Cookie Notice

WE LOVE THE NATIONS OF EUROPE
However, this blog is a US service and this site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user-agent are shared with Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse.

Monday 20 January 2020

Time to come to heads with the BBC over bias

Nominations are open this week for Select Committee chairs and the appointments and memberships of the committees could be interesting. At a time when the Conservatives have a stonking majority in the House, the opposition will seek to use the Select Committees to win media airtime. You will remember the Brexit Committee during the last session, under the Chairmanship of Hilary Benn, with 14 remainiacs dominating the 7 leavers and including Joanna Cherry and Stephen Kinnock. They lost no opportunity in piling onto pro-Brexit victims and in calling every Project Fear crank and nutter to listen with smiles and nods at their inflated drivel.

Well, no doubt you'll be pleased to learn that the Brexit Committee is back, and still to be chaired by Labour. Whatever fond wishes the Prime Minister had about relegating Brexit to obscurity after the end of the month and concentrating on trade deals will be dashed - the Brexit Committee will see it as their chosen mission to Keep Brexit Alive. There may well even be a SecondReferendumber or two sitting. Their task will be to seize on every minor glitch in negotiations (there will be many) and to summon ministers with the sole objective of seeking to bully and humiliate them. I don't know how Parliament can deal with this.

The Committee will be encouraged no doubt by the eagerness of the BBC in giving them disproportionate airtime - and we must make this a subject of intense scrutiny and complaint, possibly even legal action. There are 28 Select Committees. An unbiased, fair and objective reporting of Parliament's activities would balance reporting of the activities of them all. If the BBC gives undue eminence to the anti-Brexit activities of one single Select Committee, the organisation's access to Parliament should be suspended. It's time to get serious about embedded BBC bias.

Here is the full list of Chairs up for nomination this week -
Backbench Business Committee (non-Government)
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Labour)
Defence (Conservative)
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Conservative)
Education (Conservative)
Environmental Audit (Conservative)
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Conservative)
Exiting the European Union (Labour)
Foreign Affairs (Conservative)
Health and Social Care (Conservative)
Home Affairs (Labour)
Housing, Communities and Local Government (Labour)
International Development (Labour)
International Trade (Scottish National Party)
Justice (Conservative)
Northern Ireland Affairs (Conservative)
Petitions (Labour)
Procedure (Conservative)
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs (Conservative)
Public Accounts (Labour)
Science and Technology (Conservative)
Scottish Affairs (Scottish National Party)
Standards (Labour)
Transport (Conservative)
Treasury (Conservative)
Welsh Affairs (Conservative)
Women and Equalities (Conservative)
Work and Pensions (Labour)

12 comments:

Stephen J said...

If the big stick was removed by those that are in charge of this establishment foghorn, I would happy for them to broadcast whatever they felt would interest their subscribers.

Still for the time being, they can rest easy on the luvvie front, they have a figure of fun to feature and to bully on all the "current affairs" programmes.... Step forward the young Mr. Fox.

As for select committees, this is the role that I reckon that MP's should do full time in the parliament... These people should be trained to disseminate propositions as they are put forward by citizen groups, advise us as to what is legal and what not, advise us what we might need to change to make something equitable.

DeeDee99 said...

Why on earth will the SNP be chairing the International Trade Committee. Is it meant to be a joke? The largest trading partner for the SNP is England and they want to destroy that with "independence."

We already know the Conservative Party hasn't got the guts to deal (properly) with the BBC's bias, so there's no point holding out hope they've grown some cojones now Raedwald.

JPM said...

Glitches in negotiations? Many of them?

But we were told that a comprehensive trade deal would be "the easiest in history" and that we could "have our cake and eat it".

Weren't we?

DiscoveredJoys said...

@JPM

But we were also told, by 'experts' no less, that unemployment would shoot up, the Pound would dive, people would die for lack of medicines, GDP would plummet and World War III would break out. A few glitches in negotiations do not really compare, do they?

Dave_G said...


That bias exists in the BBC is, as far as the people that watch it is concerned, a given. The BBC will dispute this FACT until they are blue in the face.

The BBC are supposed to abide by their Charter (on balance, fair reporting etc) and are failing - blatantly. But what good is a Charter if their is no one to uphold it or enforce it? How are the BBC getting away with their lies and betrayals? Who is allowing this?

The BBC refuse to reveal details of the number of complaints on various issues (climate being a biggie) and constantly refute any claims made against them as anyone who has ever made an official complaint will attest to.

If complaining is ineffectual and the offenses keep occurring then WTF does ANYONE do? Who do you go to? Where is the justice?

THIS is why I refuse to pay a licence fee. The BBC are, in my opinion, breaking the 'law' and for me to pay a licence fee is tantamount to aiding and abetting a 'criminal act' and I could be prosecuted for doing so. Morally anyway.

Trump has the right approach - he points out media bias (CNN are on the verge of collapse due to mass-exodus of viewers since Trump outed them for their obvious and consistent bias) but no-one, absolutely no public figure worth their salt will do the same to the 'venerated' BBC.

Sickening.



JPM said...

Unemployment has shot up in Port Talbot, in Corbridge, in Bridgend etc. and we haven't even left yet.

Javid, whose smile never reaches his eyes, has already warned that things won't be good for manufacturing or for agriculture - but that's their fault since they've had three years to prepare, for what for some will be inescapable death no matter what they do.

Javid knows what to expect from Johnson when the figures don't look good.

Mark said...

Your rather good at typing with one hand I must say!

Anonymous said...

If any one of these select committees were to be disbanded - would anyone actually notice?
M.

Dave_G said...


Port Talbot? Bridgend? Manufacturing?

ALL victims of over-priced energy caused by the usual exaggerations and scaremongering created purely to milk as much from the system as possible before it all collapses anyway.

Seen the way the German economy is headed?

JPM said...

No, victims of their customers' cancelling their orders, or of their company's owner deciding to relocate.

I see that Tony Hall is going, back on topic.

Mark said...

Are you projecting again?

Maybe it's the loss of your EU "citizenship" this time.


DiscoveredJoys said...

@JPM

Figures from the ONS:

Unemployment rate April/June 2016 4.9%
Unemployment rate August/October 2019 3.8%