Well, who would have thought it. A report finds that for decades the BBC  has been rather deaf to those who were worried about immigration into the UK

The report found that the BBC was too reliant on the views of politicians, who tended to steer clear of “taboo” subjects, such as immigration, and warned that “even today the debate on the BBC may not reflect the public mood”…………………….

 ……………………………….His report concluded: “The BBC was slow to reflect the weight of concern in the wider community about issues arising from immigration. “It remains the case that the agenda of debate is probably too driven by the views of politicians.

“Slow to reflect” is far too gentle a phrase. For nearly fifty years, from Enoch Powell onwards, the BBC has either demonised or ignored any individual or group raising concerns about the sheer scale of immigration into the UK – not just in the news or documentaries but in drama, “comedy” or soaps.

Well, guess what – another report  has” let the cat out of the bag” (as if most of us didn’t know already)…

The full impact of mass immigration on British life was laid bare last night by a Home Office report.

It said that half the population lives in a town or city which has experienced high levels of immigration over the past decade.

Ministers said this ‘uncontrolled’ flow had caused a number of problems for wider society, ranging from pressure on maternity services, high rates of infectious diseases and a squeeze on school places, to disproportionate levels of some types of crime, inflated rents and immigrants living in ‘beds in sheds’

Don’t expect any change from the BBC, however.  Oh they’ll prattle on about “lessons learned” and “balance” but the culture is too deeply embedded for any significant change in attitude, not just at the BBC but throughout our media and political elite where “diversity” is something to be celebrated – as long as it is far away from their own leafy streets and their children’s schools.

Brilliant put down by historian David Starkey of the liberal left panelists on BBC Question Time. As he points out he and Conservative minister Justine Greening are the only ones who come from humble backgrounds and made progress by merit. They also happen to be the only two who are right wing in their views. The others (including the chairman David Dimbleby) had parents who were wealthy and already very well connected in the worlds of politics and/or the media.

His barbs about feminism largely working for the benefit of comfortably off  middle class women scored a direct hit on Harriet Harman – her pompous and self righteous indignation only served to prove his point. Moreover the bonus came from watching a clearly rattled Dimbleby struggling to move the agenda forward. He didn’t appreciate the audience being reminded of how much taxpayers money cascades into his pockets via the publicly funded BBC to add to his already substantial inherited family fortune.

He might be an old queen and I don’t agree with all his views but Starkey is never afraid to upset his fellow panelists – or the audience – with some hard home truths…..

Interviewer: So, Rowena, as the Daily Telegraph’s highly trained ace political journalist, tell us how you got the UKIP story?

Rowena Mason: Someone from Conservative Party HQ sent me an e mail which I cut and pasted…….ermmmm, that’s it…

Interviewer: Thank you, Rowena Mason, the Daily Telegraph’s highly trained ace political journalist…

I have always liked reading Julie Burchill. I rarely agree with her left wing feminist views but she writes with spirit and passion. I would love to meet up with her in a pub and have a good old fashioned political argument over a few pints and a pork pie.

Lynne Featherstone is a Liberal Democrat MP who is minister for International Development in the Cameron/Clegg coalition = in other words she has been given a non job with a sack of taxpayers money to waste so that Guardian readers can feel good about themselves. She is a strident humourless feminist in the mould of Harriet Harman. I would rather stick my head in a bucket of sheep dip than meet her anywhere.

Burchill recently came to the defence of Suzanne Moore, another left wing feminist

Burchill took up the cudgels on behalf of her friend and colleague Suzanne Moore who was being monstered by the militant ‘trans’ lobby.
In a magazine article, Moore had remarked that modern women were coming under pressure to look like Brazilian transsexuals. Innocuous enough, but it sparked a firestorm of self-righteous anger and unpleasantness on Twitter, forcing Moore to close her account.

Burchill doesn’t do nuance.

Suggesting that “a gaggle of transsexuals telling Suzanne Moore how to write looks a lot like how I’d imagine the Black and White Minstrels telling Usain Bolt how to run would look”, Burchill proceeded to launch a stinging attack against the ‘trans lobby’, denouncing them as “screaming mimis”, “Shims, shemales, whatever you’re calling yourselves these days”, and “bed-wetting transsexuals” who “have your c**k cut off and then plead special privileges as women”.

Twitter erupted in rage – or rather the Transsexual lobby and its fellow travellers within sections of the gay community had a hissy fit. The rest of us sat back and enjoyed the mud wrestling.

But then it became sinister

Ms Featherstone pursed her lips and tweeted

Julie Birchill rant against transgender community is absolutely disgusting – a bigoted vomit for which the Observer should sack her.

A few hours later the editor of The Observer DELETED BURCHILL’S PIECE FROM ITS WEBSITE.

So welcome to the Age of Leveson where a craven editor is so spooked by the public displeasure of a government minister that he spikes a story and grovels for forgiveness. It’s not Burchill who should be sacked – it should be the witch hunting neo NVKD Featherstone. How dare she use her position to censor a journalist for merely speaking her mind in a perfectly legal manner.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Strident lobbies will increasingly franchise politicians to crush free speech – which is why we must act now

I DEMAND THAT DAVID CAMERON SACK FEATHERSTONE FROM HIS GOVERNMENT FOR HER BIGOTED VOMIT AGAINST OUR BASIC RIGHT TO ENGAGE IN POLEMICAL DEBATE.

Assuming, of course, that he has the balls to do it…….

It couldn’t have happened to a nastier guy – pompous, self righteous media slimeball Piers Morgan (aka Piers Moron) only had a day or so to enjoy the plaudits of his Tina Brown/BBC/Guardian groupies after radio wingnut oddball Alex Jones imploded on his CNN show when the Moron himself was skewered and toasted by Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro

As Roger Kimball pointed out

Morgan is, as Ben says, a bully of the first water, a man whose delight in mud slinging was too much even for the bottom-feeding British tabloid the Daily Mirror, which fired him for publishing fake photos of British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi prisoners. Morgan is one of those liberals whose unshakable self-infatuation compels him to treat disagreement as a sort of moral heresy. His contemptuous—and contemptible—treatment of his guests makes for intermittently entertaining, if also cringe-making, television. But as Ben demonstrates, Morgan’s habit of contempt renders him a pathetic, deeply unserious mountebank.

Very true, Roger….which is why his departure from our scepter’d isle to the further shores of CNN was such a day of jubilation over here….

Three of the most vocal supporters of the Leveson proposals to impose statutory control of the press are actors Hugh Grant & Steve Coogan and former motor racing supremo Max Mosley – each of whom has an axe to grind about press reports of some of their more lively activities. Fighting alongside them are two Labour MPs, Tom Watson and Chris Bryant whose names figured large in the MPs expenses scandal.

Perhaps it was to these five individuals that Sara Payne, whose daughter was raped and murdered by a paedophile in 2000, was referring when she recently stated her opposition to the Leveson proposals despite having been a victim of press intrusion herself

It is important that celebrities and MPs, whose own moral shortcomings may have been exposed by the Press, are not allowed to hijack this vital overhaul.

Time, I think, to recall the words of John Milton who in 1644 penned the magnificent and majestic Areopagitica, still the most impressive defence of a press free from government censorship and licensing ever written

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks

Or maybe we should just echo Wordsworth’s famous plea

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee

I am not alone – at least one other person is not particularly impressed by Charlotte Church’s complaints about the media.

During BBC Question Time last night this lady, just an ordinary member of the audience, had the temerity to interrupt Charlotte in full flow

Last night an unnamed audience member aimed a barbed comment at her and said that celebrities who court the press should not be surprised if they are targeted.
‘The man in the street I accept shouldn’t be persecuted, but some celebrities go out for notoriety and press and some of them ask for what they get,’ the woman in yellow said.

Chalotte was shocked SHOCKED that she should be accused of “courting” the press. Twitter was alight with supporters who rushed to the defence of the newest feminist icon. CC waxed angrily about her family to the lady and when she tried to reply David Dimbleby shut her up and moved swiftly on.

Actually I tend to agree with the “unnamed audience member”. Like many celebrities Church has never hesitated to use the media to boost her own career and her public conduct has sometimes been dramatic. I take her point about impact on her family but the very nature of modern celebrity shines a spotlight on the immediate circle and there are always temptations for family and friends to dine out on the link, especially if there is some sort of grievance.

Maybe it’s time to reconfigure this whole concept of “celebrity” for it has taken over our media – look at the TV chat shows and the papers. Editors and producers no longer have to think hard about content – the PR hacks provide them with off the shelf fillers for peanuts…manna from heaven when the bosses are slashing costs. Get rid of the real journalism because that is time consuming and expensive – just get celebrity X on screen or on page to puff their latest film/book/album/show while the host/interviewer pretends to be totally fascinated.

So here’s a suggestion that will kill two birds with one stone – get the intrusive media off celebrity backs and clear my tv screen/paper of meaningless moronic pap at the same time. Just show the singers/actors/players doing what they are supposed to do – AND NO MORE!!!! Get rid of the chat shows and gossip pages, and use the money saved to bring back some good old fashioned journalism…

…and if you don’t have enough material to fill the schedule bring back the potters wheel, a damn sight more interesting than hearing some washed up hasbeen trying to kick start their fading famefest by yattering on about their latest project.

Job done.

“Now we need to learn the lessons and move on. It’s going to be tough but we can do it.” says Alan Yentob, “Creative Director” of the BBC (£183,300 pa )

Meanwhile, in the real world, a comment here has a rather different take on this BBC farce..

All these overpaid troughers, whether Quango CEO’s, Council Chiefs, MP’s or BBC really do think they deserve shedfuls of money from us, the poor sods who have to pay for them.
It has to end, and end now. I am sick of hearing “we must learn from this” and “we must move on” endlessly.
These overpaid incompetent people must be thrown off the public payroll without huge sums of cash as a reward for their incompetence.

Nail…..meet head….

He wore the uniform of the media class – tieless shirts, dark suits, closely shaved head and a permanent three-day beard – and was quite incapable of thinking outside the liberal mindset.

Such creatures are, of course, very expensive to run – but at least he will not be trousering money from UK taxpayers as he was at the BBC. Sounds like he is the perfect fit for the New York Times

The fearless BBC is never afraid to grasp nettles…

Social services and police “missed opportunities” to stop the sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale, a report into a grooming scandal has revealed.
……………………………………………………..
It comes after nine men were jailed in May for grooming girls as young as 13.

Oh and why were these opportunities missed?

“Deficiencies” and “patchy” training of front line staff were behind the failings, the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board said in its review of child sexual exploitation.

Ah, the old patchy training ploy, as Inspector Cluseau would say…but never fear

Lynne Jones, chair of the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board, said the council had “responded” to the review and had “improvements” had already been put in place.

That’s right, somebody wheeled out the same robot that was constructed in 1973, called it Lynne Jones, and pressed the button marked “LESSONS LEARNED”

“…working together….sharing information….raising awareness…..staff traing…..”

Only deep down towards the end of the piece, however, does the “fearless” BBC offer up a “by the way, please move along, nothing to see here” factoid

During the trial there were demonstrations by far-right groups after it emerged that white girls were being exploited by the gang, eight of whom were of Pakistani origin, with another from Afghanistan.

OMG – those crazy “far-right” groups with their racist agenda….take to the hills……oh, wait a minute

However, Greater Manchester Police said that there was no racial element to the case. It said that the main issue was older men exploiting vulnerable young women and girls.

Phew, that’s a relief. It wasn’t because of their cultural background….it was because they were “older men”. It’s not race/culture – it’s age/gender.

Julie Bindel, however, took a different view

One youth worker in south Yorkshire told me that because religious Muslims are being pressurised to marry virgins within their own extended family networks, it means that some are more likely to view white girls as easily available and “safer” than Pakistani girls.

Moreover, she felt that the reluctance of Social Services, Police and CPS to act in these cases wasn’t really down to lack of training or “working together” – but fear of being accused of being racist. This allowed the BNP to hijack the issue which obviously made it even more toxic. Now, of course, some people are speaking out…but why were they silent for so many years?

Anna Hall made a documentary for Channel 4 about Bradford Social Services which included interviews with two mothers who said their teenage daughters were being groomed.

The explosive grooming story nearly didn’t make the shortlist. Hall had already filmed several other stories through the children’s department which she was unable to screen for legal reasons. “We weren’t looking for this issue,” she says. “It just kept surfacing. Social workers said, ‘You can’t do that story because it’s too difficult.’ What did they mean by ‘too difficult’? Too racially sensitive?”

The BNP made a big deal of this film, seeing it as a vindication. Channel 4 got cold feet, especially as the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire spearheaded a campaign to stop it being shown.

So it does seem that one thing that motivated the various agencies to keep this in the Pending file was the fear of being accused of racism even though there were clearly people in the Muslim community who were confronting it.

There are, however, a growing number of individuals within the Muslim communities who are willing to speak out against the criminals. Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for peaceful harmony between different ethnic communities, advocates better education about sexual exploitation to be disseminated through imams and other community leaders.
“I was one of the first within the Muslim community to speak out about this, four years ago,” says Shafiq, “and at the time I received death threats from some black and Asian people. But what I said has been proved right — that if we didn’t tackle it there would be more of these abusers and more girls getting harmed.”

But there also appears to be another factor which pushed it down the agenda, according to the Telegraph

Police said the victims were from “chaotic”, “council estate” backgrounds and as many as 50 girls could have been victims of the gang.

That explains it, then – not nice little middle class girls from the suburbs or twee villages. Chief Constables would scarcely get into their golf clubs before being badgered by “concerned” members of the public. But “white trash” from those chavvy council estates….maybe they were, y’know, asking for it?

No wonder these evil men were happy in their work. Their culturally influenced disparagement of these girls was buttressed by the prejudices of officialdom against the Sharon’s and Tracey’s of the white working class..

A self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one…..