Wednesday 3 November 2010



Licence Fee Freeze Is "Like Waterboarding".

>> WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 03, 2010

John Simpson, the BBC's World Affairs Editor, has compared the licence fee freeze to "waterboarding".

In a letter written to Ariel, the BBC's own in-house newsmagazine, the BBC's own in-house newsmagazine Mr Simpson says that only "far-right idealogues" and the "Murdoch empire" think the BBC should share the pain being endured by the rest of the public sector. It's not fair that B-BBC doesn't get full recognition there too.

"Our income will shrink year on year for seven long years, by amounts that are unknown because we can't tell how high inflation will be over that period of time. It'll be like waterboarding. As our head is pulled out of the bath, we'll be so desperate that we can't be certain what compromises and deals we might be tempted to make. We will be at the government's mercy."
Perhaps he should volunteer to be waterboarded to see if he changes his mind?

Hat-tip: Tim at ConservativeHome

Hague’s Mysterious Visit.

The BBC is reporting “Israel halts ‘dialogue’ with UK over war crimes law.”
This looks like another of Israel’s deliberate snubs, this time aimed at the UK rather than the US (over the curious incident of the announcement about settlements coinciding with Joe Biden’s visit.)

William Hague is being humiliated, so they say, but at least he doesn’t risk being arrested in Israel, as Israeli officials do if they are foolish enough to try to come to Blighty.

Apart from the choice of wording in the headline, and an inexplicable set of scare quotes round ‘dialogue,’ the BBC glosses over something that is explored more thoroughly in the Telegraph. There’s a bit more to this than meets the BBC’s eye.
Hague risks clash with Israel in meeting activists’ reads an article on page 20.

“What activists?” a BBC web news-seeker might well wonder, as in the BBC article something decidedly mysterious is alluded to thus: “He will also be visiting the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

The Telegraph reports:

“The foreign secretary will meet the leadership of the increasingly assertive Palestinian groups protesting against the occupation of the West Bank.”[...]
“Israel argues that the campaign is not as peaceful as the adherents claim, pointing to weekly demonstrations at the separation barrier where protesters have often thrown stones....”

Online, there’s this. “Hague on collision course with Israeli government.”
“William Hague's decision to hold taboo-breaking talks with representatives of three groups at the forefront of the Palestinian civil disobedience movement has set him on collision course with Israel's government.”

Given William Hague’s well known views on the separation barrier, and on Israel in general, it figures that visiting such groups could hardly lookinsignificant from the Israeli viewpoint.
If the foreign secretary succeeds in getting the UK excluded from strategic dialogue over defence and security issues, who’s the biggest loser? Not Israel.
But on the whole if William Hague really is being humiliated, I’m all for it.

OPEN THREAD...


Wednesday and a new open thread for y'all....ooops, must be the Tea Party influence! The floor is yours

OBAMA IS THE WINNER

The morning after the night before. Feeling a bit shattered after our collective LIVEBLOG late last night, but it seemed to go well and betraying my OWN bias, I am of course happy to have seen the GOP/Tea Party deliver a stinging rebuke to BBC poster boy Obama. Thanks to all those hundreds who came along, I enjoyed your comments and company. However the BBC has not been prepared to take this lying down and I have received several irate emails from B-BBC readers showing outrageous examples of bias in their coverage last night and again this morning. There was a "debate" on Today around 8.45am with Andrew Sullivan and A.N.OTHER where the punchline was - unbelievably - that the defeat last nuight made Obama's chances of re-election more likely. Yes, Obama won. This was the consensus view. I can't find a link to it, for some reason it is missing from their audio archive, perhaps you too heard it? The BBC are gutted that Obama has lost nd so they are merrily revising the events of last evening to "prove" that the "great communicator" is on track for four more years come 2012.

Stephanie Flanders was also in good form, suggesting that the stimulus from the Fed to be announced later today is "more important" than the events of last night. She somehow missed the fact that the new brooms coming to see want to a reduction in spending - less, not more, stimulus. I presume this goes over her head, as she seemed in thrall to the wonders of the Fed's latest economic madness. Whichever way you turn, this is a bad day for the BBC.

US Mid-Term Elections Live-Blog 2nd Nov

>> TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 02, 2010


Tonight we'll be live-blogging the US mid-term elections. The BBC and the left-leaning media are already trotting out the excuses, the blame game is beginning and the spinning on all sides has been going for days. But the polls are only just closing and careers can still be won and lost in the next few hours.

We'll have the live-chat going at midnight UK time, which will be two hours after the polls close in the eastern states and just as the BBC start their live coverage.

The chat session is spread across five blogs (in alphabetical order) A Tangled Web, All Seeing Eye, Barking Spider, Biased-BBC andGrumpyOldTwat so a chance to see familiar faces and meet new ones. We hope you can join us, even if only for a short while.


Today Is Also a Referendum On the Media.

Today, Nov. 2, the US is holding mid-term elections to choose who is going to represent them in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and selected State capitals. Judging from the wild-eyed Katty Kay in the video DB posted below, it's also clearly the second-most important election in human history.

The main question on so many people's minds since even before the BBC dared ask it is: Why are all these people motivated against the President and His Plan For Us?

BBC North America editor Mark Mardell believes that this is going to be a verdict on the President. He coyly poses it as a question, of course, but we all know what he's thinking as this is the line he and all of his colleagues have been pushing for some time now. As we saw from the President's audience with St. Jon Stewart, they wonder what more He could have done, why don't we appreciate what He's done for us, why the masses don't understand how He's already saved us. And of course, why do they hate the black man?

While the President should accept the brunt of the criticism (He may have been anointed elected with a mandate for "Change", but it was obviously taken too far, and at the wrong time, not to mention the endless string of foreign policy errors), the Tea Party movement is as much a rebellion against Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and the mainstream US media and assorted comedians and Hollywood types as it is against the President Himself.

We've all been through the economic arguments of why ObamaCare was the wrong massive debt increase at the wrong time, but Pelosi and Reid were more responsible for it than the President was. Contrary to what the BBC and their fellow travelers keep telling you, there are economists besides JournoLista Paul Krugman or David Blanchflower, and hundreds of them believe that both ObamaCare and all the excessive, debt-increasing spending plans of the Democrats are the wrong policy at the worst possible time. They're also the ones who are going to let the Bush tax cuts expire at exactly the wrong time. So the Democrat-led Congress is on trial today as well.

Not only that, but the Republican Party is also being served notice today. Everyone talks about how the Tea Party movement is attacking the President and Democrats, but we've drawn blood from the Republican establishment first. In Alaska and Florida, for example, the incumbent Republicans lost the nomination when the people got fed up, and have unfortunately chosen to run as spoilers against the Tea Party-backed nominee instead. Many of the vox pops we hear from Tea Parties say that the excessive spending and debt began under Bush, and they're just as sick of the Republican establishment who went along with it.

But in addition to the President and the political parties, there's another element against which so many people are rebelling: the media. This includes edgy comedians and Hollywood dopes.
Watch this video and mark how much the statements you hear match what comes out of the mouths of Beeboids. Then you'll know why we're so angry, and what we're really voting against today.



When Bill Maher says that we're too stupid to be governed, he's got it backwards. In reality, we're too smart. If enough of us are, today's election will reflect that.

MEET THE TEAM....

pic
Let me introduce you to Barra Best. Who is he? Well, he presents the weather here on BBC Northern Ireland. He has a little history, here he is being interviewed BY the BBC back in 2005!
"Gerry Adams stands out for good reasons. He actively promotes the Good Friday Agreement and encourages positive change. Ian Paisley stands out for bad reasons. He publicly ridicules the Good Friday Agreement and seeks to revert to the status quo of the old days when unionism was in its hay day."
Barra then reveals he is a likely Sinn Fein voter. In the past few years, he has joined the BBC and is presented to the world as their lovable weather presenter. What a guy.
You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing in the BBC!

The Latest Midterm Narrative From The BBC

It's a referendum on Sarah Palin, apparently.



D'oh!

Here's Richard Bacon dog-whistling his Twitter followers to get angry about a New York newspaper which is not supporting the Democrats:


Murdoch's New York Times? Someone's a bit too keen to play the Murdoch card to bother paying attention to detail, there. The image to which he linksis of the New York Post. The New York Times is, as usual, backing the Democrats, which is what all newspapers are supposed to do (in the mind of a right-on BBC media luvvie, that is).

(Richard Bacon occasionally accepts money in exchange for putting his name to pointless drivel in The Sun. Sorry, I mean "Murdoch's Sun".)

Small Crumbs

Many of us have noticed the BBC’s fixation with cruelties imposed by Israel on the Palestinians.
This obsession forces them to scrape every half-baked crumb from the bottom of the barrel. I do feel sorry for this lady, bit I want to know why I should feel less sorry for Israelis who live on constant alert, a state of affairs which, after all, is at the heart of the cause of the obstacle to biscuits.

If we are to hear so very much about things wrong with Israel, why not for once hear about some of the things right with it?




And hundreds more which one would think the BBC might be mildly interested in, as some of them are green, and environmentally friendly.

ICE COLD...

As dodgy Dave sells out more of our sovereignty to the French, Indian scientists are off on a jolly jaunt to the south pole, no doubt with their expenses paid by our uncut international aid budget. To the BBC, there is only one purpose; to measure the unavoidable impact of climate change. Actually, the exact purpose of the mission is not clear, other than to establish an Indian research station in Antarctica. But the BBC signpost to the story says this:

India is to make its first expedition to the South Pole, in a mission focusing on the impact of climate change.


If that does not make it clear that ice is melting faster than a lollypop in a heatwave, when you arrive on the story page, right at the top is a picture of a fast-melting chunk of ice. To ram the message home further, there is then a quote from an expedition member that "everything is now linked to global warming", a statement that sums up precisely the BBC religion. And if that does not get you to the correct propaganda point, there's another subtle hint: it's all about changes in the last 1,000 years, ie, when men began their evil industrial activities that are leading irreversibly towards destruction. Exactly in tune with this chilling kill-us-all-final-solution board game, which could have been devised by the BBC writer.

To round off this exercise in unbiased, fair, and factual reporting, the writer provides helpful links to five more Antarctic end-of-the-world fairytales, including that ice is breaking off from west Antarctica, and, from Richard Black, of course, when all the ice there does melt, we will all drown anyway.

There's just one inconvenient truth that this alarmist claptrap does not take into account. Warmists have been trying to prove for 20 years that Antarctica is melting. But it isn't - it's stubbornly, unremittingly, colder than ever. Even when warmists go looking for confirmation of their bias.

WHY DEFEAT MEANS VICTORY!

>> MONDAY, NOVEMBER 01, 2010

As we approach the US Mid Terms tomorrow, and judgement is about to be cast on The One, the BBC seems to have gone almost hysterical as it adopts denial mode and nowhere was this more evident than here on BBC Radio with an "interview" with Thomas Mann of the leftist pro-Democrat Brookings Institute. Go to 1hours17mins and have yourself a laugh. First question "Is it Obama's fault that so many Americans are disappointed in him"? Answer No! -and then it just gets worse, totally surreal. Tomorrow means little, Obama can win in 2012, we need more stimulus! You could NOT make this one-sided dross up. I know Seamus McKee the BBC interviewer and he should be ashamed of himself for participating in this overt damage limitation exercise on behalf of Obama's cheer-leaders in the rancid local BBC.

Voter Fraud in 2010: Where are the BBC reports this time?

Three weeks before the presidential election of 2008, Newsnight hired far-Left political activist Greg Palast to do a couple of video reports (which can be viewed here and here) about voter fraud in the US. This was a strategically-timed effort to create suspicions in the minds of the public in case Sen. McCain won the election. The BBC could raise the specter of 2004, and point to Palast's "investigations" as evidence that this election was stolen by racist Republicans who didn't want a black man as President. This time around, the margin of fraud in individual election races is going to have to be much larger than usual in order for people to trust the outcome. But this time around, the BBC has been utterly silent.

Newsnight producer Meirion Jones is a co-conspiritor of Palast's, having worked with him previously on an investigation of voter fraud in Florida in the 2004 elections (this wasn't mentioned in the report, nor did the BBC admit on air to Palast's activist assocation with Robert Kennedy, whom they show as an independent voice - so the BBC's dishonesty is there for all to see). Jones and Palast are convinced that Bush stole that election, so Newsnight hired Palast to do these reports, produced by Jones.

Needless to say, both reports were made with the intent to convince you that only Republicans engaged in voter fraud, usually with the goal of preventing poor black people from voting. In the second report, Palast actually whitewashes the now defunct ACORN, even going so far as to say that, while ACORN had been indicted for and a couple people convicted of voter fraud, there was no evidence that they actually influenced an election. Palast's report also took the standard far-Left activist/denier's line that all registered voters that were purged from the rolls for breaking various rules were in fact innocent. He provided no evidence for this.

I commented on it here at the time, and sent a complaint in to the BBC. Meirion Jones actually responded, and after exchanging a couple of emails it was clear that he believed that Bush stole the election, and that ACORN engaged in voter fraud for kicks, with no intent to affect the outcome of an election. He couldn't offer any valid reason why they would do such a thing if it wasn't to effect election outcomes. I knew at the time that if there was ever any evidence of voter fraud from the Democrats in future elections, the BBC would keep shtum, because of their political bias.

Now that we're having the second-most important election in human history (to judge from the hysteria at the BBC), I'm still waiting for the BBC to make a single report about the increasingly widespread Democrat voter fraud going on now.

Below the fold are several stories the BBC doesn't want you to know about.

OPEN THREAD...