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The BBC says the English don’t want devolution

July 4, 2014 wonkotsane BBC Bias, England, General, Regions 25 comments

The BBC is asking “Why don’t the English want more power” in response to the Scottish independence referendum in defiance of the evidence that actually they do.

In an article promoting the balkanisation of England into artificial regions, they make the ridiculous claim that 19% of English people support regional government and only 15% support an English Parliament. Toque has been keeping tabs on English Parliament opinion polls since 2002 and not once has support for an English Parliament dipped that low – in fact, in a 2007 ICM opinion poll for the Telegraph 15% supported English independence. Are we to believe that just because people have stopped asking the question in the last year and a half, the support for an English Parliament that has consistently been between more than 50% and almost 70% depending on the question asked has suddenly nosedived to just 15%? That’s rubbish and the BBC know it which is why they’ve left it unsourced.

You can gauge the support for an English Parliament quite easily by just asking any random sample of people – your family, friends or work colleagues – whether they think England should have its own government like Scotland does and unless your circle of friends are ill-informed hardcore British nationalists, most of them will say yes.

The case for an English Parliament does need to be made again because there hasn’t been an effective campaign highlighting the issues and the solution since the Campaign for an English Parliament collapsed into a mere parody of itself a few years ago but support for an English Parliament is still high. Support for regionalisation is still low but increasing in Yorkshire and Cornwall where Labour and Mebyon Kernow respectively are peddling their divisive, anti-English politics.

The message for Yorkshire and Cornwall – and elsewhere in England for that matter – is that an English Parliament and regional devolution aren’t mutually exclusive. There is no reason why Cornwall or Yorkshire shouldn’t have an assembly of its own if that’s what the majority of people there want but that power has to be devolved democratically from an English government, not given away by the British government to frustrate the wishes of the English people. A Cornish Assembly or Yorkshire Assembly could never compete with the Scottish Parliament or Welsh or Northern Irish Assemblies let alone a G20 country but England in its own right would be a G8 country, one of the largest economies in the world. The British government won’t devolve meaningful power to a region and that’s one of the reasons why the regional assemblies were rejected by the electorate but a devolved English Parliament with greater autonomy for county or regional government under that English government could deliver local decision making where it’s more efficient or a national approach isn’t appropriate without breaking up England.

The message for the BBC is that we do want our country back and you can quote all the dodgy, unsourced statistics you want and give as many column inches to the regionalists as you like but you won’t change the facts. The majority of people in England want an English Parliament.

Defending England on the BBC

February 1, 2013 wonkotsane Anglophobia 6 comments

We’ve had a double-dose of England-bashing in the last couple of days with former Scottish rugby coach Jim Telfer declaring the English team arrogant and French journalist Jean Jaffe (probably spelt that wrong) said that the English are arrogant and think they’re the centre of the world.

BBC Radio Five Live phoned me up this morning asking if I would go on their morning show and “defend the English”. They bumped me even though I’d told them I was delaying going out to do the interview and then didn’t bother calling me back which was a bit rude! But BBC Radio WM called me at lunchtime and asked me if I’d do an interview on their show instead which I did.

The interview was so well received the producer called me afterwards to tell me that they’d had so much positive feedback, including one person who sent in a text saying that I should be in charge of the country because I talk a lot of common sense.

This is what the French journalist said:

I don’t think the French are very taken you know with Beckham’s brands. You know, I’ve never seen many ads with Beckham in France in magazines or on the Paris Metro. Apparently his wife was a bit snooty and she didn’t want to come to Paris, it was not good enough for her career. Most of the English people you think you are the centre of the world and that we have to care about what happens in your country and we have to love you English and I don’t say the British, the English.

I think I defended the English and represented the normal, tolerant side of English nationalism quite well. You can hear the interview on YouTube …

The BBC has made Bristol Welsh

February 25, 2012 wonkotsane BBC, Wales 5 comments

Last year the BBC moved filming of Casualty from Bristol, where the programme is based, to Cardiff.

Since moving to Wales, most of the extras are now Welsh – presumably recruited from the local population. We now have the ludicrous situation where, if you watch Casualty, you would be led to believe that most people in Bristol are Welsh.

When the filming of Dr Who was moved to the same studios in Cardiff, the Doctor suddenly found himself talking to an awful lot of Welsh people and spending a lot of time in Welsh towns and villages. No doubt the new series of Upstairs Downstairs that is being filmed there will be based in a London full of Welsh people as well.

The BBC’s desperation to spread the British brand through the “nations and regions” has ruined one of its flagship programmes and frankly, I couldn’t care less if I never see Casualty again.

Jeremy Clarkson apologises to unions for poking fun at BBC

December 1, 2011 wonkotsane BBC, Bullshit, Come the revolution, Unions One comment

Jeremy Clarkson has caved in and apologised for making a joke about the anti-government strikes.

Jeremy Clarkson During an interview on the One Show, Clarkson was asked what he thought of the strikes to which he replied that they were brilliant, he could dart around London and there was no traffic and it reminded him of the 1970s. He then went on to joke that because it’s the BBC there has to be balance and said that he would take them outside and shoot them and would have them executed in front of their families.

The joke was actually at the expense of the BBC and its charter obligation to remain balanced and impartial which sometimes makes for bizarre statements from newsreaders and chat show hosts. The unions, however, were consumed with mock outrage with UNISON actually going as far as taking legal advice as to whether he could be reported to the police for incitement to hatred!

Clarkson has now apologised to the unions for making a joke at the BBC’s expense and UNISON have magnanimously accepted his apology and won’t be trying to get him arrested for being funny.

Just in case anyone from any of the unions is wondering, if I was in charge I wouldn’t have you executed, I’d take your leaders and agitators and put them in a hard labour camp until they stopped being such bloody stupid pricks. When people like Dave Prentis (UNISON), Mark Serwotka (PCS) and Bob Crow (RMT) hand over some of their huge salaries (they all have pay and perks of £100k+) to set an example they might deserve some respect but until they do, they deserve all the contempt that’s directed at them, the useless champagne socialist troublemakers.

Apparently the BBC received a large number of complaints which they believe have been made as part of an orchestrated campaign (no doubt organised by the unions). I have made my own complaint tonight at the BBC’s decision to apologise to the unions when they were obviously taking the piss for publicity:

I am disgusted that the BBC and Jeremy Clarkson have been forced to apologise to the unions over Clarkson’s joke on the One Show. No offence was intended and none was caused – the unions were expressing mock outrage at a joke that was made at the expense of the BBC, not the unions and not strikers. The BBC should have told the unions to grow up and do something useful, not waste everyone’s time pretending to be offended by a joke aimed at the BBC for publicity.

£2.2m taxpayer funding for BBC Arabic

June 22, 2011 wonkotsane BBC, WTF? No comments

The British government have announced a £2.2m funding package for the BBC Arabic service after the BBC announced it was closing it as part of its cost-cutting measures.

Apparently the “valuable work” it does in the Middle East is more valuable than, say, the cost of 100 life saving courses of the breast cancer treatment, Herceptin, for English women who are left to die because the “National” Institute for Clinical Excellence thinks £20k is too high a price to save an English life. Or providing free university tuition for a year for 222 English students who have been priced out of university education by the British government’s English university tuition fees.

BBC revisionism on kids TV

May 21, 2011 wonkotsane BBC 3 comments

Those of you familiar with the Horrible Histories books, you may be pleased to know that the BBC broadcasts a series of the same name and along the same lines as the books on the CBBC channel.

The Horrible Histories books teach children about history using cartoony pictures and by concentrating on the “horrible” history such as beheadings, torture and gross things like crushed rat and honey face cream.

The good thing about Horrible Histories is that it’s not just entertaining for kids, it’s entertaining for adults as well. The bad thing about Horrible Histories is that it’s produced by the BBC and therefore revisionist.

Take the episode I watched with the kids this afternoon for example. The programme made multiple references to “Anglo-Saxon Britain”. There was no such thing as “Britain” when the Anglo-Saxons invaded in the 5th century, 1,300 years before the Act of Union. The Anglo-Saxons invaded and conquered the myriad kingships that emerged in Sub-Roman Britannia (that’s Britannia, not “Britain”) and the resulting kingdom that followed the eventual unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was called Engla Lond (Land of the Angles) which of course morphed over the centuries into today’s spelling of “England”. There was no kingdom, fiefdom, principality, country, nation or any other form of state known as “Britain” or “British” in the 5th century, nor was there a people that called themselves “British”.

In the same programme, they showed a Georgian sailor using the 1801 version of the union flag, incorporating the St Patrick’s saltire. While that flag was used towards the latter end of the Georgian era, the majority of the Georgian era used the pre-1801 flag. The sailor was wearing a tricorn hat which fell out of use after 1800 so the flag he would have used would have been the pre-1801 version. It’s a small thing but the idea is to educate people, not mislead them.

The BBC is fond of calling claiming England for “Britain”. A few years ago I successfully got the BBC to revise several of the country profiles on their website which claimed they had been settled by the British when they were part of the English Empire before the first Scottish bailout (aka the Act of Union) in 1707. But then what can you expect from an organisation that doesn’t even recognise the English nation?

Complaint to the BBC about “far right” label

April 15, 2011 wonkotsane BBC Bias 10 comments

I was browsing the BBC News website this morning and started to read an article on the “far right” English Defence League (EDL).

The BBC has an obsession with the term “far right”, applying it to any organisation that speaks out against unfettered immigration and criticises Islam or multiculturalism. In general, I think the BBC is a good thing but their institutional left wing bias really gets on my tits so I’ve sent this complaint:

It is increasingly common to find protest groups and political parties referred to by the BBC as “far right” when they hold views that are not mainstream.

The term “far right” is not a synonym for “different” or “extreme”, it refers to an extreme right wing ideology. In Europe, the right wing of politics is conservative, liberal, generally christian and monarchist. Racism is considered to be a trait of far right politics (although the same is equally true of the far left) but by no means the sole or overriding defining criteria.

The BBC labels the BNP as “far right” yet the BNP is a nationalist socialist party advocating nationalisation of industry and illiberal curtailment of freedom of the press. Yes, they are racist but they are not conservative or liberal. They have some traits of the far right but their core ideology is a national socialism which is very much a left wing ideology. In reality, the BNP are a far left party.

The BBC also – bizarrely – refers to the EDL as “far right”. The EDL is not a political party, nor is it a political organisation. It has no political ideology at all and campaigns only against Islamification and unfettered immigration. Whilst the cause of, and answer to, Islamification and unfettered immigration is politicial, so is the cause and answer to high fuel prices and food prices yet the motoring organisations and charities campaigning against those aren’t given left/right wing political labels.

Finally, why do you not use the term “far left” in the same way that you do far right? I appreciate that the BBC is awash with Guardian-reading communists but there are prominent organisations like the laughably named fascist group “Unite Against Fascism” who are quite evidently far left extremists bent on violence and the suppression of freedom of speech and suppression and advocates of the sort of far left society that George Orwell warned about.

So my complaint is three-fold really and there are therefore three questions that I want an answer to:

1. Why do you mis-label left wing organisations such as the BNP as “far right” when they meet only peripheral right wing criteria that can be equally applied to the far left and their core ideology is left wing?
2. Why do you label apolitical organisations like the EDL as “far right” when they have no political ideology?
3. Why don’t you label left wing extremists like UAF as “far left” in the way you label what you insist on calling right wing groups as “far right”?

Burns Night – so fucking what?

January 26, 2011 wonkotsane BBC, Scotland 5 comments

It was Burns Night last night in Scotland. I wouldn’t have known because it’s not on my calendars – and nor would I want to know – if it wasn’t for the bloody BBC who didn’t shut up about it all bloody day.

Robbie Burns was a shit, illiterate Scottish poet who wrote shit poems in a Scottish accent. He’s been elevated to national hero status in Scotland as the only person in their history who has ever been marginally famous for something cultural but he’s still a shit poet and completely irrelevant outside Scotland.

BBC Breakfast were gushing over Burns and Scotland in general (by way of variety) yesterday and I ended up changing the channel. Later in the day, listening to BBC Radio Shropshire, they were falling over themselves to appear more “Scottish” than each so I changed the channel. Yesterday evening the news came on and guess what? Robbie fucking Burns again.

What relevance does Robbie Burns have to English people? What relevance does he have to Shropshire – it’s over 200 miles away from the Scottish border and in a different country. I could understand if our local BBC radio station were bigging up a Welsh “hero” because Shropshire is on the Welsh border but not Scottish.

And to top it all off, the BBC are creaming themselves over Andy “Anyone but England” Murray this morning. It’s a conspiracy to piss me off, I’m sure of it.

Bloggers4UKIP: Climate change religion is falling apart

February 6, 2010 wonkotsane BBC, Climate Change 3 comments

A Populus poll conducted for BBC News has shown a marked increase in the number of people who don’t believe in the global warming climate change CO₂ pollution religion.

Just 3 months ago 41% of people believed in man-made climate change, now only 26% believe. 38% believe that climate change is not proven to be man-made when 3 months ago only 32% held that opinion. Three months ago 8% of people thought man-made climate change was environmentalist propaganda, that figure has now risen to 10%.

Worryingly, the number of people who think climate change is not happening at all has gone up from 15% three months ago to 25%. I say worryingly because the climate is changing, just as it has for billions of years!

Overall, this is excellent news. The wheels are falling off the global warming wagon as more and more people see through the lies, dishonesty and propaganda.

CEP: “There’s cruelty in Englishness” says Scottish BBC presenter

January 24, 2010 wonkotsane BBC, Racism 2 comments

"There's cruelty in Englishness" - Andrew Marr, Racist Andrew Marr, the Scottish presenter of the imaginatively titled Andrew Marr Show, used his BBC1 show today to racially abuse the English.

Whilst interviewing the actor, Mark Rylance, about his new lefty liberal hand wringing play about Englishness, Marr interrupted to say “There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too”.

The following a transcript of the relevant part of the interview:

Rylance: I think it’s about the question of what is indigenous Englishness. I think it’s clearer to look at the Welsh and the Irish and the Scottish and grasp … maybe you can’t put words to it but there’s certain kind of things that are very much part of their nation’s character and it’s harder perhaps because of our imperial past and the nature of the history of England to be pleased or proud about being English. We used to have at the Globe a lot of difficulty trying to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday and St Georges Day without the National Front coming in you know?

Marr: Yeah

Rylance: And I remember Ken Livingstone and I think still Boris is trying to figure out how …

Marr: How you celebrate because part of this is very sort of dark and dysfunctional too isn’t it? And I mean just thinking about that ghastly story from Doncaster this week, I mean there is a certain amount of wildness and madness and cruelty. There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too. It’s not just an easy thing to celebrate.

Can you imagine the outcry if a BBC presenter had said there’s cruelty in Scottishness or Polishness or Chineseness?

Why on earth should we allow ourselves to be racially abused by a second-rate Scottish TV presenter for the British Broadcasting Corporation? Well I for one won’t be – the following complaint has been made to the BBC regarding Andrew Marr’s racism and demanding a public apology.

On today’s Andrew Marr Show, Andrew Marr (a Scot) racially abused the English with the following comment:

“There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too. It’s not just an easy thing to celebrate.”

Had any other nationality been described as cruel there would have been an instant apology on-air yet because it is the English he has made a racist comment about, no apology was made.

I demand an unreserved apology on-air from Andrew Marr on next week’s show for his racial slur.

The programme can be watched again on the BBC iPlayer here. Fast forward to about 24 minutes.

Biased BBC: no mention of climate change fraud

November 24, 2009 wonkotsane BBC Bias, Bullshit, Climate Change, Propaganda One comment

Don’t you just love the BBC? Balanced reporting? Na, that’s something for amateurs.

The BBC News website is reporting that “three UK groups studying climate change” have pronounced that “the science underpinning climate change is more alarming than ever” and are warning that carbon emissions must be cut.

These three groups say that persistent droughts in Australia – you know, that huge continent in the southern hemisphere that’s been mostly desert for the last few thousand years – are because of man-made climate change. They also warn that the Maldives – the island chain that is asking for billions of pounds in international aid to combat climate change because it is sinking – could soon disappear under the sea because of man-made global warming. They go on to say that evidence for “dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change” is growing.

So who are these three groups? Well, there’s the Met Office – a British government department with a huge climate change budget that was part of the IPPC report on climate change that has been proven to have been based on fraudulent data and predictions. Then there’s the Royal Society, also with a huge climate change budget, that has been criticised for bullying and unscientific behaviour in closing down debate that doesn’t support climate change theory. The third is the Natural Environment Research Council, a British government funded quango with a huge climate change budget and is responsible for advising the British government on crackpot climate change policies.

So no vested interests there then.

The science if fraudulent and the only thing that is growing more alarming is the way the lies and fraudulent data and predictions these “scientists” are paid to make up are actually still being taken seriously, even when their own words have exposed them.

Balanced reporting from the BBC? Don’t make me laugh. There’s not one single mention of the fact that the “science” these British government funded global warming propaganda merchants are quoting is a fraud.

What is the point of BBC HD?

November 2, 2009 wonkotsane BBC 2 comments

Can anyone tell me what the point of the BBC HD channel is? Really, what is the point of broadcasting 8½ hours of crap in HD?

BBC1’s schedule today includes MI High, Newsround, Weakest Link, the One Show, Eastenders, Panorama, Life, the Graham Norton Show and Apprentice USA. During the same period, BBC HD has LazyTown Extra, My Almost Famous Family, Doctors, Flog It, Panorama, Gardeners World, Life and Scallywagga. Only two programmes from the BBC1 schedule and not one from BBC2. What a waste.

Enormous amounts of money have been spent on HDTV and the BBC is wasting an opportunity – not to mention our money – because they’re showing crap on the BBC HD channel. I’ve had Sky HD for a few months now and I haven’t watched the BBC HD channel once. There really is nothing worth watching on the BBC HD channel – especially for the 15½ hours a day when it just shows previews. Why not show an upscaled version of whatever is showing on BBC1 or BBC2 during the day instead of previews?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/BBC_HD.svg/200px-BBC_HD.svg.png

Nick Griffin on Question Time and UAF thugs strike again

October 22, 2009 wonkotsane BBC, Free Speech, Police State 3 comments

Nick Griffin will be on Question Time tonight in front of what is probably going to be the bigget TV audience Question Time has ever had.

And the reason why Griffin is going to be getting this huge amount of publicity? Because the anti-democratic, anti-BNP idiots have made such a fuss about him appearing on the BBC that almost every news channel and major newspaper at home and abroad has been talking about nothing but the BNP and Question Time.

The Tories have obvously got jealous of the publicity that Liebour is getting from the fascist left wing thugs at Unite Against Fascism and set up their own anti-BNP protest group called “Nothing British”. I wonder if Camoron will leave UAF and join “Nothing British” instead.

Protesters have been causing trouble outside the BBC studio all day and 25-30 people managed to break in and had to be removed by the police. Can you guess who the protesters are? Yep, Unite Against Fascism. Again. The lawless far left extremist thugs supported by the Liebour Party, David Camoron and senior civil servants and police officers all over the country.

The BNP are a nasty, racist party but they are a legal political party (despite what that idiot Peter Hain says) with two MEPs and have a right to impartial representation on the BBC. The “no platform” policy hasn’t worked, nor have the senseless, anti-democratic attacks on them by fascists like Searchlight and UAF.

The BNP need to be given enough rope to hang themselves, the more they’re attacked, the more support they get. The BBC were absolutely correct to invite Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time as the leader of a legitimate political party and a democratically elected MEP and I can’t wait to see Nick Griffin make a complete dick of himself in front of millions of people.

As I was typing this, I noticed that Old Holborn has previously found details of the Home Office funding Unite Against Fascism. State sponsored thugs violently supressing opposition to the government … why does George Orwell come to mind?