude of omissions from the programme, so most of the instructions headed ‘points to make during the complaints process’ begin: “no mention of this, no mention of that, and no mention of the other.”
However they provide little or no answers for the points that were made, so we’ll wait and see how steadfast the BBC will be in their resistance to this concerted and efficiently orchestrated lobbying onslaught.
Let’s hope the BBC is as intransigent with their allegations of bias as they invariably are with ours.
As some of us have been haphazardly complaining about the BBC’s 60-year campaign to delegitimise Israel for about 60 years, if the BBC caves in under pressure from the PSC, perhaps we can take a leaf out of their book and learn a thing or two about how to organise ourselves. Or, if they stand firm, even if only for disingenuous evidence of impartiality, we can take comfort from the fact that their charter does at least still oblige them to attempt that.
The irony being that for so long the PSC and its ilk has it all its own way with the media. The first sign of the truth and they respond with mass apoplexy. Funnily enough, we know how they feel.
BBC, if you’re out there, don’t let it get to you!HELL FREEZES OVER...
ECU Ruling: BBC News at 10, BBC1, 25 January 2010
Publication date: 19 July 2010
Complaint
In a report on calls for Dr Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the BBC's Environment Correspondent referred to him as "the UN's top climate scientist". A viewer complained that this was inaccurate and misleading, as Dr Pachauri's scientific qualifications and credentials were in a field unrelated to climate science.
Outcome
Although the phrase was intended as journalistic shorthand for the occupant of the most prominent international post connected with climate science, the implication that he was himself a climate scientist was materially misleading in the context of this report. Upheld
Further action
The Editor of BBC News at 10 is reiterating to his team the importance of accuracy in the introduction of our contributors.
What the complaint ruling doesn't say of course, is that Mr Harrabin, along with Richard Black, worship at the altar of the IPCC and the execrable Dr Pachauri daily, and report his every utterance with the reverence that the BBC normally only shows to Islam. For a truer picture of the Indian railway engineer, see Richard North's latest blog here.Nick Bryant And The "Prevailing Wisdom"
>> SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 2010
Ever since Tony Abbott challenged Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership of Australia's Liberal Party at the end of last year the BBC's Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant has, at almost every opportunity possible, dismissed the chances of the man he never fails to remind us is nicknamed the "Mad Monk". From his smirking obsession with Abbott's "budgie smugglers" to his quaint conviction that climate scepticism could lead to the dissolution of the Liberals, Bryant has reflected the sneering views of the Ozzie left.
When Abbott stood for Liberal leader Bryant said he lacked the "plausibility factor". When Abbott defeated Turnbull, and immediately announced that he would oppose Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation, the BBC journalist responded:In what is already being billed as "the climate-change election", most observers predict a lop-sided majority for Labor, if not a landslide… By electing Mr Abbott, many commentators think that the Liberals have entered a sort of twilight zone - that they risk becoming a fringe party… By installing Mr Abbott, have the turkeys just voted for Christmas?
Bryant anticipated a snap election to coincide with the end of bushfire season which, he said, would allow the global warming message to be driven home with greater impact. When it became clear that his beloved Kevin Rudd didn't have the nads to go to the country Bryant posted an update saying it was wiser to wait:It's a smart political strategy, for it will highlight and possibly deepen the fissures within Liberal ranks between those who think the party has no other choice but to support an ETS - John Howard proposed an ETS, after all - and the climate change sceptics and deniers. Labor is hoping that a weak Liberal party will be even be even more fragile by the time that parliament resumes. And, remember, that trigger can be pulled at any time the government wants.
Labor backed off a snap election not, as Bryant's spin would have it, because they hoped to capitalise on Liberal Party "fissures" but because opposition to ETS had given sudden momentum to the Liberals under its new climate sceptic leader.
Undaunted, and still with his finger firmly on the political pulse, Bryant began 2010 with a list of predictions, top of which was this:1 - The election: If history is our guide, Kevin Rudd will win this year's federal election. After all, not since the great depression has an incumbent government been turfed out after just one term in office. Ever since he became leader of the Labor Party in December 2006, Kevin Rudd has enjoyed an unbroken run of high approval ratings, and it will surely take some unforeseen, game-changing event or scandal to put his government in jeopardy.
A month later Nick, along with the rest of the Rudd-supporting media, was in shock:For this week the biggest, and most surprising, political headline came from a fresh opinion poll which showed the opposition coalition had pulled ahead of Labor for the first time in three years…The prevailing wisdom has always been that Kevin Rudd would win what is already being dubbed the climate change election - and win it handsomely. But in the month or so since Copenhagen, the prime minister has been largely silent on the question of climate change, and the opposition has filled the vacuum.
No worries though:While there appears to have been a shift in the politics, there is by no means a sea change.
By June, following a succession of political missteps from Rudd and his party, often relating to green policies (fatalities from a mismanaged insulation project, dithering over further ETS legislation, a high profile battle with Australia's successful mining sector over a proposed super-tax) polling showed that the Mad Monk had become more popular than the PM. Shortly afterwards the Labor Party toppled its leader.
In December 2009 Bryant had suggested (somewhat optimistically?) that the new Liberal leadership's opposition to climate legislation could lead to the party's fracture and demise; eight months later it was Labor that polled lower in a federal election than any governing party since the war.
Perhaps Bryant should get out a bit more and meet a wider cross-section of the great Australian public. Alternatively, he could try a change of career: Nick Bryant and the Prevailing Wisdom is quite a good name for a Prog Rock covers band.A DAY IN THE LIFE
Breakfast set the agenda:"Drug addicts on benefits must seek treatment or they could have their
welfare taken away. That's the hard line being considered by ministers trying to
cut government spending. A similar policy was dropped by the previous Labour
government because of fears that addicts could be driven to crime to support
their habit."
In that single statement, there's a subjective judgement that this is a "hard-line" policy, as well as a presumption that the reason for any such policy is purely "to cut government spending" - not also to help tackle a major social ill.
First to be interviewed was Martin Barnes of the charity DrugsScope. He was critical of the proposal. Clearly a decent chap, he resisted the bait inKate Silverton's loaded question: "Do you think this is about dealing with drug addiction or saving money?" He said it was the former. Oh well, a beeboid can but try!!
As the News Channel-proper began rolling at 8.30 Tim Willcoxinterviewed...Martin Barnes of DrugsScope, who made the same criticisms again. To his credit, Tim did put several good questions to him (unlike Kate).
The same interview was reprised in full at 9.45.
So nothing but criticism of the government's 'hard-line' proposal so far.
At 11.45 Richard Tilt, from "the independent Social Security Advisory Committee" was interviewed. He too was also critical of the government. He went on to regret its decision not to bring up the issue of the de-criminalisation of drugs.
At 12.15 the criticism was ratcheted up, with Kirsty Douse, a young woman from the drugs agency Release, being highly critical of the proposal.
At 12.35 the one and only supporter of the proposal appeared - the Labour MP and former home office minister Alan Campbell (who I'd never heard of). Mr Campbell came across very well, refusing to play party politics. The nearest he came was to express, in passing, a hope that the government was doing it for the right reasons. This comment took up about 5 seconds in a 4 minute interview.
The interview with Mr Campbell was reprised at 1.40, though the most supportive first minute was cut! Worse, beeboid Julian Worrickerintroduced the truncated clip like this: "Well, earlier I spoke to Alan Campbell...and he told me the scheme would only be successful if it was done for the right reasons". Trust the BBC to pluck out of context a passing comment! Pure narrative-spinning!
The report by beebette Jude Kelly on the One O'clock News featured a reprise of some of the earlier criticisms. In a sop to impartiality it featured atiny excerpt from an interview with Tory minister James Brokenshire. This interview was never broadcast on the News Channel & must have been done just for the One O'clock News. Why was the full interview never broadcast on the News Channel (or anywhere else?). What else did Mr Brokenshire say? We'll never know.
The criticism was ratcheted up even more at 2.10 as Mark Linnell from the drugs charity Lifeline denounced the government's proposal as "a terrible idea" and a "policy written on the back of a fag packet" (a phrase beloved of Labour, coincidentally).
At 3.10, Howard Garrick, a recovering addict, and Savvas Panas(Howard's helper) from the Pillion Trust appeared. Howard said that if his benefits had been cut he'd have resorted to crime to get the money to feed his habit. Mr Panas was very critical of the government's proposal too, saying "this new policy is going to push those people further underground".
On the Six O'Clock News (seen by millions. Shame on them when The Simpsons is on Channel 4!!), Jude Kelly's report dropped Mr Brokenshire and any pretence of impartiality. Her report was prefaced by this: "Charities have warned that addicts will increasingly turn to crime and prostitution to feed their habit without proper support." Jude's report featured Barry Woodward, a former drug addict & dealer, who said the government's proposal wouldn't work. She went on, "Some who are familiar with the drugs world condemn what they call the blunt stick approach of benefits cuts". For 'proof' she turned to Ettan, a former addict, who condemned the proposal, saying it will lead to more homelessness & crime. No-one else was featured, no defence given.
The only new interviewee to appear on the News channel after that came at 8.15, and it was someone from the organisation I was expecting to appear all along - Steve Rolles of the pro-legalisation campaign groupTransform. He, in conversation with the very fragrant Sangita Myska, also strongly attacked the government's proposal. (Sangita didn't fail to mention"swingeing cuts").
There are two different conclusions a News Channel watcher might draw from this. On the one hand it could be the case that only politicians support this proposal. Everyone else, including all drugs charities, thinks its a very bad idea. So it is a very bad idea. Or you might instead suspect that the BBC has deliberately ignored all other supporters of the proposal in order to pump out nothing but anti-government propaganda all day long and that there might be a valid case for doing as the government proposes after all, even though we haven't heard it on the BBC. (I'll leave Martin to suggest another possible reason why the BBC might be resistant to the idea of a cutting the benefits of drug addicts!!)Islam-O-Ubiquity
For once the panel consisted of two estimable non-leftists, Douglas Murray and Baroness Ruth Deech, but their rational approach was counteracted by Quilliam founder Maajid whassisname and Alex von-something-to-do-with-Jeremy Paxman. Her PC fanaticism was more than enough to outweigh the others, with plenty left over for a rainy day.
The questions raised concerned Tony Blair’s ‘generosity’, the NY mosque, Lockerbie and Pakistan. The Islam theme interwove the programme, continuing throughout A.A.
Most of the callers thought Douglas Murray and Ruth Deech represented evil personified, but towards the end a courageous caller tentatively put forward the suggestion that the Islam theme permeated the BBC itself! Oohh Nooo!
In an ironically humourous twist of fate obviously engineered by the Jewish Lobby, the trail immediately following the programme was for the upcoming propaganda fest: “British Muslims, Father and Son.”
Laugh? I nearly split my sides.
Monday, 23 August 2010
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