BBC Bias Is Off The Scale Now

Take a look at this tweet from Aaron Bastani. In it you will be able to compare footage from Friday night's Question Time Leaders special. In the original live footage, a woman in the audience poses a question to our alleged Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who is immediately met with jeers and laughter. In the following day's BBC News at One, the footage is edited to remove the laughter and replace it with applause.

This is blatant corrupt bias. The kind of thing one would witness in dictatorships.

The BBC are, as ever quick to reply, arguing that the footage was 'shortened for timing reasons'. But that is utter nonsense. We see something with our own eyes and then we are fed it back in a complete different way, with a completely different implication for the powers that be. Like I say, it's the kind of action one would expect from state television in a dictatorship.

Only a week earlier, the BBC came under fire for showing footage from 2016 of Johnson laying a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday rather than the actual footage from the day before in which Johnson looked dishevelled, jumped the gun and laid the wreath upside down. I wrote about this on this very blog here. More, I complained about it to the BBC. Their reply to me was woeful, citing human error in a highly pressurised newsroom environment. That same excuse just doesn't cut it here, and I have sent a complaint specifically about this distortion of the Question Time footage.

Question Time itself of course is notoriously corrupt. On the same show, Jeremy Corbyn faced questions from the audience. He came off significantly better than Johnson despite the fact that one of those questions was posed by Hull West and Hessle Conservative representative and activist Ryan Jacobsz. The South African Jacobsz initially tried some play acting as he posed his question, claiming that he wanted to believe so very much in Mr Corbyn's promises in order to fool the audience that he was impartial, before launching into a deeply aggressive hectoring rant about perceived anti-semitism. This is not the first time that Mr Jacobsz has appeared on Question Time, in fact it's his fourth; as you can see here. Is this flagrant stitch-up all over the news? No. The Tory friendly media have instead focused on the actress Kate Rutter, stare of I, Daniel Blake, being in the audience and allowed to ask Jo Swinson about austerity. But, as a Sheffield resident, Ms Rutter had more right to be there than Hull's Jacobsz.

I have complained about both of these issues and I urge anyone who believes that their licence fee should be going to an impartial public service broadcaster who is beyond reproach to do the same. 

Fighting Back : Petitions to Sign

Before I begin I must say I love the BBC and what it stands for. Or should I say stood for? Because we have to face the fact that, fearful of losing its charter and aware that their future is in the hands of unashamed and openly anti-BBC Tory John Whittingdale, its reportage of news and current affairs is in a terribly biased state.

Time and time again we see Labour and Jeremy Corbyn belittled and derided, whilst real issues that clearly matter to a wide number of people in society are being routinely ignored and unreported. Mass protests, demos and marches against the government and their austerity measures are consistently kept off the BBC's news agenda - they're pretending that our justified anger at Tory rule simply does not exist by not giving it airtime - whilst anything remotely embarrassing or negative regarding David Cameron or his party is regularly kicked down the running order. And don't even start me on the bias they showed during the Scottish referendum.

This petition calls for the resignation of the BBC's Head of News, James Harding for clear bias. Harding is a former editor of The Times, which as you all know is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an anti-BBC media mogul who does not enjoy transparent and unbiased journalism. Harding is also a close personal friend of George Osborne - such a relationship and such previous credentials make his position at the BBC completely untenable.

This petition calls for the resignation of Question Time chair David Dimbleby. For some time now Dimbleby seems to bring his own/or the BBC's natural bias to the proceedings of the long running political debate programme whilst he coasts on his reputation as an elder statesmen of current affairs broadcasting. He is either ineffectual as a chair or he's biased. He repeatedly interrupts and cajoles participants, exerts little authority when debates veer wildly off course (unless its veering towards a right-wing angle) and he seems to give more airtime to statement from government representatives on the panel than anyone else. In my view it's time for a younger, more impartial host - maybe even a woman. Kirsty Wark perhaps?

It's not just news and current affairs either. Satirical comedy programmes such as Have I Got News For You on the whole seem to have lost their nerve for attacking the government, preferring instead easier targets like UKIP or deliver the same kind of unfair and manufactured criticism of Jeremy Corbyn that Murdoch's tabloid press indulges in. Contemporary drama serials never hold any political messages any more either - the last remotely political drama I saw on the BBC was The Village whose passionate evocation of left wing ideals was safely cushioned by the fact that it was set in the past and therefor historically accurate to show; they seemed to miss the parallels that could easily be drawn with the situation today. Meanwhile ongoing serial drama like Casualty which once had such a determined anti-Tory angle based on their mishandling of the NHS, is now content to depict the life of doctors and nurses in a ridiculous unreal manner in which budgetary restraints never significantly appear, and if they do it is the mysterious and enigmatic 'the system' that is now blamed, rather than the Tories.

Fighting Back : Petitions to Sign

Nicky Morgan's spectacular meltdown of Ben Swain proportions was a delight to watch on Question Time last night - declaring the Budget to only be 'a suggestion' as some of her fellow MP's are in protest over Osborne's proposed cuts to disabled benefit. But we can't just rely on a few protests and a gaffe from the Tories - we need to come together and make a statement regarding this government's stance on PIP and we can do that by signing this petition demanding Osborne thinks again. He's looking increasingly isolated and we need to force his hand. It's worked before - remember the tax credits cuts? - it will work again.

Please, sign it.

Sympathies....

So Nicky Morgan MP has just said that Cameron shouldn't have to apologise for his 'terrorist sympathiser' comment on Question Time, arguing that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are, in her view, terrorist sympathisers. Why? Because there are photos of them shaking hands with Gerry Adams.

Um, OK. So what does that make Tony Blair then?

Or The Queen?

Or Nelson Mandela?

Then again, Cameron et al believed Mandela to be a terrorist who should be executed in the 1980s, so maybe that last one speaks volumes to the likes of Nicky Morgan?

Terrorists and freedom fighters are both interchangeable terms and times and allegiances change. Let's not forget that America financed and trained most of the terrorists and despots they later had to do battle with.

I'm not denying that the IRA is a terrorist organisation and that their crimes perpetrated in the name of a united Ireland are utterly horrific and inexcusable, but the blinkered, prejudiced mindset of the Tories right now and their combined desire with the media to discredit the Labour party is utterly ridiculous, dangerous and disgusting - doubly so, when one considers the global crisis we are now currently committed in and the destruction of the welfare system, the NHS etc that is occurring at home.

The Creeping Blairite Revival and Some Thoughts on Syria

Look at that image - sickening isn't it?

The only time I want to see Blair sans tie now is shortly after his arrest for war crimes, when a custody sergeant instructs its removal because he fears he'll use it as a makeshift noose in his cell during the long dark night of his poisonous duplicitous soul.

The joker on the left really is a joker too. It's Matt Forde, former Blair office boy, now stand up 'comedian' whose sweaty porcine fart features are currently pissing me off on Question Time as he dismisses the party he worked for, but has now left, as 'the loony left' with ineffectual aims and leadership, despite helping pressurise Osborne into a complete and utter U turn this week.

I hate this creeping revival of the Blair regime which sees media friendly whores getting a free pass at TV airtime to wax wistfully about 'the good old days' of Blair in the hope that he'll descend upon us once more like some Second Coming. 

It's actually insulting to start looking at the Blair years through rose tinted glasses when there is still so much about his dictatorship that remains unresolved and deeply contentious, specifically the fact that we still haven't got a clear verdict on his warmongering.

And war rears its ugly head on Question Time obviously, given the increasingly inevitable step towards air strikes in the vain hope that it may defeat Isil.  

It won't defeat Isil. 

It's an understandable move to do it. But it's a kneejerk reaction. Cameron himself once said that he was not someone who believed that he could "drop democracy out of an airplane at 40,000 feet" yet he's putting us on course for that right now, making the same mistakes that Blair did. And it's a dangerous course, and that's why Corbyn is arguing that there is no clear strategy. Bombing will only be a crap gesture at foreplay ahead of the inevitable call for 'boots on the ground'. Britain does not have the resources to go to war any longer. Thanks to MOD cuts that Cameron has overseen, our army is now the smallest it has been for centuries. 

It will be impossible and fatal to take this path now. You simply don't pick a fight with someone with your hands tied behind your back and that's exactly what this will be.

Worse, we'll inevitably hear that vital funding required for other areas in civilian life, such as the NHS will suffer. It's ridiculous that the NHS is now completely, critically ailing with the finger of blame being pointed at the poor economy when Cameron's government will happily spend 4 billion on the replacement for Trident. The Socialist Labour government of 1945, vowing to never agin endure anything like the war we have just come out of, set up the NHS and it did so when we were a completely bankrupt nation. So what really is Cameron's excuse?

Attlee's government made the commitment to look to our own after the shadow of war. I say that with terror looming over us, we should look to our own once more and focus more on surveillance, policing and prevention within our country.

Murdoch and the media may want a Blairite revival, but they really will be getting the very worst of it if we decide to make the same mistakes that warmonger gleefully led us into. 

I Worry About My Readers Sometimes

Why?

Well take a look at some of the searches that have brought a discerning net surfer to my blog in the past 24 hours

Oh dear.

Now to be fair, you can see why such a word search has brought someone here. I do post pictures of bums and pictures of people who would easily be considered hot. I also post about politics. I know, it's a rather schizophrenic blog (but what can you do?)

But never the twain shall meet!

I can only wonder what dismay said searcher experienced when he realised my opinion of Esther McVey was not that she was hot nor indeed in any way appreciative of any of her alleged 'skills' and 'talents'.

You'd think the fact that I tag her as 'Esther McVey the cunt' would be explanatory enough.

But worryingly, I do wonder what sort of person watched Question Time last night and saw McVey on it (these searches have all been done in the last 24 hours) and thought not, 'Jesus what a heartless smug and vapid Tory bint', and instead thought 'Cor, she's hot! I'd love to see her arse'

Sorry to disappoint. For me McVey is an arse.

BarLOW Can You Go?

Getting a bit fed up of hearing the calls for Take Prat's 'musician' Gary Barlow to return his OBE in light of his tax dodging. 

He shouldn't give his OBE back.

He should be giving the money he ferreted away from the Inland Revenue back.

And we should be taking his OBE off him!  It shouldn't be his choice.

OK he didn't do anything strictly illegal, but it was dishonest and, as the above shows, it was hypocritical.

His fans and he can safely count David Cameron and the Tory cabinet (the odious Esther McVey is currently defending him on Question Time as I type) among that number are defending him by saying his OBE was for all his charitable work and is therefore a 'separate thing'. Well by that token anyone with an honour coming up in the Operation Yewtree investigation - including the dead bastard Sir Jimmy Savile - should be allowed to keep their honours too, because by and large they were given for their charitable work.

Do we really want that? I know I don't.

Once again we're seeing one law for one group and a totally different one for another.

Stick To Selling Butter

The BBC must have had high hopes when they invited former Sex Pistol John Lydon onto the political debate show Question Time last night. How they must have rubbed their hands gleefully to think that he would in this, the proclaimed 35th anniversary year of UK punk, provide the debate with some punk fire  as he espoused an ethos of front line angry alternative thinking.

Well, he didn't. The man sells butter on TV adverts these days, and to be honest that is exactly what he should stick too. Still, as his appearance has propelled me to actually write about it - albeit for all the wrong reasons - the programme makers have I suppose succeeded in some way.

And it came down to the hoary old question of 'The war on drugs is lost; shall we legalise/decriminalise them' and an embarrassing wrangle with Conservative MP Louise Mensch to fully show Lydon up for the out of touch berk he truly is.

A deluded old fart

A Tory MP, surprisingly less deluded

During her chance to answer, Mensch admitted to taking Class A drugs in her past before becoming an MP. She explained how she deeply regrets this as she feels it has severely afflicted her with regards to her long term mental health and an increase in her anxiety levels. She also revealed that she was the subject of a nasty blackmail campaign to keep her from testifying at Leveson recently as these persons unknown threatened to inform the public of her drug taking past. What she failed to be drawn on though was to name which Class A she had taken as she felt to do so would to give it a spotlight it did not deserve.

Then came Lydon's turn to speak. He'd actually spent the vast majority of the show prior to this confirming his status as a poor stunt booking with little to contribute but inane sub Max Miller schtick - winking and gurning at the audience after each comment made - and making in turn awkward interruptions and silences. But what he did next was totally crass, insulting, deluded and offensive and made me do something I never thought I was capable of; it made me feel sorry for a Tory. He decided to talk down to her on the drug issue, address the audience loudly so any chance of fair comeback from her corner was drowned out and actually claimed she was lying about taking drugs, stating "You seem pretty lucid here" It was a completely knucklebrained disgusting thing to do to anyone, let alone a woman who had just admitted something that clearly upsets her and showed no real understanding of drugs and their effects - odd considering how much Lydon himself must have taken over the years.

But it got worse; he then proceeded to claim that drugs should be legalised because everyone must have their own free will in life and the right to do whatever they want. Now, personally I think there's a good argument for the decriminalisation of drugs, but not from this clown's mouth. His response was embarrassing twee and desperately out of touch and kudos to Mensch for sitting back and rolling her eyes at the guff he came out with. He boasted, and in doing so clearly hoped to get the audience on side, that he is "A working class lad from Stepney" - never mind that he's actually a multi millionaire who has lived in LA for the past twenty odd years at least - and that as such, the working classes should be allowed to do what they please and it is his belief that there'll be no serious repercussions such as overdoses or the long term ill health Mensch claimed she suffers with because "the working classes look out for one another" 

As opinions go this as laughable, senile and out of touch as those espoused by a Mail reading ret'd Major, the type of person one feels Lydon still thinks he rails against, when in actual fact he's living in the same kind of cloud cuckoo land of a yesteryear that never really existed. 

Drugs harm. Drugs kill. Drugs harm and kill the people around you and they harm and kill you. Does a drug addict care? No, because they care only about drugs. That is the nature of addiction. There's no looking after or out for anyone, there's no community or class bonds in drugs, there isn't even any family in drugs, because it's every man for himself. Class doesn't come into it. The class war died long before the drug war was even lost.  

On Question Time last night Lydon was just another example of a boring old fart who still feels he has some relevance, some cachet and affection in our society. He doesn't. For this old punk there really is no future. The sooner he buggers off back to the States and behind the security fences and perimeters of his mansion counting his money in his bubble world the better.