The BBC: Its real origins and purposes

[Paul Rigby]

Some random thoughts on the issue:

1) Britain's stewards seem intent on recreating the Chirac v Le Pen contest of some years back.

2) The ostensible primary object is, of course, a Tory restoration after a decade+ of neo-con rule.

3) The greater purpose is to end any prospect of left-wing government for good, just as in France.

4) The intervention of the Tory Generals in an attempt to distance the British Army from the ersatz fascist British National Pary - the so-called battle of the uniformed war crims and Mosley's heirs - appears an integral component in the above.

5) The embrace of the French strategy is an admission of Cameron's failure to relicate the Blair "big tent." Unable to win that kind of broad support - or merely lazy acquiescence - by the usual means, the stewards have had to go for a much grander scheme: Cameron v Griffin.

6) There would appear to be a major portent here for America's next election: Obama himself will need significant assistance from the US stewards to win a second term after the abysmal farce of his first. What form will the US variant of the Chirac/Le Pen (Cameron/Griffin) ceremonial will the US stewards plump for? Obama v the Military is looking favourite.

7) The timing of Frau Clinton's intervention on the question of the Tory attitude to Europe leaves little doubt that the US stewards are in broad agreement with their Brit equivalents; and that efforts to restore establishment "sanity" to the Tory approach will be unbending between now and the next election. Stand by for some swift volte faces from the compliant Cameron.

[Magda Hassan]

Horrible Right Wing BBC Agenda

I am watching BBC Question Time, for the first time for many months. I am genuinely astonished at the right wing bias of the panel. That the two "non-party" panel members are Digby Jones and Fraser Nelson shows the determination of the BBC to cover the full spectrum of political opinion from very right to very very right.
That they could not find a single panel member who supports the release of al-Megrahi, or who was prepared to mention that he might well not be the Lockerbie bomber, rendered the whole first fifteen minutes of "debate" otiose
As previously mentioned, I was once invited to be a panelist on Question Time but was cancelled by the BBC at short notice. .The BBC more recently caused a storm by inviting the BNP on to Question Time. I have stood against the BNP in two parliamentary elections - one in Norwich, and one in the very heart of the BNP heartland in Blackburn. Combining both parliamentary elections, as a mere individual I gained just two votes less than the BNP.
Yet, according to the BBC, I am officially banned from politics programmes on the BBC because I have no evidence of popular support for my views, while according to the BBC, the BNP have to be invited because of the extent of the popular support for their views.
The truth is that there is no concept of too right wing at the BBC, while there is a concept of too radical. The one no go area is a questioning of the narrative of the War on Terror.
Fascists are within the pale; sceptics are not.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

[Paul Rigby]

Horrible Right Wing BBC Agenda
The truth is that there is no concept of too right wing at the BBC, while there is a concept of too radical. The one no go area is a questioning of the narrative of the War on Terror.
Fascists are within the pale; sceptics are not.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

But Craig, it's always been that way - where've you been? Abroad?

So now we have an important litmus test for any genuinely democratic party in the UK - the BBC. Content to permit this right-wing monstrosity to remain as is? Then you're a dud.

[David Guyatt]

[quote=Paul Rigby]

[quote]

2) The ostensible primary object is, of course, a Tory restoration after a decade+ of neo-con rule.

Agreed Paul. But I think this was inevitable anyway as the so called democratic arrangement amounts to swings and roundabouts between two political parties, which makes the political landscape easier for the elite to manage.

3) The greater purpose is to end any prospect of left-wing government for good, just as in France.

Tsch tsch. There hasn't been a left-wing government since Wilson was tossed out of power (whoops! "resigned"). And no chance of ever having one again either.

4) The intervention of the Tory Generals in an attempt to distance the British Army from the ersatz fascist British National Pary - the so-called battle of the uniformed war crims and Mosley's heirs - appears an integral component in the above.

I don't think the BNP ever was going to have any political clout in the UK to achieve anything anyway. I seem to remember that they were once secretly funded (or otherwise supported) by the intelligence services? Anyway, it all smacks to me as a cunning campaign of deflection or similar --- firstly, elevate the BNP to greater public awareness and then smash them down.

[/quote]

[Paul Rigby]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com...07563.html

Matthew Norman: Of all the New Labour toadies, Jack Straw must be the worst

His entire career is a gruesome paradigm of the enfeeblement of Westminster politics

Friday, 23 October 2009

Even to so sensationally talentless a soothsayer as this one, writing hours before the big event, it seems a safe bet that the most dangerous member of the panel got away with it on Question Time last night. But then he always does, doesn't he, that slippery eel Jack Straw?

In a bewitching display of transference, the country awoke yesterday in a frenzy of concern about the perils posed to what passes as British democracy by Nick Griffin, an obnoxious creep, yes, but fundamentally a mirthless joke with the same prospects of affecting public life one iota as Andrew Neil has of being cast as the lead in a Cary Grant biopic.

Meanwhile, this newspaper devoted its front page to news of Mr Straw's latest assault on the kind of democratic principle we once regarded as sovereign, and all too few eyelids will have blinked in alarm. The Injustice Secretary's attempt to win the power to render public inquests public no more, and have them held under such blanket secrecy that even the deceased's family would be excluded, isn't merely a scandal. It is an outrage that would, in a less ovine and apathetic nation, lead to the overturning of ministerial cars and the lobbing through Whitehall windows of Molotovs.

Unusually, the fact of this one is arguably less offensive than the method. Perhaps it's just being inured to attacks on civil liberties and human rights after a dozen years under a government that cannot glance at them without sending its valet off for the hobnail boots. The list is so long and familiar (right to silence, right to trial by jury, habeas corpus, DNA storage etc, etc) that the tolerance level rises, as it does to arsenic.

This one is certainly poisonous enough. To deny the grieving their right to learn how and why a loved one died, and who was responsible, is as wickedly cynical and self-serving an aim as the reasoning behind it is transparent. The next time a family of heartbroken Brazilians come to town to hear how an unarmed relative was gunned down on the Tube, it would be spiffing for the Government to express deep regret that the demands of "national security" dictate that neither they nor media and public can hear whatever evidential crumbs the Metropolitan Police deigns to flick from its tunic. When next a British serviceperson is killed by American "friendly fire", what a relief to spare the Pentagon the trouble of refusing to assist the inquest in any way. The desire of our ally to evade embarrassment must always trump that of British nationals to win posthumous justice for next of kin. The need to protect the police from impertinent inquiries about homicides will always come a close second to the paramount need to protect spooks and ministers from insolent questioning about security fiascos of the kind that enabled the bombings of July 2005.

This much we have known for a while, so it would be faux naïf to swoon like a crudely propositioned Victorian maiden every time the pattern is confirmed. All one can do is hope, with virtually zero confidence, that David Cameron means it when he promises to reverse this foaming tide of disdain towards the rights of humble subjects.

What startles even this grizzled student of New Labour autocracy is the method Mr Straw deployed, in vain, to get this one on the statute book. Twice before he had tried, and twice been rebuffed. As recently as May, having reintroduced it back in January, he withdrew the measure from the Coroners and Justice Bill, apparently accepting that the political opposition was too fierce.

"It is clear the provisions still do not command the necessary cross-party support," he said. Within six months of that grudging admission, he elected to circumvent that opposition by burying these proposals deep within the Bill, although not deep enough to evade the prying eyes of the Lords, who soundly rejected them. In one sense, there is something pleasingly holistic about this approach. How better to pass law granting unjustifiable secrecy than by stealth? In another sense, so arrogant and blatant violation of democratic principle induces violent nausea.

But then so does that laureate of sneakiness Jack Straw. Barbara Castle, whose Blackburn seat he inherited, once said, without warmth, that she hired him as a special adviser in the mid 1970s for "his guile and low cunning", and the old girl knew her onions there.

His gift for dodging responsibility verges on genius. Time and time again the hand of censure has brushed his collar, and each time he has slipped it and vanished into the night. Over his complicity as Foreign Secretary in the rendition and subsequent torture of terrorist suspects, he escaped by the skin of his teeth. What deniability he had – and his story changed, in the most legalistic of language, after an initial blanket denial – rested entirely on being given the benefit of a gigantic doubt that he never asked the most obvious questions, or turned his deaf ear to the answers if he did. As Martin Bright wrote in the Independent on Sunday, his self-alleged lack of curiosity about the outsourced torture of British nationals is astonishing.

The man's entire career serves as a gruesome paradigm of the poverty and enfeeblement of Westminster politics. The granddaddy of the professional politician, he blazed the trail so well worn now by gliding seamlessly from leftie student activist to legal qualification to unelected adviser to MP to Cabinet member, quietly jettisoning every belief he once professed along the way to speed the journey.

The one thing we can be sure Mr Straw believes in is Mr Straw. His ambition is unquenchable. When his one serious mistake (deflecting transatlantic glory from Mr Tony Blair by cuddling up to Condi Rice) cost him the Foreign Office, he accepted humiliating demotion just to stay in the game. His transfer of allegiance from Blair to Brown, whose leadership "campaign" he managed (and hats off for winning that one), was comical in its fervency. Even now, be sure that he is scheming to position himself as the Jim Hacker compromise candidate should Labour somehow locate the energy required to ditch the PM.

Tragically, there would be worse electoral choices. As viewers doubtless observed on BBC1 last night, he is adept at promoting an image of calmly authoritative blandness, hence his comparative popularity, and a grandmaster of televisual smoothness. He is as slimy as an oil slick, and always quick to move on once he's coated the vulnerable birdies with filthy tar.

An utter disgrace to every high office he has held, Jack Straw has, typically enough, evaded the widespread loathing attracted by Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Campbell and the rest, despite being one of only three ministers to remain in the Cabinet since 1997. In an all-star team containing Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and Zidane, only the more obsessive fan would notice Patrick Vieira unflamboyantly putting in the hard work in defensive midfield.

But viscerally loathed he should be, for the damage he has done us in the cause of personal ambition, and for the damage he hopes to do yet by bringing this pernicious law back to the Commons. Perhaps in time he will be. A painful inquest into the death of New Labour approaches, and whatever Jack Straw's feelings on the matter this one will be held in public.

[Paul Rigby]

[quote=Paul Rigby]

2) The ostensible primary object is, of course, a Tory restoration after a decade+ of neo-con rule.

Agreed Paul. But I think this was inevitable anyway as the so called democratic arrangement amounts to swings and roundabouts between two political parties, which makes the political landscape easier for the elite to manage.

3) The greater purpose is to end any prospect of left-wing government for good, just as in France.

Tsch tsch. There hasn't been a left-wing government since Wilson was tossed out of power (whoops! "resigned"). And no chance of ever having one again either.

4) The intervention of the Tory Generals in an attempt to distance the British Army from the ersatz fascist British National Pary - the so-called battle of the uniformed war crims and Mosley's heirs - appears an integral component in the above.

I don't think the BNP ever was going to have any political clout in the UK to achieve anything anyway. I seem to remember that they were once secretly funded (or otherwise supported) by the intelligence services? Anyway, it all smacks to me as a cunning campaign of deflection or similar --- firstly, elevate the BNP to greater public awareness and then smash them down.

I am sufficiently "sad" as to have a copy of Keesing's Contemporary Archive volume XXI (1975) to hand. On p.27013, it reproduces parts of the speech Harold Wilson delivered at Kremlin luncheon on 14 Feb 1975. It included the following:

"The peoples of the world are looking forward to the speedy embodiment of international detente in concrete deeds...Such deeds include curbing the arms race, cutting back the scale of the military preparations of states and their military expenditures, and extending peaceful economic co-operation and other kinds of co-operation among them...one of the paramount objectives is the achievement of a peaceful settlement in the Middle East...I trust that this visit will herald a new phase in Anglo-Soviet relations."

In Britain, this is referred to as Harold's Alzheimer period.

[David Guyatt]

Phew. For a second I thought you'd said "Harold's alkaseltzer period".

Then again, perhaps I was fundamentally right in my misreading?

Such sentiments were indigestible to the Western elites.

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Come to think of it, they still are.