For years, the BBC's Question Time political programme has been scrutinised, ever since its apparent left-wing bias became sufficiently obvious to make the more attentive viewers sit up and take notice. It has been worsening ever since, and now considerably larger numbers are commenting on its ever-strengthening leftward slant.
Several people have not only been watching it all closely, but a few (most notably Beeb Bias Craig) have laboriously documented all manner of interesting statistics – such as numbers of interruptions of each panellist by the programme's host, David Dimbleby – and a whole range of other factors.
Here, then is a guide to what is done and how it is done...
The Panel
Usually five members, the odd number so that it can be made lop-sided by including someone who has no relevance to the political scene at all, and is usually a Lefty comedian or similar showbiz figure (this week it's a 'poet and author').
The panel will nearly always have at least three members from the political left (or allied to it, as in the case of the comdian or whoever is in the fifth seat), and they try to specialise in hetting one of the more left-of-party Conservatives on the panel, as often as they can. The same names crop up repeatedly. There will often also be a journalist among the five.
The solitary exception (as far as I have been able to ascertain) is that, once per season, they have it round the other way, to 'prove' that they are 'unbiased' and 'even-handed'. No-one is fooled by this; but it makes it impossible to do anything about it. Smugly, they continue as ever.
The seating arrangement is planned to suit the programme-makers' agenda as well. For example, in this short clip, we see how Labour's Harriet Harman got David Dimbleby to interrupt Conservative Iain Duncan Smith, which was oh-so-easy to do because of how they were positioned...
The Questions
These are, of course, chosen by the BBC production people from the many submitted – which is why the topics they cover are so predictable that at least two websites run a regular contest for their visitors to predict what will come up. Typically the actual subjects will allow for maximum bashing of the Right, will play to the Labour/Green member(s) of the panel, and will echo the BBC's own agenda.
This is why important matters that don't suit their agenda are omitted, and less significant ones can be debated for an inordinately long time. It is not unusual for more than a third of the programme's air time to be taken up dealing just the first question. They always ensure they make time for the frivolous 'final question', which someone in the audience has conveniently provided, without fail every week.
It seems likely that it is either scripted by the producers, or guided by them, in advance. No-one in the audience is going to waste their one chance to ask a question on something lightweight and (often) trivial, after all.
The Audience
These are predominantly public sector workers and students. They are largely brought in on coaches from other areas – which explains why so many called to speak don't have local accents. Certain ones, vetted by (perhaps even invited as personally known to) the producers will be made known to David Dimbleby, who will make sure they are called.. Usually, despite many people indicating are not called at all, one, two or three of these will be called upon twice, though occasionally the second time follows their first speaking bit being to ask one of the chosen questions. Perhaps that's thought to be less blatant..
Somerimes there are a few seats right at the front of the audience seating area, in front of the longer rows, and these are for 'those who must be called'. I think they also provide an occasional steer to David D on something (via gestures or hand signals), off camera but plainly visible to him.
The Chairing
The chairman specialises in selective interruption, attempting to derail any Right-winger on the panel by butting in just after they've started, and repeatedly interrupting. This tends to be done to the Lefties much less. He doesn't usually dare do this too much ro the non-politicians, though, such as David Starkey, I have noticed.
There will also be cutting-off if a Right-wing replay is making too good a point, directly counter to the BBC's own preferred message, if he can get away with it.
Generally, there will be an obvious (i.e. it's easy to see it being set up) ambush, prepared in advance, on any Conservative MP (or equivalent) panellist. Sometimes there are two; but it's easy to spot what is going on, once you have watched a few of these programmes, and to work out how it was devised.
In Conclusion
There is a lot more, but the above gives the flavour, and some detail. It will certainly make some of the more puzzling aspects of the show (and it is a show, literally) more understandable, when one realises that the whole purpose of it is to promote the BBC's own political agenda, and that is its sole purpose. That includes helping Labour, Greens and the like look good, giving them a relatively friendly platform, 'Tory-bashing', and messages on such matters as public spending vs 'the cuts', Israel/Palestinians, and lots of others
It's all obvious when you pay attention to what they are trying to feed the viewing public. It works; so the formula has remained the same for years – though the degree of bias has continually intensified, as it has throughout the Corporation's news and politics departments, and probably elsewhere as well.
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
Friday, 19 July 2013
Weekly Political Digest – 19 July 2013
There is again a lot to go through this week, but I shall, as always, attempt to keep it fairly brief...
First, following up something covered in my last digest, it's worth noting that UNITE's Len McCluskey has, as expected, welcomed Ed Miliband's proposal regarding union affiliation fees that will give the unions more of the money they will continue to collect, while making Ed-M seem responsible and competent in the eyes of those who don't realise what a sell-out it really is.
How Much Tax?
The Daily Mirror ran a typical front page headline that tried to suggest that the Coalition Government was placing a higher tax burden on 'the poor' than on 'the rich' – standard Lefty class warfare. Of course, they got it wrong, on two counts in fact.
First, as Fraser Nelson reports, there has already been a significant shift of the tax burden away from the poorer end of society and toward the better off than was operated under the previous government, or indeed any previous government.
Second, the real or effective tax level for some at the lower end can be as high as 84%, not the 36% that the Mirror splashed over its front page; and Fraser has provided the data to back up this claim. Some could even be paying 95% in effective tax.
As he says, the real issue is the slow reform of the welfare system that really needs to move on apace, as the reality of Labour's system and how it was structured was (as some have been saying all along) to trap huge numbers of people within a system that was always intended to make them dependent upon the State and be economically unable to find a realistic way out of in as many cases as James (a.k.a. Gordon) Brown in particular could devise a way to hold onto.
Not that Labour has stopped there: in order to restore and expand on that whole policy, they are secretly planning to make claiming benefits a kind of 'human right', so that it becomes a permanent and unshakeable burden and a trap for even more of us than ever before.
Again, the solution is (as with so many inadequate outcomes since 2010) a Conservative overall majority in 2015. Not only would this release their MPs and Ministers from the compromises and blockages that they are currently having to tolerate – and I have considerable inside info on this, provided to me in confidence – but it would also remove the excuse of the Lib Dems, for those who like to perceive it as such.
As I say, I know more of the truth than to fall for that easy attack line myself, but that doesn't stop others, especially UKIPpers, who seem to have made a career out of it.
Fantasy Politics
Lord Ashcroft has an enormously respected record of extensive and detailed opinion polling, and among his latest commissioned work has been the result that a lot of ideas being floated by some within the Conservative fraternity, including some MPs, is just fantasy politics that has little if any public support. He has been looking specifically at what has been labelled The Alternative Queen's Speech: it is the speech that is different, not the Queen, I hasten to add(!)
As the Noble Lord. says, those policies are not the way to a parliamentary majority in the next General Election. Although there is no harm in looking at these side issues in private (they make for useful mental exercise, especially in terms of inventiveness and thinking outside the box), but it isn't a good idea to promote such ideas in public.
However, now that this had been done, it did at least afford Lord Ashcroft a suitable opportunity to teach us the hard-knock lesson of life regarding such things, so I suspect this is the last Alternative Queen's Speech we shall encounter from this government...
Beeb Traps Itself
Charles Moore looks at the BBC this week, and finds all manner of interesting things, some of which I and others already knew. It is worth going through the whole piece. The most striking conclusions, inescapable though they are (in more than one senses of the word), are that (a) the Beeb has, in effect, trapped itself into reporting only what suits its people's own outlooks, and (b) employing only like-minded people.
This seems to be irreconcilable, no matter what anyone tries to do, so almost certainly cannot be solved in any way that leaves the BBC essentially intact. As a number of commenters and observers have been saying for years, it has to be broken up and sold off as a commercial enterprise that will in future need to compete directly in the marketplace, not hold a privileged position outside and above the real marketplace. The licence fee (in reality an anachronistic stealth tax) must then go as well, and rightly so!
Medway Maritime Hospital
Our local hospital – the one where I was taken when I had my 'incident' a couple of years ago – is one of the fourteen that were looked at specifically in the recent inquiry, and of which eleven have now been placed in so-called 'specisl measures'. Whether or not the media were right to latch onto the 'excess mortality rates' as the single big factor is challenged by FullFact, with some justification, though it shouldn't be dismissed as a measure, having considerably validity nonetheless.
The Keogh report contains a number of colour-coded tables to show the level of quality at each of those hospitals in various areas and a range of aspects of each. It has to be said that the Medway came out not all that badly overall, but a moderate number of areas needing attention did get highlighted.
In a sense, all this is good news, in that it had been going on for years yet nothing was being done about it. The previous Labour government treated the NHS almost as a kind of sacred cow, and it is known that the then Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, refused to countenance dealing with any complaint and instead preferred to hide it all away and pretend that all was well.
That has been documented in several places, though with differing numbers of formal complaints, so there isn't a single source I can quote with a hundred percent confidence on that particular aspect. The 'NHS as a religion' meme is covered very well by Rev. Dr Peter Mullen at Cranmer's 'blog, and helps one understand just what it is like to some and what that means in practice.
It will come as no surprise that Lefties treat the NHS as an entity as the be-all and end-all, and that (as always with the Left, as I have reminded readers numerous times) the individual has no value. Paul Goodman covers this in his piece for ConHome.
When the subject was aired in the House of Commons, perhaps inevitably – and certainly predictably – it became something of a blame game. Now, there are those who don't like that in politics, and I tend to go along with that view myself as an ideal; but if one doesn't realise and understand how we got to a particular point and why, and especially if some are spreading misinformation, then it becomes difficult or even impossible to find a proper and lasting solution.
Take it from an old hand in the public sector who has seen it all before...
Indeed, as Douglas Carswell MP reports, Labour MPs were far more interested in making it out to be about them than caring about the multiple deaths and other ills at the hospitals. Self-serving to the end, their 'phoney rage' (as Douglas puts it) attempts to divert attention away from the actual issues.
Meanwhile, local Medway MP Mark Reckless welcomes the support that the special measures will apparently provide to Medway Maritime Hospital. We shall have to wait and see what this will turn out to be in practice, but Mark's words in the linked article do make for illuminating reading about how the three Medway-based MPs have approached the matter of our local hospital and its deficiencies and needs.
First, following up something covered in my last digest, it's worth noting that UNITE's Len McCluskey has, as expected, welcomed Ed Miliband's proposal regarding union affiliation fees that will give the unions more of the money they will continue to collect, while making Ed-M seem responsible and competent in the eyes of those who don't realise what a sell-out it really is.
How Much Tax?
The Daily Mirror ran a typical front page headline that tried to suggest that the Coalition Government was placing a higher tax burden on 'the poor' than on 'the rich' – standard Lefty class warfare. Of course, they got it wrong, on two counts in fact.
First, as Fraser Nelson reports, there has already been a significant shift of the tax burden away from the poorer end of society and toward the better off than was operated under the previous government, or indeed any previous government.
Second, the real or effective tax level for some at the lower end can be as high as 84%, not the 36% that the Mirror splashed over its front page; and Fraser has provided the data to back up this claim. Some could even be paying 95% in effective tax.
As he says, the real issue is the slow reform of the welfare system that really needs to move on apace, as the reality of Labour's system and how it was structured was (as some have been saying all along) to trap huge numbers of people within a system that was always intended to make them dependent upon the State and be economically unable to find a realistic way out of in as many cases as James (a.k.a. Gordon) Brown in particular could devise a way to hold onto.
Not that Labour has stopped there: in order to restore and expand on that whole policy, they are secretly planning to make claiming benefits a kind of 'human right', so that it becomes a permanent and unshakeable burden and a trap for even more of us than ever before.
Again, the solution is (as with so many inadequate outcomes since 2010) a Conservative overall majority in 2015. Not only would this release their MPs and Ministers from the compromises and blockages that they are currently having to tolerate – and I have considerable inside info on this, provided to me in confidence – but it would also remove the excuse of the Lib Dems, for those who like to perceive it as such.
As I say, I know more of the truth than to fall for that easy attack line myself, but that doesn't stop others, especially UKIPpers, who seem to have made a career out of it.
Fantasy Politics
Lord Ashcroft has an enormously respected record of extensive and detailed opinion polling, and among his latest commissioned work has been the result that a lot of ideas being floated by some within the Conservative fraternity, including some MPs, is just fantasy politics that has little if any public support. He has been looking specifically at what has been labelled The Alternative Queen's Speech: it is the speech that is different, not the Queen, I hasten to add(!)
As the Noble Lord. says, those policies are not the way to a parliamentary majority in the next General Election. Although there is no harm in looking at these side issues in private (they make for useful mental exercise, especially in terms of inventiveness and thinking outside the box), but it isn't a good idea to promote such ideas in public.
However, now that this had been done, it did at least afford Lord Ashcroft a suitable opportunity to teach us the hard-knock lesson of life regarding such things, so I suspect this is the last Alternative Queen's Speech we shall encounter from this government...
Beeb Traps Itself
Charles Moore looks at the BBC this week, and finds all manner of interesting things, some of which I and others already knew. It is worth going through the whole piece. The most striking conclusions, inescapable though they are (in more than one senses of the word), are that (a) the Beeb has, in effect, trapped itself into reporting only what suits its people's own outlooks, and (b) employing only like-minded people.
This seems to be irreconcilable, no matter what anyone tries to do, so almost certainly cannot be solved in any way that leaves the BBC essentially intact. As a number of commenters and observers have been saying for years, it has to be broken up and sold off as a commercial enterprise that will in future need to compete directly in the marketplace, not hold a privileged position outside and above the real marketplace. The licence fee (in reality an anachronistic stealth tax) must then go as well, and rightly so!
Medway Maritime Hospital
Our local hospital – the one where I was taken when I had my 'incident' a couple of years ago – is one of the fourteen that were looked at specifically in the recent inquiry, and of which eleven have now been placed in so-called 'specisl measures'. Whether or not the media were right to latch onto the 'excess mortality rates' as the single big factor is challenged by FullFact, with some justification, though it shouldn't be dismissed as a measure, having considerably validity nonetheless.
The Keogh report contains a number of colour-coded tables to show the level of quality at each of those hospitals in various areas and a range of aspects of each. It has to be said that the Medway came out not all that badly overall, but a moderate number of areas needing attention did get highlighted.
In a sense, all this is good news, in that it had been going on for years yet nothing was being done about it. The previous Labour government treated the NHS almost as a kind of sacred cow, and it is known that the then Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, refused to countenance dealing with any complaint and instead preferred to hide it all away and pretend that all was well.
That has been documented in several places, though with differing numbers of formal complaints, so there isn't a single source I can quote with a hundred percent confidence on that particular aspect. The 'NHS as a religion' meme is covered very well by Rev. Dr Peter Mullen at Cranmer's 'blog, and helps one understand just what it is like to some and what that means in practice.
It will come as no surprise that Lefties treat the NHS as an entity as the be-all and end-all, and that (as always with the Left, as I have reminded readers numerous times) the individual has no value. Paul Goodman covers this in his piece for ConHome.
When the subject was aired in the House of Commons, perhaps inevitably – and certainly predictably – it became something of a blame game. Now, there are those who don't like that in politics, and I tend to go along with that view myself as an ideal; but if one doesn't realise and understand how we got to a particular point and why, and especially if some are spreading misinformation, then it becomes difficult or even impossible to find a proper and lasting solution.
Take it from an old hand in the public sector who has seen it all before...
Indeed, as Douglas Carswell MP reports, Labour MPs were far more interested in making it out to be about them than caring about the multiple deaths and other ills at the hospitals. Self-serving to the end, their 'phoney rage' (as Douglas puts it) attempts to divert attention away from the actual issues.
Meanwhile, local Medway MP Mark Reckless welcomes the support that the special measures will apparently provide to Medway Maritime Hospital. We shall have to wait and see what this will turn out to be in practice, but Mark's words in the linked article do make for illuminating reading about how the three Medway-based MPs have approached the matter of our local hospital and its deficiencies and needs.
Thursday, 10 May 2012
And now for the weather in Scotland
I'm sure I've seen the BBC's new weatherman somewhere before.
Here's an excerpt (all that is available to embed here)...
He certainly enjoyed his one minute of fame in this new job, even though there's still little sign of any "reign" for himself...
Here's an excerpt (all that is available to embed here)...
He certainly enjoyed his one minute of fame in this new job, even though there's still little sign of any "reign" for himself...
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