Friday 29 November 2013

# 283 - WAR - Lord Sugar speaks out against the 'Jobsworths' at the BBC.

Lord Sugar, a Labour Peer, is quoted by Ephraim Hardcastle in The Daily Mail as saying, in the House of Lords, recently - "Layers of jobsworths need removing at the Corporation"

Also in the same paper Jennifer Saunders rants that the BBC is full of too many layers of unnecessay management and waste money.

Both these are significant criticisms of the BBC as they come from 'friends' as both Lord Sugar and Jennifer Saunders have been in programmes on the BBC.

When the luvvies start to point out the bleeding obvious, that the BBC is overmanned or should that be overpersonned, then I am hopeful that the worm may be slowly starting to turn.

However having said that I predict that it will still be many years before the BBC is brought to heel or book whichever you prefer!

Wednesday 20 November 2013

# 282 - WAR - David Dimbleby on the BBC.

David Dimbleby who has been with the BBC for more then 50 years said the following yesterday on Radio 5 Live as reported in the Daily Mail today.

1. The BBC is too powerful and should be slimmed down.
2. It should cut gardening and cooking programmes.
3. The coverage of the Royal Pageant on the Thames was rueful.
4.  It is crushing local newspapers with its online coverage.
5.  BBC4 should merge with BBC2 and concentrte on quality.
6.  If you have one organisation that controls the airwavs is that in the end democratic?
7.  Some of the licence fee money should be used to subsidise other independent radio and broadcast   stations to give more variety.


All those things and more would help the BBC but I'm not certain it would end the bias.


Interestingly in the same article it said former head of of TV news Roger Mosey admitted the BBC was too big and too left wingand also suggested the licence fee should be shared with rivals and the number of TV channels reduced.

Well done David Dimbleby for speaking out but isn't it annoying how those that point out that the BBC is bias are usually FORMER employees of the BBC!!

# 281 -- WAR - Roger Helmer's newsletter.

This from his latst newsletter - "Straight talking"


The BBC: Even when it’s balanced, it’s biased

 

I was listening to the Today programme early in November, and John Humprhys was doing a piece on the referendum on nationalisation of the electricity grid in Berlin.  He interviewed one supporter, one opponent.  So perfectly balanced, then?  Not quite.

 

The case against nationalisation was based entirely on finance.  Nationalisation involves spending a great deal of public money for no discernible economic benefit.  The case in favour, on the other hand, was all about “fighting climate change” (though why fighting climate change necessitates nationalising the grid, I’m still not clear).

             

The two key points were made by the proponent of nationalisation: (A) we need to fight climate change; and (B) quoting Lord Stern, “the price of inaction exceeds the cost of mitigation”.  No attempt was made to challenge either of these points.  Both are highly contentious.  Readers of this newsletter will be familiar with the general arguments on anthropogenic global warming.  On Stern, this is just about the only substantial economic study concluding that costs of inaction exceed costs of mitigation.  Most studies find the opposite.  There is also a splendid and authoritative rebuttal of the Stern report by inter alia David Henderson and Richard Lindzen, which is well worth reading: here. But of course the BBC takes the Stern position as Gospel, and wouldn’t think of challenging it.

 

While we’re having a go at Humphrys, he did a piece on the Grangemouth dispute with the Unite union recently.  In the course of an interview, he came up with the splendid line “But the Union wouldn’t have taken action without the approval of its members?”  Of course trade unions constantly take action without the approval of members, which was why the law on strike ballots was introduced.  But Humphrys kept digging deeper.  “But the membership voted for Len McCluskey, didn’t they?”.  Just think about it, John.  You might as well say “The people voted for Margaret Thatcher, so of course they all approved of the Poll Tax”.

Sunday 17 November 2013

# 280 - WAR - It's only your money they waste!

Andrew Gilligan writes a good article today attacking the BBC in the Sunday Telegraph under the heading:-

What Lonley Planet is the BBC on?

In it he points out the BBC lost £100million after selling the 'Lonely Planet' travel book company.

Quite why the BBC enter this market in the first place, which is NOT their area of expertise, is ot explained but one can only assume as they are only ever spending your money they don't have to have a good reason.

The person responsible for this loss making deal was paid off with £800,000.

Other statistics from th4 article include:-

  • BBC managers to be reduced from 437 to 415 by 2015 - WHAT ARE THEY ALL FOR?

  • Despite the BBC's prominence in news reporting they have only won 39% of the awards from the Royal Television Society in the last 5 years and NONE from the Bafta since 2006 and only won it twice in the 12 years since the award was created - IS IT ANY SURPRISE?

  • The BBC is the largest news organisation in the world - WHY?

With most of the BBC news dumbed down and centring on such matters as Beckham's tatoos, while presented in sound bites for those with the attention span of a gnat, I'm not surprised they aren't winning news awards.

Friday 15 November 2013

# 279 - WAR - Immigration

Jack Straw and David Blunkett have both warned this week of the dangers of riots if too many Roma immigrants come into this country.

The BBC has virtually ignored this story.

Now if this statement had been made by a Tory.................................................!!!!

The BBC is bias bias and bias.

# 278 - WAR - Jeremy Vine show and Climate Change.

This post is a little late as I've been away in London attending a debate on whether we should leave the EU with the result being - 51% for leaving and 49% for staying!! History teaches us that unless the 'outs' enter the referendum 20 points ahead we will lose.

Anyway back to the Jeremy Vine show. Earlier in the week, I believe Wednesday, the first topic for discussion was whether we should now change our minds about the green taxes on our fuels bills because of the typhoon in the Philippines.

Bias number one - Only one person was interviewed being the pro climate change journalist George Monbiot.

Bias number two - George Monbiot comes from the Guardian!

Bias number three - Monbiot was NEVER interrupted or challenged on two of his facts - that the Oceans have warmed up and that the world's temperatures have gone up by 1% over recent years. Both are wrong.

Bias number four - Despite most telephone calls being against climate change Jeremy Vine appealed for more people to telephone in who supported climate change and gave equal billing to both sides.

I believe the only way to get the BBC to change is for a mass boycott of the TV licence.



Wednesday 6 November 2013

# 276 - WAR - The new BBC News Studio.

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Well here it is in all its glory the new BBC News studio opened in March this year and no doubt familiar to you all. Well last night as I was listening to the 'lip twitcher' Hugh Edwards reading the news I suddenly thought 'I wonder how many work in this studio?' I've counted seating for around 250+ and feel this has to be the biggest vanity project the BBC has ever undertaken given the increasingly low grade news output designed for a general public that apparently only have the attention span of a gnat!! This also has to be the biggest white elephant the BBC has ever produced and sums up exactly why the BBC is so out of touch with the public it serves.
Lord Hall told the CBI conference this week that the BBC must spend our money as if it was their own which is a clear statement that the BBC has spent money like water up to now!
The BBC is a hugely bloated oganisation that is quite incapable of reform as all those who work in it and are associated with it have as much idea about beening 'Prudent' as did Gordon Brown!!  

Sunday 3 November 2013

# 275 - WAR - Is the BBC capable of reform?

NO of course it isn't, that is until it has to live in the real world without the licence fee tax.

Here are 4 examples of how the BBC operate I've picked up over the last few days.

1. They spend your money like water - I read in the press that the BBC have on their books the ex Nu Liebour spin doctor  Godric Smith to act as a PR consultant to improve the image of the BBC after the Savile affair. He only works part-time and is paid £150,000! Apparently the BBC already have 140 people in the PR department but there is always room for one more left-wing ex-Blairite.

Can you imagine the BBC employing an ex Tory spin doctor .......exactly!!

2. BBC management are guilty of turining a blind eye to wrong doing - So Paul Gambaccini admits to be the recent BBC employee to be questioned by the police during its operation Yewtree investigation, into sexual abuse, after the Jimmy Savile situation.

What strikes me, since Savile's exploits hit the headlines, is the extent to which the BBC is guilty of  turning a blind eye to many illegal acts going on around it and indeed on its premises. The BBC is stuffed full with the liberal elite and their rooks are coming home to roost.

Someone peoples heads should roll.

3. BBC stage manage a racist story -  I saw the broadcast Rod Liddle writes about in the Spectator this week.

The programme Inside West, in Bristol, dressed up two people, one in a suit and the other in a Muslim robe and cap, gave them identical CVs and sent them out to apply for the same jobs.

Yes you guessed it the suited man got more job offers.

Rod Liddle concludes " If you dress in a way to emphsise your difference to the norm, don't be surprised if you're afforded fewer job opportunities as a consequence."

Exactly!

This was BBC propaganda and not objective news reporting.

4. The propaganda of a non story - On my local BBC news covering Somerset tonight The lead story involved the governments's spare room allowance ( Bedroom tax).

The story centred on a man with a cronic condition living in a house with a spare bedroom. He was being asked to move as the room was not used but he was appealing as the room was too small to fit a bed in it so he argued it couldn't be classified as a bedroom. The room was small and they are still awaiting the result of the appeal. So this was a non story but built up by the BBC to attack the govermnnet over, what they have been calling the bedroom tax, but referred to during this news item as the spare room allowance. This I assume was after Iain D-S complained about the BBC bias on this topic.

Why was this the lead story especially as it had NOT reached its conclusion?

Why did the BBC not show a successful story, associated with the spare room allowance, helping someone get a house?

The answer is because the BBC is still institutionally bias.