In an interview BBC Today’s John Humphrys had with Labour politician Harriet Harman the subject of Jimmy Savile came up

Mr. Humphrys added that the BBC has been drawn into a ‘witch-hunt’ over the issue.

An interesting turn of phrase – and it probably reflects the opinion of many within the BBC Establishment….remember Paul Merton and Ian Hislop on “Have I Got News For You” last week? When the topic of Savile and the BBC came up they both spent most of the time prattling on about the hypocrisy of the Mail Online and Merton managed to bring Margaret Thatcher into it.

The joke is that Humphrys, Hislop and Merton are paid a great deal of money to publicly skewer politicians, bankers, celebrities etc. who might have strayed from the straight and narrow – it’s all done from the standpoint of a high moral tone. If Savile had been a catholic priest or a tory politician they would have been having a field day. But the fact is they are paid a great deal of money by the BBC and they just can’t bring themselves to bite the hand that feeds them.

Which is why, Mr. Humphrys, we are all enjoying it so much – it’s schadenfreude – the taking of pleasure from the discomfort of others, the laughter generated when the trousers of a particularly pompous and moralising bore fall to the ground in the midst of a hectoring tirade.

And do you know what gives it an extra bit of spice, Mr Humphrys? It’s the fact that it irritates you, it grates on your sensitivities – and it will be bubbling around for a very long time..

It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of pompous, moralising bores…..

Interesting story from Guido Fawkes about how last December a journalist tried to get newspapers interested in an article about the BBC pulling the Savile exposure and highlighting some of the issues raised by it

I was told by several of the papers that taste was a factor in their decision but in at least one case the Leveson Inquiry, which was then at its height, was mentioned as being a problem as well. It’s common knowledge that at that time no paper wanted to take on what could turn out to be a controversial story, so they didn’t.”

Remember at the time the odious quartet of Steve Coogan, Max Mosley, Charlotte Church and Hugh Grant were swaggering from studio to studio being celebrated as heroes by fellow showbiz weasels. Who can doubt that in the febrile atmosphere of the moment, if he had been alive and some of his creepy antics reported he would have joined them in their well rehearsed performances of upright citizens hounded by malignant hacks. Indeed Charlotte Church was at it again a few days ago on the ITV chat show hosted by the oily Jonathon Ross, the man who has transformed insincerity into an art form.

Church, who was really there to push her seventh musical comeback, blathered on about being a timid and retiring soul deeply scarred by a vindictive media . But it all sounded a tad self serving in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

The fact is these showbiz types need the media to keep their names in the public eye. Hence they are circulating constantly using their latest book, film, play, therap, divorce, rape or arrest as a hook to get their faces in the camera lens. Their publicity drones flood the airwaves with their presence to “maintain the profile”. These dysfunctional , self centred parasites need the oxygen of the media to flourish and survive. Hence the hypocrisy of attitude – they want to control medium by exercising a personal veto on all publicity that is not to their liking.

The Savile /BBC scandal is a timely reminder that the media must not be hamstrung by legislation which restricts their ability to tell us something about the darker side of these glittering stars….

Remember how the soon to be installed CEO of “The New York Times” said he knew nothing about widespread long lived rumours of the sexual abuse of underage children committed by one of the BBC’s biggest stars, some of the abuse taking place on BBC premises?

Even when an item on a BBC current affairs programme investigating these rumours was pulled at the last minute…

Even when the go ahead was given a few days later to air a TV special celebrating the star’s life and saying what a wonderful wonderful guy he was…

Well, the plot thickens….

But yesterday Lord Patten – who said he himself first heard about the Savile allegations less than two weeks ago when he read about them in a newspaper – insisted Mr Thompson had been made aware of the Newsnight investigation last December by director of news Helen Boaden.
When asked to confirm that the former director-general knew about the investigation, he said: ‘Yes’.
His comments were later retracted by the BBC Trust, which said he ‘misspoke’ on the matter.

I wonder if any of those brilliant, sophisticated, right on, politically correct lovers of investigative journalism at the NYT will want to have a quiet word with Mr Thompson next time they are sipping their dry martinis?

hhhhmmmm….former BBC Director General Mark Thompson, soon to take up his new job as CEO of the New York Times has just been asked a rather awkward question – how much did he know about the pulling of a BBC programme that investigated allegations that a top BBC star, Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011, was a serial abuser of underage girls.

Although the BBC pulled the programme their rivals at ITV aired a more extensive exposure a few days ago which has forced the BBC onto the back foot.
Thompson claims he had nothing to do with cancelling the Newsnight piece and was totally unaware of the rumours about Savile that had been circulating around the BBC for many years.

After Savile died on October 29 last year, Newsnight spent six weeks investigating allegations that he abused pupils from Duncroft school in Surrey at the height of his fame in the 1970s.
BBC journalists spoke to ten women who claimed they had been abused or had knowledge of abuse at the school, which shut in 1980.
But the investigation was never aired after Peter Rippon, editor of Newsnight, decided to abandon the broadcast in December, shortly before the BBC broadcast three tributes to Savile over Christmas.
After it was dropped, an angry BBC journalist is said to have cornered Mr Thompson at a Christmas drinks party in London to complain.

Thompson got the job at the NYT because of his reputation as a smooth operator with his finger on the pulse of his organisation – yet he claims to be totally oblivious of the implications for the BBC of the Savile programme being pulled.

That’s OK then…..

You and Yours is one of several Radio 4 programmes that still have Reithian values embedded within and earlier this week they had a useful and timely piece on “Not Going To University”

On Call You and Yours we’ll be asking do you need to go to university to be successful? More than four hundred thousand students are just starting their new courses across the country, and have committed to spend at least three years and in the region of fifty thousand pounds in getting a degree. But is university the only path to getting solid qualifications? If you didn’t apply or didn’t get in, are you left feeling flat and directionless?

Increasing graduate unemployment and dumbed down degree courses have made a mockery of the “50% at university” pimped by the Blair drones who never really left student politics. So a serious attempt to remove “not going to uni” as a badge of shame is to be welcomed.

Overall there was a great deal of common sense in the programme. But in the course of the broadcast when somebody advised going out and doing any job rather than waiting for something “suitable” one of the presenters agreed about working in a supermarket or McDonalds until something “worthwhile comes along”

Now that is rather odd when you realise that companies in the supermarket and fast food areas are doing very well and are major employers. Retail is also one of the few areas where it is still possible to rise quickly through the ranks via enthusiasm and hard graft without an initial fistful of paper “qualifications”. It is also an honest way of earning money to pay the bills.

But the BBC has always had a rather aristocratic disdain for “trade” and shopkeepers because that is the feeling of the media demi-monde that inhabits and controls the organisation. Selling is a grubby little business in their opinion whereas “making” things is godlike, hence their idealisation of manufacturing, ignoring the fact that stuff is useless unless it’s sold.

That, of course, was the mistake made by the communists who ruled Russia for over seventy years. Lenin and Stalin were so obsessed with production that they forgot that the goods and the crops also had to be distributed. Transport networks and retail systems were neglected – the USSR was always a logistical nightmare.

The result? Goods stockpiled at chokepoints and zero choice for consumers who were therefore forced into buying crap products.

Maybe I can draw a more clearer picture – Thatcher losing in 1983 and Britain under Michael Foot during the 80s = British Leyland cars and BT still dictating who could have a phone…

How about we put it another way to You and Yours?

Not going to uni but you need to earn money but nothing suitable in the pipeline? You could always fill in the time in at the BBC until you got something worthwhile at Tesco or McDonalds…

H/T for pic…SodaHead

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) says student attendance at London Metropolitan University is not being monitored and that many have no right to be here.
As a result, the university will no longer be allowed to authorise visas

Cue for the BBC to get out the onions with tear jerking quotes from bosses at London Met and, naturally the National Union of Pizza Eaters and Beer Drinkers (aka Nat Union of Students – funded by us the taxpayers of course…)

Cobblers

The UKBA says London Metropolitan University had “failed to address serious and systemic failings” identified six months ago.
Immigration Minister Damian Green said London Metropolitan University had failed in three particular areas:
• More than a quarter of the 101 students sampled were studying at the university when they had no leave to remain in this country
• Some 20 of 50 checked files found “no proper evidence” that the students’ mandatory English levels had been reached
• And some 142 of 250 (57%) sampled records had attendance monitoring issues, which meant it was impossible for the university to know whether students were turning up for classes or not.

Fact is that the London Met (nothing to do with the prestigious University of London) is the worst performing university in the UK and has been relying on foreign students to subsidise it’s inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Hence it’s willingness to turn a blind eye to either the legal status of foreign students or their attendance. Indeed I would not be surprised if the rolls at London Met are as full of dead people as the Chicago Electoral Register…

…and all that stuff about no other uni in the same position? Biggest porkie pie of the year – most of the low level performers are at it. London Met was selected pour encourager les autres. Hopefully at a large number of pseudo universities urgent e mails are being sent to staff presently sunning themselves on beaches across the globe telling them that the gravy train has reached the buffers and that from the start of next term they must start keeping proper registers instead of making them up.

Even better maybe once the word of this crackdown spreads across the globe there might even be a loss of income for these institutions. Some of the phantom departments could close….OMG….those that remain might have to start doing some actual work!!!!!!

Trouble is at the trade union for the great and the good the BBC is pretending to be shocked but is actually full of glee for nothing gets BBC mouths salivating better than an issue containing the words “student” “illegal” and “immigration”. Already, no doubt, documentaries are being commissioned and a foreign student storyline inserted into “East Enders”…

So – will the government stand firm?

Probably as firm as a meringue…

The BBC, acting in its capacity of being the UK extension of Barack Obama’s “Palace Guard” (aka the US mainstream media) led on the website with an item headed

Romney and Republicans raise $100m in June

Under the headline the text confirmed that Mitt Romney, the likely Republican candidate in this coming November’s Presidential election, had raised more money than Obama. At first glance one could have sensed from this the possibility of a Damascene conversion at Beeb HQ…..that they might have actually decided to report a US election in a fair and balanced way by shedding the liberal/left blinkers that for over half a century have coloured their reporting.

But, true to form, as one’s eyes travelled down the page, it became clear that they were performing to the script posted out from the New York Times, Washington Post and the TV alphabets. The Obama campaign is firing all its guns on Romney’s wealth to characterise him as a gold plated fat cat who knows nothing about the everyday problems of ordinary people in a struggling economy – and the reason for harping on the success of the Romney/GOP fundraising was to associate the Republican Party with this fat cat image…

Look, folks, it’s Obama and the people v Romney and the fat cats – and the fat cats hope to buy the election…

Moreover, to darken the image even further, the BBC references a recent Vanity Fair article

And there were negative headlines this week over a Vanity Fair investigation reporting that much of Mr Romney’s personal fortune was hidden in a network of opaque offshore investment havens.

Yes, Vanity Fair, (the one that was so sympathetic to the Occupy “movement”)…..did a full scale investigation into Romney’s wealth (probably using the fifty fact checkers that AP sent to Alaska after Palin’s VP GOP nomination in 2008)…..yet somehow has never managed to send anybody to Chicago to find out more about Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko, a key figure in his political transfiguration who was later convicted of money laundering and bribery.

But then, since VF is clearly the house magazine of the glitterati, the BBC didn’t spend too much time agonising upon the mixed messages being sent out by Obama’s hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite….

As for the tear stained pleas from Obama and his surrogates about being outspent – smoke and mirrors, anyone?

The only catch is that the actual spending by super PACs so far this year tells a quite different story. The truth is that the super PAC founded by top Obama staffers and its aligned “independent” groups are outspending groups that oppose the president by roughly two to one.

….and behind those pro Obama super PACs are some very shady figures….

But hey, whenever did an honest in depth probe of any liberal/left political structure figure particularly high on the BBC agenda? As for the piece itself just look at the subtle hints offered by the selection of photos……Romney holidaying on an expensive rich man’s toy while Obama is out there talking to horny handed sons of toil….

….and not a single mention of golf….

cross posted at Biased BBC

Remember reading the 2004 Balen report requested by the BBC itself to investigate accusations of anti Israel bias in its Middle East reporting?

No, neither do I – because the BBC has resisted all attempts to force it into the public domain. Don’t bother to ring Sherlock Holmes either to find out why because the findings must have been an embarrassing indictment of the Beeb’s lack of neutrality.

At The Commentator Simon Plosker has a good analysis of a more recent report on the BBC’s coverage of the Arab Spring. Generally a whitewash but, to be fair, there are some criticisms, particularly of the rather cavalier use of unverified mobile phone footage without an accompanying caveat.

Perhaps the Balen Report also found that the BBC has an unhealthy reliance on Palestinian “eyewitnesses” whose versions of events cannot be guaranteed as reliable.
And what about the lack of caveats? Does the BBC announce the reporting restrictions from Gaza where there is risk of intimidation and threats from Hamas, both towards foreign media and against Palestinians who deviate from the party line?

That is a very pertinent point. The Hamas administration in Gaza is an authoritarian regime with an unpleasant record of human rights abuse. Any Palestinian who publicly criticised it would almost certainly suffer severe consequences. But in any Gaza vox pop presented by the BBC there is never a caveat about this lack of freedom.

But then should we be surprised? After all whenever “ordinary folk” were interviewed in any Catholic enclave in Northern Ireland during the thirty years of the Troubles we were never told by the BBC that their reporters only operated under IRA “protection”.

Similarly we were never informed that government “minders” always accompanied BBC “journalists” around Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, making certain that every citizen toed the party line.

As long as a regime or group is anti British (or anti Israel) you can be certain those caveats are conveniently forgotten.

After all, as the BBC says, “it’s what we do”

cross posted at Biased BBC

A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”

Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.

Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.

They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework

Enter John Prescott

They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.

Enter Kirsty Wark

The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.

Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.

Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…

Only the BBC would dream of digging up a graveyard full of corpses who were punks in 1977 when we were celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

“I was against the Silver Jubilee, against the symbolism and the money being spent on the festivities. My friends and I thought the royals could afford to pay for the party themselves.”

Thus one Louise Bolotin, a 50 year old “writer”, reminiscing about those glory days. A real rebel was Louise..to show her rage against the machine she wore her “Stuff The Jubilee” badge ALL DAY…tell that to the Solidarity members who were being imprisoned in Communist Poland or the Cuban dissidents being tortured by Castro’s secret police. Louise showed true defiance and, what’s more, she feels the same today.

The Beeb revived other corpses to find the same sentiment and then proceeded to inform us of the historical/sociological significance of punk

Her attitude typifies those following the punk movement at that time. Although the nation had been encouraged to have a party in honour of the Queen, not everyone wanted to come.
The rising popularity of the punks provided a snarling, spitting, sometimes swearing outlet for some of the angry youths disillusioned with 1970s Britain – a time of strikes, economic hard times and high unemployment

What a load of pretentious colour supplement drivel. It wasn’t a movement, you moron, just a fashion trend like the Teds, hippies, mods, skinheads, Goths and thousands of others. There was no political dimension, just, like me in my Teddy Boy drainpipes in the 50s, a wish to irritate my elders by wearing something that made me stand out from the crowd and to make me seem intimidating (think hoodies)…the badge of youth in every generation.

However a tiny group of student/arty types muscled in on the trend and created a style industry and bigged it up to get some PR traction and, of course, with sound capitalist motives, to make some money selling music and fashion. These, like latter day Jacobites, are sad dinosaurs still dining out on the “movement” . Most of the punks, however, like the Teds and Goths and Mods grew up and became adults with families and proper jobs.

As for the BBC’s political point, as a teacher in South London during the 70’s, I remember that the punks tended to be the spotty, insecure loners on the fringe of school social life who found out of school solace in belonging to their outlandish tribe. In full punk gear they looked violent and terrifying but they were plaster board warriors who were essentially the embodiment of Urban Wimpdom.

So why did the Beeb even bother to visit this particular cemetery? The clue is in the description of 1970s Britain.. “a time of strikes, economic hard times and high unemployment”…it’s the BBC narrative about Cameron’s Britain and they are constantly searching for signs of disaffected youth. They thought they found it in the 2011 rioters but had to pull back when the public supported belated tough police action and harsh sentences. So, at the moment, they need to go back in time…except they forget to mention that punk erupted under a Labour government and the black fog of despair that fell about the nation in the 70s and helped spawn the punks was dispelled for the ordinary people of Britain in 1979 with the arrival of the BBC’s nemesis..

cross posted at Biased BBC