Good analysis of Osborne’s 2013 Budget by Benedict Brogan and Jeremy Warner of the Telegraph. No histrionics, none of the “look at me, I’m the real star of the show” BBC Newsnight gotcha dramatics from the guy chairing the discussion.
Political TV for grown ups…..
Guardianista ecowarrior George Monbiot, Murdoch-baiting, expenses grabbing Labour MP Tom Watson and the media elite at the poll tax funded, left wing BBC are all, at this very moment almost certainly having deeply significant conversations with their lawyers because Lord McAlpine is hinting at the issue of writs for defamation.
Monbiot and Watson used Twitter to give legs to a BBC Newsnight report suggesting that a senior Tory, closely associated with Margaret Thatcher was implicated in the sexual abuse of boys in a North Wales children’s home in the 1980s.
The Conservative grandee, a party treasurer under Baroness Thatcher, was not identified in the Newsnight programme eight days ago.
But yesterday his lawyers accused the current affairs programme of “taking the coward’s way out” by encouraging people to seek out the accused politician’s name on the internet.
….and Monbiot and Watson were only too happy to oblige.
The BBC is now furiously back pedalling but a comment at the Guido Fawkes blog hits the nail right on the head
At the very least, the BBC are guilty of astonishingly shoddy research, and, potentially more likely, of using the tragedy of the victims of abuse in that care home to overshadow the scandal that is enmeshing the BBC over Savile.
But there was something else about the story that gave it a magical appeal to the left wing media and it’s supportive trolls – the link with Margaret Thatcher….
They hate her and their hatred is unceasing. They hate her for the fact that she broke the power of the left and her policies were endorsed by the electorate in three successive elections. That’s why they will grab at anything – Hillsborough, coalminers, paedophiles – to try to extract some kind of delayed revenge. It’s their crazed obsession and, to me, it is good news…..because the left has only two attitudes towards its opponents. Most of the time they simply despise the Heaths, Majors, Camerons and Cleggs who seek compromise and don’t wish to be branded as “nasty”.
But the ones they hate – the Thatchers, the Powells – they hate through fear….and if someone is feared by the left then to me it means they are doing a good job.
Schadenfreude….mmmmm….tastes so good when applied to the 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…