EU recommends more power for the EU

BBC reports it as a good idea (i.e. no contrary points of view allowed). Obviously, given the previous track record of the EU, this will be a tremendous success, and it certainly wouldn't be used by the French and Germans to legislate the City out of existence to benefit their own financial centres, of course not.

While the BBC liberally smears scare quotes over any proposal or phrase it is suspicious of, it reports an EU body calling for an EU power grab without even raising an eyebrow. Nor does it point out the truism that the further away a supervisory body is, the less accountable it is.

Still, it's another step on the way to political union, and that's good enough for the BBC.

Boilerplate leftist surrenderism

No surprises that this was originally written in the Guardian, or that the BBC welcomes it enthusiastically.

He said the right response to the threat was to champion law and human rights - not subordinate it.

That's why you want to hold us without charge for 42 days, invade our private property on even more flimsy pretexts, and use anti-terror legislation to persecute Enemies of the People, such as parents who want a good education for their children.

The BBC, after a post-Christmas famine of scare quotes and qualification, vomits up a pile of them in this next quote:

US President George Bush's administration, which has led the so-called "war on terror".

"So-called" and scare quotes! You can feel the Leftist, patrician derision from a thousand miles away. Shame the BBC didn't follow its guidlines and use qualification in stories such as this or this, the Dear Leader's plan to "create 100,000 jobs" (see, it's easy, anyone can do it).

Anyway, back to Milliband's articles of surrender:

Calling for groups to be treated as separate entities with differing motivations, he wrote that it was not a "simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil" and treating them as such was a mistake.

Milliband doesn't think that we are moderates and the Taleban, al-Qaeda etc are extremists. Let's just check the score here. Milliband thinks that people who do this, or this, or this, or this...we could be here for the rest of the day and the flow wouldn't stop. If Milliband thinks that these are not extremists, and that we are not moderates, then he is mentally ill. Obviously he gets all of his information about the world from the BBC, so it is likely that he is utterly ignorant of what is actually happening in Islam. He might think that he is practising nuanced and serious thinking, as against cowboy simplisme, but if it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, no amount of nuanced thinking is going to make it anything other than a duck. Nuanced thinking in the context of terrorism is simply the process of denying reality in more and more sophisticated ways. It goes down well in Paris and Hampstead but, sadly, it is suicidal.

the stance he now promoted was international "co-operation"

Co-operation with whom? Who are we not co-operating with that we should be? Is he referring to terrorist groups which he doesn't consider to be extreme?

BBC worried

A plaintive cry. Obviously, if we are eating more cheap pasties from Greggs, things can't be THAT bad on the economic front.

Come on, people, pull yourself together! Gordon is on the case, he will save us (from something which isn't a problem anyway). etc.

The carbon footprint of handwringing

The BBC promotes some obscure academic to turn the ratchet of global warming induced hysteria one further notch.

This article has 'dodgy' written all over it, I just know it instinctively. One of the lines which suggest this is this one:

Mr Wissner-Gross's study found a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g (0.25oz) of carbon dioxide.

If you enter another request you obviously end up with double that amount.

Why 'obviously'? When people use the word 'obviously', and it is not completely and demonstrably obvious, and they aren't experts in their field I start to think 'agenda' or 'laziness'. Do Google cache search results? A cached result will return far quicker, and use less energy, than the original. 'Obvious'? Hardly.

This is quibbling while our culture burns, however. A culture and society which obsesses and agonises to this level of detail about perfectly normal things being done by billions of other people around the planet is a doomed one. What's next - the carbon footprint of breathing?

I'd like to see a study done on the energy produced through liberal handwringing. We could line 'em up in rows, attach them to generators and show them statistics about education, or photos from Africa or something. At times of peak demand we can bus in a load of Church of England bishops. It's win-win - energy crisis solved and liberals, at last, doing something useful.

Wot no scare quotes?

The BBC discard even the pretence of impartiality. This is a government press release, no more, no less, together with hilarious Private Eye type picture of the Dear Leader.

If the Conservatives, sorry Tories, had proposed this, then "create 100,000 jobs" would have been in scare quotes a mile high. The BBC report his claim as fact. Let's make a prediction here - he won't create 100,000 jobs, and the jobs he creates will be hideously, massively subsidised by the taxpayer. And they will all, mysteriously, be in Labour marginals.

Still, that's all good news for the BBC. Gordon must be Saved.

The BBC and Israel

Some snippets from their blanket anti-jewish coverage:

A vegan chef from Totnes is important enough to get an article on the BBC international website. Who'd have thought it? I'm sure that the fact she has stridently anti-Israeli views and is a member of an organisation dedicated to Israel's destruction is irrelevant. The BBC are currently interviewing non-entities from the West Country and writing long articles about them. Who knows, it might be a Jewish solicitor from Blandford tomorrow.

Where's the screaming racist murder attempt headline? Usually the BBC are pretty good at this when an ethnic minority is targeted. Of course, this only works if the target and source groups are correct - sadly, in this case, the target were Jews and the source a palestinian, so he could have chopped up their kids in plain view, screaming "death to the Jews", and the BBC would still report it as a legitimate political act.

Police said they were unsure what the motive was, but Danish media have speculated it may have been a protest against Israeli air raids in Gaza.

Hmm, yes, what could the motive possibly be?

Who will rid us of this meddlesome druid?

Rowan the Happy Druid is at it again. Its a mystery how a socialist got on to the Today programme to talk about how we are all consumed by greed, but that's by the by. This is another example of recession porn, liberals and leftists getting their rocks off by welcoming what is going to be a Depression. For them, it is a triumphant vindication of their beliefs, and there's no-one more smugly triumphant than a progressive liberal.

Williams talks of the depression as a "welcome reality-check". Personally, I'd trust his opinion on reality as much as I'd trust a cat's opinion on Bach. His past pronouncements have not exactly screwed his reputation to the sticking-plate of reality. This is the man, after all, who thought (thinks) Sharia Law is inevitable in the UK.

Still, back to the "welcome reality check". It is a welcome reality check to all the progressive liberals who have become rich on the system they so profess to despise, and who are so completely insulated from the hurricane which will shortly flatten our economy that they can afford to indulge in most public and unseemly gloating. If you live in an enormous palace on the banks of the Thames, enjoy a very, very comfortable salary and have servants to assist your every want, why it is easy to enjoy the "reality check" from your lofty seat.

For the poor bugger who has lost his job, or is living in fear that he will lose his job, "reality" is not so welcome. In fact, the "reality" of "unsustainable greed" which the Archdruid alludes to is not a reality at all, but a progressive liberal fantasy. The average Joe in Britain is so crushed by taxes (truly the unsustainable greed!) and the cost of living that he can barely provide for his family, let alone indulge in the Archdruid's fantasy of hedonistic consumption. If Williams stepped out of his socialist fantasy for fifteen seconds he would see the truth of this, but there is no room at the Inn for unwelcome truths.

The meme is entrenched, the progressives dominate the establishment and the media, and an awful lot of people are going to hurt a great deal as the libs sate their pious lust to blame anyone except themselves. I loathe each and every one of them.

The new plumbers

Plumbers are out; "NHS Doctors" are in - the latest must-have euphemism for avoiding at all costs the phrase "Muslim terrorist". In fact, the BBC does its usual trick of not mentioning the I or the M words AT ALL in the article.

Still, they did manage to get in the usual Lefty equivalence about "we are as bad as the terrorists", except of course they avoid using the word "terrorist" as well, in case it might offend. They only use it when an unimpeachable source (e.g. a terrorist) says it, and then they quote. The left-wing media in the court (i.e. most of it) must have creamed in their pants when the terrorist said:

he believed the British government and Army could equally be accused of terrorism for their actions in Iraq.

A dream quote for them; they so want to believe. Islamic terrorists know that all they have to do to get the Left onside (and it doesn't take much effort, believe me) is to say the correct slogans about Bush and Iraq. Never mind that their attacks are planned years in advance, often beginning before the events they 'blame' have ever took place. No, all it takes is for the slogan to be said, and it becomes real.

When is a Fat Cat not a Fat Cat?

When it is capable of having kittens, I guess. City financiers aren't usually given gushing titles such as "superwoman" by the BBC. I suppose if the gender fits, it's all change on the Ideology Express.

Breathtaking

The BBC manage to pen an entire article about the Mumbai Jewish community's vulnerability without ONCE saying who is targeting them. OK, it's the BBC so covering up for Islamic terrorism is hardly news, but you would think it would be difficult to write an article and avoid the CENTRAL point.

But no, this one goes one step further:

The Jewish community here is close to Muslims

They are bosom buddies! OK, they want to kill all the Jews, and they think they are descended from pigs and apes, but hey - that's just banter.

I remember when this was all fields...

Ah, I remember the good old days, when the BBC and the rest of the Left would dilligently report government leaks as public interest stories.

Oh dear, times have changed. Gee, I remember when if there was a Tory government, the BBC would report leaks as if they were gospel truth. The source was sacrosanct; the leaker a public hero. Who would have thought that with a Labour government in power the BBC would reverse their deeply held belief in the sanctity of leaks?

For the BBC, there's no Clive Ponting any more. Those days are long gone. No, these days there are Enemies of the People, and Damien Green is one of them. I pity the poor bastard who leaked these stories to him, he has the government and the BBC after him.

Strictly Come Blathering

The insane hysteria over "Strictly" (spit) gathers apace. Obviously HMG's ministers are snowed under at the moment with the recession an'all, only the Scottish Secretary was available to pronounce from on high on this national emergency.

This story has been bubbling amongst the top three headlines on the BBC World News (!!) page for days now. Could it be something to do with John Sergeant being an ex-employee? Surely not! I thought the cappuchinatti's world view ended at the M25; clearly it doesn't get much beyond Shepherd's Bush.

Like shooting fish in a barrel

The Chief of the UK Entitlement industry has his usual page one spot on the BBC. Two points I'd like to make:

He whinges about 'change', and how the UK system is biased against 'change'. I don't know about you, but the UK seems to have changed an awful lot in the past thirty years, only some of it for the better.

I liked this quote:

Mr Phillips later told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme it would be very hard for people who were not the right gender, class or race to reach the very top because of the current political system in place.

Lest we forget, as Phillips clearly has. 1979 was clearly so traumatic for him that he must have blocked it from his memory.

The Latest News from Diversityland

David Davis, MP for the fine town of Monmouth, dissed the brothers yesterday. You would think that pointing out that a policy which excluded people on the basis of their skin colour was racist was completely obvious, but alas not in the Vibrant Land of Diversity we now inhabit. Note also the classic whinge that by telling them the truth he "disrespected" them. Will Davis soon be the victim of a drive-by shooting from a Panda car, one wonders?

Anyway, back to the article. The BBC is clearly sympathetic to the grievance mongers in their use of headline: "MP defends police race criticism". This is a classic BBC dodge - it suggests very strongly that Davis was wrong and has been forced to defend his actions, whereas in fact he spoke the completely bloody obvious to a bunch of cossetted single-issue fanatics. The average man on the Clapham Omnibus can see this, but the extremists in the BPA and the BBC cannot, or will not, so the whole sorry saga continues.

Great Big Dirty Lie of the Week

Mark Thompson, BBC Director General, wins the first of a new, regular feature of the show, Great Big Dirty Lie of the Week, for this effort (HT: Biased-BBC). This is the winning quote:

Mr Thompson, who spoke at a lecture for think-tank Theos, said shows critical of Islam would be shown if they were of high quality.

Ahahahahaha! Am I cynical in thinking that the quality threshold for that genre will always be tantalisingly out of reach? Could that quality threshold be applied to the rest of their pisspoor output please? Contrast Thompson's mysterious and sudden commitment to 'quality' programming over Islam with the execrable piece of crap Bonekickers, which clearly had no quality threshold applied at all.