Dave's Sun v Brown's BBC

The saintly Sun is sticking the knife into dear old Auntie banging on about Tory bias at the BBC. Bear shit found in woods. Sour grapes found in Brown sauce.

A fag-end government hijacking a state broadcaster as an electioneering tool for political propaganda? Whatever next.

The Sun proudly proclaims its investigation has unearthed "an alarming BBC bias against the Tories in the run up to the Election."

The Orange Party has lost count the number of times a blatant biased BBC has been wearily highlighted, tearing out what little hair is left. But cannot help feeling there's a little bit of Sun bias and sour grapes creeping in.

Murdoch's Sun is no pals of the BBC, rounding on the corporation for using its whopping licence-funded resources to stick the commercial knife into the Murdoch empire.

And until recently, Wobbling Dave just wasn't cutting the mustard with a newspaper which has put its neck on the line to beat the drum for Dave. Lurking in the background are those nasty Tories bent on cutting the corporation down to size.

Claims of BBC bias are as old as the ridiculous way the public is forced to cough up for watching telly. But the Orange Party would suggest it's not anti-Tory bias per se. More likely compliant BBC bullshit.

More the way New Labour spinners have managed to capture and control the state broadcaster for political advantage. And more the way an urban liberal politically correct elite is forcing the world to look through cosy rose-tinted BBC glasses.

Nevertheless, the Sun makes great play citing examples of BBC 'anti-Tory bias' with "Covert smears on David Cameron's Conservatives ... made right across the state-owned network."

News coverage, chat shows and even kids' TV are as guilty as sin in the eyes of the saintly Sun. Even the Basil Brush Show featured a school election with a cheat called Dave wearing a blue rosette.

Whatever next? Reds under the bed? A McCarthy witch hunt?

Foxy Basil Brush dressed up as Tory toff Dave in a mock election is kinda political satire in a child-like way. Anyway who wouldn't vote for cute baby-faced Basil?

Stuffing chat shows and 'question time' panels with shed loads of New Labour stooges has as much to do with TV wannabes trying to get in on the political act and their faces on the telly.

A distinction too should be made between the corporation's general programming, with its management and trust overseers, and BBC News. In the BBC world, never the twain shall meet.

Much more insidious is the way Downing Street spinners have managed to capture BBC broadcast and on-line News to set the political agenda and capture the narrative. And the way Toenails Robinson has been allowed to bang on about bloody Ashcroft day after day after day.

The difference between BBC News and ITV News is stark and shocking with ITV's political editor, Tom Bradby, refreshingly realistic. Channel 4 News? The biased heart's in the right place. Bless.

The days of Auntie knows best are numbered. The BBC needs to be put back in its box. The public is forced to fund a state broadcaster which kowtows to the government. A commercial corporation with fingers in so many pies. All a far cry from the original public service broadcasting remit.

Faced with a fiery Sun, the usual BBC spokesperson was trotted out: "The notion that the BBC is biased is palpably not true. Our news coverage scrutinises all parties with rigour and impartiality."

But one person's 'bias' is another person's 'balance' and depends on which side of the political fence you sit on. And 'news scrutiny' for 'impartiality' is pretty meaningless if a story has been pushed to the top of the news bulletin to suit a political purpose in the first place.

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Beeb Boss Gets Tucker Treatment

Beeb boss Thompson's Paxo stuffing over 'cuts' was hilarious. Now a bright spark with a wicked sense of humour has cut in clips from The Thick Of It. Like watching a lion rape a sheep.

Even the camera crew burst into fits of giggles as Newsnight's Paxo tore apart the director general over the BBC's sham of an axe. Well and truly Paxoed trying to throw a few digital scraps to the Tories to keep them sweet.

Thanks to CowbagTV for giving Thompson the Tucker treatment.

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Sugar-Coated Apprentice Gimmick Hard To Swallow

Disillusioned youngsters have been left in the lurch after a government apprenticeship 'gimmick' fronted by BBC personality, Alan Sugar, failed to lure them on to meaningless college courses to stave off a life on the dole. Even a spoonful of Sugar couldn't help the Brown medicine go down.

The cunning plan has come unstuck with millions squandered on a gimmick fronted by a TV celebrity rewarded with a peerage for services to celebrity.

A government website set up to boost apprenticeships has been branded an "expensive gimmicky failure" by the Tories after filling a paltry 1,185 vacancies out of the 18,000 advertised, with only one apprentice hired for every 25 vacancies since the website began in January.

Quick to defend the discredited scheme, the Department for Skills resorted to the old trick of comparing like with unlike, pointing out that 225,000 people started an apprenticeship last year compared to 65,000 in 1996-97.

But to compare apprenticeships from the late Nineties to the current flammed up mishmash is highly misleading. As usual, scratch the surface and the spin and hype is not too hard to find. It's all in a name.

Most of the much vaunted 225,000 "apprenticeships" are in fact just college 'programme-led' apprenticeship courses. Way back in 1996/7 similar state-funded "youth training programmes" were not even called apprenticeships.

Then move the goalposts and lower the bar so that lesser qualifications now count as "apprenticeships", as fed-up industry leaders have been quick to point out.

And to cap it all, million of pounds has been squandered on the process rather than the outcome, with a whopping £2.85m a year spent on advertising and promoting the scheme, to little avail.

Sugar, the face of BBC's The Apprentice and now government enterprise tsar, was controversially picked by celebrity obsessed Brown as the face of the pre-election campaign to pluck 400,000 apprentices out of thin air by 2020.

But launching the National Apprenticeship Matching Service earlier this year with a television advertising campaign failed to improve the rate at which young people are placed in work training.

Sugar's appointment and peerage has already got up the nose of the Tories after the BBC in its wisdom reckoned there was no conflict of interest with his BBC TV work and a plumb government job coming as it does so close to a general election. And on top of that Siralan is reported to be threatening to sue Mail sketch writer, Quentin Letts, for having the gall to call him names.

But Brown spin is in a pickle after announcing it would fund an extra 35,000 apprenticeships to tackle the recession depression, at a cost of £140m.

Goodness knows something needs to be done to attract and keep young people into training with meaningful apprenticeships with the promise of a real job at the end of the day.

But a hyped up dodgy gimmick full of style and no substance fronted by a TV personality, who was ennobled as a reward, pulling the wool over young eyes, is no way to go about it.

Apprenticeships are the key to helping young victims of Brown self-inflicted recession. But celebrity gimmicks and silly colleges courses only lull youngsters into a false sense of security. The future lies in directly funded apprenticeship 'places' at the workplace with real support to firms running the schemes.

But faced with a deliberately decimated manufacturing industry and a government still pinning its hopes on a financial and media industry now on its last legs, there's no wonder New Labour is forced to play silly buggers with the hopes and the future of the country's young people.

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Put The BBC Out Of Our Misery

Auntie is on her last legs. The BBC is dying. The only way to save the BBC is to strip it of its licence fee, according to Labour's minister of common sense, Frank Field. Fine words but Auntie is actually alive and well and kicking back all the way to the bank, Frank.

The race is on to save public service broadcasting for the nation, according to Field, who offers a breath of fresh air and an elegant solution. But Field has a fatal flaw.

Public service broadcasting isn't dying. But the way it's funded is. And it's not just dear old Auntie. State-owned broadcaster Channel 4 lives on the back of a fat taxpayer's subsidy with a dodgy public service remit tucked way behind Big Brother.

Field's plan is to use the licence fee, albeit greatly reduced, as a source of funding to dole out to a whole range of public service broadcasters. Funding would be channelled through a Broadcasting Commission handing out cash to programme makers as long as they stick within a public service remit.

But a licence fee stealth tax is still a stealth tax no matter how it is dressed up.

And there's no need. Simply levy a tax on all devices capable of receiving a TV signal. Another tax? In fact that happens already. It's called VAT. Use that VAT revenue alone and Bob's your broadcaster.

What is clear is that the days of the dear old BBC as a bastion of public service broadcasting are long gone.

Today it's all about chasing ratings, making fat profits from spin offs, cutting cushy deals and making a £118m profit on a £916m turnover through the BBC Worldwide commercial arm.

The current row over whether to top slice some of the whopping £3.6 billion a year licence fee and hand it over to commercial operators is a red herring and simply puts off the day of reckoning.

Here's an organisation with a guaranteed income on the back of taxpayers hard-earned cash and obscene profits from its commercial enterprises.

But the current argie bargie over the future of the BBC and the future of public service broadcasting in the digital download age is all rather academic.

Downing Street needs to keep the BBC sweet in the run up to the general election - or rather keep BBC broadcast and on-line news on-side and on-message until that election is finally called and strict broadcasting laws over political balance kick in.

But a start could be made with alerting broadcasters how much would be in the kitty if the VAT on TV receivers was to be ring-fenced for public service broadcasting. A true Value Added Tax less painful than the monstrous licence fee.

The only issue is whether Strictly Come Dancing performs a vital public service for celebrities and whether Channel 4's 'Christmas' message from Iran's President Ahmadinejad really can be classed as UK public service broadcasting.

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Who Killed Dr David Kelly?

The official 'suicide' of government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly, has been called into question by a group of doctors hoping to overturn the controversial verdict and a new documentary which sheds fresh light on the mysterious death of the scientist whose body was found in Oxfordshire woods six years ago this week.

Kelly's death came just days after he was at the centre of a government witch-hunt for the source of embarrassing leaks over now discredited Iraq weapons of mass destruction.

The Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death and the controversial suicide ruling led The Independent to clear its entire front page with one giant word - WHITEWASH.

The death in 2003 prompted reporters to ask prime minister Blair the chilling question whether he had "blood on his hands" as Kelly's apparent suicide came days after he was grilled in the commons and exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the "sexed up dossier" on Iraq’s alleged WMDs.

Now the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death are set to return to haunt the government in a two pronged attack by leading doctors who question the suicide verdict and US television investigators who claim Kelly was writing a book exposing the murky world of anthrax and “suicides” of five government germ warfare scientists from around the world.

Many have long argued Kelly's death wasn't suicide with the more likely explanation that he was murdered by enemies in the course of his work as a weapons inspector.

The Orange Party doesn't believe government agents were part of a dastardly assassination plot. More likely part of a bungled botched-up attempt to cover-up his death as an apparent suicide.

LibDem MP Norman Baker in a forensic investigation for his book The Strange Death Of David Kelly reaches a similar startling conclusion putting him at odds with Blair's spin doctor Campbell, and his part in the 'dodgy dossier' that was used to justify the Iraq invasion.

Claims that this had been "sexed up" sent Campbell into a spin, waging a fierce campaign against the BBC, eventually leading to Kelly's death.

The 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, by investigative journalist Bob Coen already aired on Canadian public television, claims Kelly's death may have been linked to the secret world of germ warfare research and adds to the calls for a full and proper inquest into Kelly's death.

The film exposes Kelly's links with Dr Walter Basson and his notorious work for the South African apartheid regime using chemical and biological weapons research to ethnically cleanse the black population.

The assassination scenario is strengthened by revelations that a team of 13 specialist doctors who worked closely with Baker have compiled a detailed medical dossier that rejects the Hutton conclusion that Kelly died from loss of blood. Those revelations in the Mail on Sunday also claim they think it is highly likely he was assassinated.

Reports in today's Sunday Express reveal Kelly, an expert in biological warfare and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, was writing a highly damaging book before his mysterious death.

That was due to reveal the claim that he'd warned Blair that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction as well as lifting the lid on the scandal of his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Following his death, Kelly's computers were seized and many involved in probing the mystery of Kelly's death, including Baker, have also found material on their computer had disappeared.

Critics have long regarded the Hutton report as a 'whitewash'. Blair remains acutely sensitive to the accusation that he has 'blood on his hands' over the scientist's death.

The only official verdict came from the Blair commissioned Hutton Inquiry, which concluded that Kelly died from loss of blood after cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

In a highly unusual move, a coroner's inquest into the scientist's death was suspended before it could begin by order of the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, which is now set to be challenged by the doctors.

The Hutton Inquiry included the chilling testimony from a former British ambassador who quotes Kelly as having said, “I will probably be found dead in the woods” if Iraq were invaded.

Anthrax War which will be screened privately in London on July 17, the sixth anniversary of Kelly’s death, includes this extract which centres on the biological weapons expert following an anthrax scare after 9/11.

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Spoonful Of Brown Sugar Helps Medicine Go Down

Knighted businessman turned TV presenter turned Brown goat, Sir Alan Sugar, has got the go-ahead to continue his bully boy tactics on Brown's BBC while waiting in line as one of Brown's peers brought in to advise on a central plank of government policy. The state broadcaster reckons there's no conflict of interest.

Slipped in while everyone was busy looking at what MPs had bunged on expenses, Surallan Sugar has been given the BBC's blessing and backing and will continue to front Auntie's The Apprentice, despite concerns over his new role working for the government as an "enterprise tsar".

According to the BBC, Sir Alan would not be making or endorsing government policy and the corporation also stressed that Sir Alan would hold off from all public activity in his governmental role while promoting and presenting the TV series.

Which begs the question what will he be doing for his peerage?

Surrallan came under fire from Tories after he accepted a Brown nose job as Enterprise Tzar as well as a cushy peerage.

The Tories argued the state broadcaster's stars should be politically neutral. But the Beeb has decided in its infinite wisdom his new role as a government adviser would "not compromise the BBC's impartiality".

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt had called Sir Alan's role "totally incompatible" with BBC rules and described today's statement "an outrageous piece of media management by the BBC".

"Slipping this letter out when the media is focused on MPs' expenses is simply staggering," he said adding that the DGs justification for retaining Sir Alan were "riddled with inconsistencies".

A peerage is expected to follow Sir Alan's appointment as Enterprise Champion, announced as part of bullet-ridden Brown's botched cabinet reshuffle earlier this month.

What is it with starry-eyed Brown's obsession with the cult of personality? Has he got so little of his own that he's got to bribe people with peerages in the hope some rubs off on him?

A Private Eye reader asks if anyone spotted the resemblance between a tragically departed comedian and occasional magician and the late great Tommy Cooper?

The sixth series of The Apprentice is expected to be broadcast around general election time in spring 2010, unless the struggling Supreme Leader is booted out beforehand. Just like that.

Top Picture: Private Eye front cover

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Mr Brown Goes Off To 'Terror' Town

When the going gets tough, the tough get going and in the case of Battered Brown, to the safe and heavily fortified sanctuary of Camp Bastian, with some useless rhetoric playing the "terror" card and playing politics with troops set to be sent to their death in Afghanistan's bloody, hopeless and unwinnable war.

Maybe there are just not enough problems to wrestle with back home. After all, the country is delighted by his Darling's budget, his MPs' expenses solution to pay them more for turning up for work has gone down a treat and that pesky Downing Street e-petition calling for his resignation isn't really democracy at work, now is it?

In a classic case of positive spin slipped into a report, which smacks of stealth reporting, the BBC's Nick Robinson, travelling with the PM, said: "He [Brown] believes that the big increase in troop numbers - particularly Americans - should be accompanied by the same strategy that succeeded in Iraq".

So what hard evidence is there that the big troop numbers was a "success" in Iraq and that a similar surge will succeed in Afghanistan? How is success measured - by the numbers of dead?

Once again Brown seems to have photocopied a White House memo which apparently would do just fine for the folks back home. But this isn't the US Army Mr Brown. Just copying Obama doesn't make it right.

 Is this a softening up signal for yet more of our troops to be sent to war as part of his pre-election politics?



When things are not looking good, the Supreme Leader has a habit of popping up in Afghanistan's Helmand province to have his photograph taken with our boys and girls. Nice pictures shame about the policy.

After talks with Afghan president, Corrupt Karzai in Kabul, the Dad's Army prime minister announced "a new strategy" for dealing with terrorism across the tribal border areas with Pakistan, warning of a "chain of terror" starting "in the mountainous region and ending in capital cities worldwide."

Corporal Brown said Britain could not "sit by" and do nothing: “Security in these mountainous border areas, which may seem distant and remote from home, will mean more security in Britain ”

Really? What exactly was the 'old' strategy? The recent Easter 'bomb plot' to blow up Britain has been exposed as bunkum. Wouldn't sending more troops to the new Vietnam just make things a tad worse? And you and who's army Mr Brown? The army serves the monarch. Parliament should decide major troop deployments, not an arrogant tin-pot dictator.

Obama's announcement to send 17,000 more US troops for the Afghanistan war as part of a Spring surge, raised a few eye-brows among US liberals and raised the vexed question here of how many more UK troops will be sent to their deaths.

War mongering Bush and his poodle Blair, will live with their legacy but would Brown come over all lovey-dovey for Obama's war? The answer was out of the Iraq frying pan and into the Afghanistan fire - with nearly a thousand troops to be sent for the Afghan August elections on top of the 8000 already there.

The reticence over troops numbers revealed a rift between the gung-ho MoD and its band of ministers and the foreign office and ministers who take a more sanguine approach, as Brown struggles to toe the Washington line.

The Orange Party makes no secret of it distaste for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way the Blair government sucked up to the Bush regime, now followed by Obama's Brown poodle.

Sickened Labour stalwart, Alice Mahon who recently quit the party in disgust summed up the mood of many: "Brown has just announced plans to send another 900 troops to Afghanistan, billions to be spent on an unwinnable war and pensioners dare not turn on their heating because this Government will not tackle the energy fat cats.''

It seems McCavity Brown has done his usual trick of running away from problems on the domestic front. Meanwhile the mood at Westminster and in the country over the fantasy budget is turning decidedly cold and chilly. It's still unclear just how he's going to wriggle out of his much derided MPs' expenses non-solution. The Downing Street e-petition, calling for his resignation, is growing by the day.

UPDATE 5pm: Brown's jolly jaunt to Pakistan was dealt a blow after he was snubbed by the president and had to make do with the more junior prime minister. Stop laughing at the back.

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Blatant BBC Bowen Bias Blasted

Blatant anti-Israel bias of BBC's middle east editor, Jeremy Bowen, has been blasted in a report by the corporation which has blown away any claims of accuracy and impartiality over its Gaza conflict reporting.  

The BBC Trust has ruled coverage of Israel in an article on the BBC's web site and a radio broadcast by Bowen was partially inaccurate and that aspects of the internet article lacked impartiality. 

In reporting about Israel, the BBC's internal complaints panel found Bowen has breached the corporation's guideline on accuracy and impartiality.

Confirming what many already knew, the Zionist Federation said that the findings show the BBC has an anti-Israel "bias" and that the position of Bowen, is "untenable". Claims rejected by the corporation. 

The Trust was responding to complaints filed separately by a London-based barrister and by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Taking up the claim, journalist and author Chas Newkey-Burden, said: "It is extraordinary to think that the BBC entrusts a man such as Bowen with coverage of such a monumentally important issue. As we saw during Operation Cast Lead, anti-Israel distortion contributes to the atmosphere of hate that leads to violence against Jews on the streets of Britain."

Time and time again the BBC distorted and twisted its coverage of the Middle East and Gaza conflict, hghlighted by the Orange Party and others at the time fed up with a pseudo-liberal bias which verged on the anti-Semitic. 

But the BBC continued its bombardment of the UK media with Iran-backed Hamas propaganda, as Israel tried to strike back in vain to explain their side of the conflict.

The Orange Party became heartily sick of the blatant pro-Hamas bias from the BBC, most notably the highly skewed reports from middle east editor Bowen and his band of Iran-backed Hamas apologist thugs disguised as "journalists".

The Zionist Federation of the UK said that Bowen's position as Middle East editor of a public service broadcaster "is untenable in the light of the ESC's findings."

The report vindicates what many thought at the time of Bowen's reports. Viewers and listeners had to put up with his relentless attacks on Israel, delivered with an almost religious fanatical zeal, hardly able to contain his hatred and contempt coupled with fawning yawning support for the Palestinian cause.

Not quite the style one would expect from an objective BBC reporter.

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Not Fit To Run A Northern Wreck Whelk Stall

Northern Wreck has lived up to its nickname with the spending watchdog confirming what many knew all along, the hapless bunch at the treasury weren't fit to run a whelk stall, let alone oversee the taxpayers' takeover of the Rock. 

A damning National Audit Office report has exposed the monstrous cock-up, as ministers hid the scale of the bill which taxpayers were being asked to pick up. 

Even the BBC's business editor and treasury moonlighter, Robert Peston, reckons the report was embarrassing for Brown and Darling as "a spotlight has been shone again on their misjudgements". Though adding the caveat: "none of which will surprise you". As if that miraculously makes it all right. 

"We've known for many months that they were wrong on these very big issues," he added, cryptically.

The Orange Party is mystified as to the identify of the royal "we" to which Pesto refers. 

With an election round the corner, the Tories are spitting blood over biased BBC coverage, with Cameron's warning dirty tricks would be used against them by New Labour. It seems they are already happening.

On the day the public deficit soared by £9 billion and Cameron made a key-note economic  speech, the BBC evening news bulletin was blocked out with three "news items" padded out with time-filling back reporting, before Cameron even got a mention. And only then as a fag end, dropped into a long-winded report on the axing of the Motor Show. 

Today the BBC is reluctantly reporting the Rock, allowing Brown to take centre stage, droning on about "doing the right thing" in what was a gross error of judgement. 

The NAO found the treasury still allowed Northern Crock to lend £800 million in risky 125% mortgages for six months after it was propped up with taxpayers' cash.

And the treasury was aware of "potential shortcomings" in how to deal with failing banks as far back as 2004, when Brown was chancellor. Even the Telegraph was sounding a warning back in 2007 with this ominous profile of then CEO Adam Applegarth. 

That begs the question: Why didn't the treasury demand an immediate stop to the reckless lending that got the bank into trouble in the first place?

True to form Brown's deputy Mandelson has been spinning away and reckons "saving Northern Rock, stabilising it, turning round the business as we are doing now is the right decision." 

But the NAO slammed the treasury for not thoroughly checking out the bank's finances before nationalising the bank. And the report reveals greater scrutiny would have uncovered a much higher level of mortgage arrears than the Rock had previously been admitting.

Months of dithering around led to "major due diligence failures at the Treasury both before and after nationalisation" which has resulted in the bill for taxpayers being even bigger than was previously thought.

By the end of December 2008, 33% of all Rock mortgages had fallen into negative equity and with arrears mounting up, the treasury had to give it a further £3 billion financial cushion in July 2008.

Despite all the taxpayers cash, Northern Rock recently announced a loss of £1.4 billion for 2008. LibDem economic oracle, Vince Cable, branded it a disgrace: 

"With billions of pounds of public money at stake, the least taxpayers should expect is that basic due diligence of the company's loan book should have taken place before nationalisation."

Often what Cable says gets lost in translation. A monstrous cock-up at the taxpayers expense is equally close to the truth. 

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