‘The Channel Migrants Are UN Soldiers’: The Weird Paranoid Views of Correct, Not Political

A few days ago I watched another video put up by Jim Boobeh, the main man behind the right-wing YouTube channel Correct, Not Political, and a fellow rightists, called O’Looney. Correct, Not Political are the bunch who believe that the World Economic Forum are at the at the heart of a global conspiracy to take over the world and make us all serfs under green communism, owning nothing, confined to 15 minute cities and eating insects for the good of the planet. Many people on the right have similar views, like Carl Benjamin and the Lotus Eaters. But I wasn’t prepared for just how paranoid Correct, Not Political was.

That they’re a bunch of far right conspiracy theorists is obvious, as shown by their videos of them protesting gay rights marches, drag queen story hour, trades union and environmental protests, pro-refugee demonstrations, and events held by socialists and ‘commies’. How right wing they are is also demonstrated by the video they show introducing their live streams, which are old footage of Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts marching about. They also don’t like the Freemasons and there’s more than a touch of anti-Semitism there, as I think they’re also into the stupid myths of the Jewish banking conspiracy. But they’re also worried about a military invasion by the Channel migrants. Yup, these are not poor unfortunates fleeing war and persecution in their homelands, but undercover UN soldiers. Now, many members of the anti-immigrant right have said that most of the Channel migrants are military age men, and are suspicious of them because they don’t include similar numbers of women and children. Which is what you would expect to see if people were fleeing war and persecution, or at least what the sceptical peeps of the right would. But there was an interview with one Channel migrant a little while ago who said that he, and many others were running away from conscription, and hoped to bring their women and families over later when they had settled. I also think that many of the military age men are actually young blokes hoping to find work and greater opportunities in the West. The impression I’ve had reading various bit and pieces of information on the current state of the Middle East and talking to more knowledgeable friends is that there’s a real problem with large scale unemployment in many of the Arab countries. A little while ago there was a piece in one of the news blogs that the economic situation in Egypt had deteriorated to the point where many families could no longer afford basic staples. There was a similar situation among Sunni Muslims in Syria, where they were very firmly at the bottom of the social pile and faced with grinding poverty, less educated and with poorer prospects than the Shi’a, Alawi and Christian Syrians. Hence their support for radical Islamist movements and the rebellion against Assad. But Correct, Not Political really do believe that we’re being literally invaded.

Boobeh and O’Looney spoke about how they’d heard from a number of people that the Channel migrants were really undercover UN soldiers. One man had sent a drone off to spy on them, and had seen them being trained by the Black Watch. They were here, ready to take over the country. The two also speculated about the outbreak of a nuclear war, and stated that the elite would be all right as they would be safe in their luxury nuclear bunkers 2- 3 miles underground. That was certainly true of the Soviet elite. After the Fall of Communism it was revealed that a whole city, complete with shops, had been built underground for the Communist rulers in the event of a nuclear war. I dare say that something similar may have been secretly built in the west. One of the TV travel shows, in which a celeb goes round a part of the world talking about the interesting bits, showed the world’s most expensive nuclear bunker. I think it was built by a businessman in Nevada, and was so luxurious it even had a swimming pool. I don’t know if other big businessmen built themselves similar bunkers, but as during the Cold War ordinary Americans were told to build fall-out shelters in their yards it really, really wouldn’t surprise me.

Going back to the weird idea of the migrants as UN troopers, it looks like a mutant British version of some of the rumours that were going around America’s paranoid fringe in the ’90s. This held that the Soviet Union had not in fact collapsed, but had a staged a careful ruse. There were supposed to be secret Soviet military bases on the Canadian and Mexican borders, from which Russian tanks would roll into America once the invasion started. Here the Red Army has been replaced by the Channel migrants and the United Nations, who are the centre of similar fears on the American right. It’s all part of the plan to set up the evil, satanic one-world communist government. The current paranoia about the World Economic Forum is part of that, and indeed Boobeh himself put it into context by mentioning the other groups that have also been seen as part of the global conspiracy, like the Trilateral Commission.

The extent of this section of the far right’s alienation from mainstream society was shown by Boobeh and O’Looney talking about how they’d like to set up parallel societies, complete with a separate healthcare system, independent of the mainstream. Well, the anarchists and other left-wing radicals they despise have also felt the same way, and tried to something like it, but have been unsuccessful. They, or at least Boobeh, also were against voting, because all the parties were compromised, but neither did they want to start a violent revolution. Which was reassuring. Mosley’s their hero, but they don’t want to follow him down the road of trying to attempt a Fascist seizure of power along the lines of Mussolini and Hitler.

I don’t know how many of them there are in Correct, Not Political. Probably not many, as even at their height the extreme right-wing groups in this country were numerically small. The BNP claimed to have 2,000 members, but researchers have suggested that they only had about 200 core members. Most of the others left after about a year, probably because although they were against non-White immigration, they didn’t have any interest in Fascist ideology. But I suspect that there are many other groups and individuals, like Godfrey Bloom, who shared their fears about the WEF and the UN.

As for the notion that the Black Watch were training the migrants, it seems to me that they may have been sent to guard them. Some of them came over with guns, as reported a few months ago. But if any kind of training was going on, I wonder if it could be because these are western-allied soldiers, who were disguised as civilians, perhaps to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. Or perhaps as part of some undercover global security operation which uses the migrant networks. Of course, this is just speculation and it may well be rubbish, and no training of any kind is going on. But I wonder.

There may be a genuine conspiracy here, which has nothing to do with the UN, WEF or Masonic Jewish bankers.

Drag Queens, Freemasons and the World Economic Forum: The Weird Conspiracist Views of Correct, Not Political

I spent some time Saturday evening watching a couple of videos posted by the far right YouTube outfit, Correct, Not Political. One was of their man Jim walking around the demonstrators and supporters at Drag Queen Story Time in Colchester asking them awkward, ‘Socratic’ questions. The other was an interview between Jim and another fixture of the British far right, Godfrey Bloom. Both were weirdly interesting, but only for the light they cast on these two men’s conspiracist views. I’ve already written about how Correct, Not Political has the classic paranoid idea that the Masons are behind a massive conspiracy. His interview with Bloom, and the comments he made talking to some of the people in Colchester confirmed it. It also revealed him to be a mad anti-vaxxer who thinks they’re putting something in it to kill people as part of the WEF’s goal to reduce the human population on the planet.

The drag queen reading to the kids in Colchester was Edward Wilcox, who performs under the name ‘Ann Nemic’ or something similar. Talking to various members of the crowd, Jim said that ‘Nemic’ had been vaccinated twice, and given blood 92 times. He didn’t want to say too much, as he didn’t want his channel to be banned, but didn’t this tell you something. Er, yes. It demonstrates that he was like everyone else and did as the government and medical authorities advised. He got vaccinated to protect himself. As for giving blood 92 times, one of the women at the demonstration pointed out that it made him a good person and that surely you want people to give blood? His stage name also shows that he has a sense of humour: Ann Nemic/ anaemic. It doesn’t say anything more than that, unless you’re so paranoid you think he was actively trying to spread whatever it is in the vaccine which you think is a poison by donating his contaminated blood. Sadly, I think Jim really is that bonkers.

Looking at the crowd, he declared, ‘There isn’t half a lot of sodomy going on here!’ This was probably because they were quite a few gay people and people waving pride flags, not because gay men were having sex in the street. He then went round warning people that drag queen story hour was a plot to indoctrinate kids with gender ideology and abuse from paedophiles. Here he has a point. James Lindsay has read out a paper co-written by a drag queen and queer activist, which states that the purpose of these shows is to queer the children’s minds and upset gender norms. And yes, the founder of Queer Theory, Judith Butler, did support paedophilia and the breaking down of barriers between adult and child. But this doesn’t mean that every drag queen, library or school which stages these sessions holds such views or is even aware of their existence. They may just be doing it because they genuinely feel it is spreading tolerance towards gay and trans people whilst encouraging children to read. No more than that.

Walking around the demonstration was a bald bloke, who looked a bit like the Matt Lucas character George Daws, selling copies of the Socialist Worker. So Jim immediately called him a Communist, asked whether he was trying to get people to sign up for Communism, and then asked people to tell him if there was a country in which Communism had ever succeeded. Well, technically the man was a Trotskyite, which is a slightly different form of Marxism. And I actually agree with him in that there hasn’t been a country where Communism has been successful. China has been doing very well of late, but that’s also thanks to a capitalist component in its economy. But from where Britain stands at the moment, capitalism isn’t working very well either. Far from improving people’s living standards, they’re being lowered. However, the right haven’t given up the refrain that this generation has it far better than anyone else at any time in history, and capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than socialism has. The first part of that statement is utterly wrong, and the second needs serious qualifications.

The drag show, Jim said, was all about promoting equality. But this was equality under communism, where everyone didn’t have life equally good, but equally bad, except for those at the top. Again, this seems to come from critiques of the woke ideology from James Lindsay and the EDIJester. It’s certainly present in those ideologies, though its equity – equality of outcome – rather than equality of opportunity. There were a couple of examples of this in the American education system a month or so ago. One teacher, in the interest of equality, gave all her students an ‘A’. Another one just gave the average award to a series of excellent students, who actually deserved much higher marks to take them into one of the prestigious American universities to study science. This was eventually revealed after an inquiry and possibly legal action. I have yet to hear of a case like this in this country, however.

Jim also got shirty with the Trotskyite because the man called him a Fascist and a Nazi. Jim told him that was libel, to which the fellow rightly pointed out that it was slander, as he’d know if he’d actually had any knowledge of the law. As Jim has prefaced several of his livestreams with old footage of Oswald Mosley and the BUF, and that Mosley changed his benighted organisation’s name to the ‘British Union of Fascists and National Socialists’, it could be said that what the man said was fair comment.

When someone asked who was behind this plot to corrupt Britain’s kids, Jim replied that, again he didn’t want to say too much, but it was the Freemasons, citing a couple of 19th century authors, who, he said, were themselves 33rd degree members of the brotherhood. I’ve forgotten just who they were, but their names rang a bell among the sources cited by those convinced of such a conspiracy. Finally, after bothering the good burghers of Colchester for about an hour, and nearly being assaulted by some particularly angry LGBTQ+ rights demonstrators, he went off in search of something to drink. Going through the town’s back streets, he complained about the number of ‘weirdos’ there were and that it was all coffee houses. Quite what he has against coffee houses I don’t know. Perhaps he was afraid that if he went inside, left-wing intellectuals would all jump on him like the characters in Fraser all those years ago.

His conspiracist views became much clearer in his conversation with Godfrey Bloom. Bloom announced himself has having been an investment banker for 40 years and at one time a member of the defence council or something like that. He was thus well-placed to know that capitalism was about to collapse. Actually, there’s a Marxist economics professor on YouTube, Richard Wolf, who has being saying exactly the same thing. And if it hadn’t been for Brown in 2008, I’m sure it would have collapsed. The two then shared their views on the World Economic Forum wishing to depopulate the planet, set up Green Communism and make us all eat bugs. The WEF has captured all our institutions, including the monarchy. Prince Philip also believed there were too many people on the planet. Well, the late Duke of Edinburgh was the head of the World Wide Fund for Nature, so his views are hardly a surprise. The WEF are Malthusians, which means that they believe that population always outstrips the supply of available food, as suggested by the 19th century economist Thomas Malthus. Malthus and his followers believed that when this happened, starvation and war would inevitably result. In order to prevent this, they recommended birth control and were active promoting contraception. As did the Duke, who on one of his official visits to some tribe showed the men how to put on a condom using a spear. However, the WEF were going much further and planning to wipe out a sizable chunk of humanity using a manufactured disease or its vaccine. Those who survived would be under the WEF’s new communist order.

This made me wonder if Jim knew about the wretched views of the late zookeeper John Aspinall, best known for his big cats killing and mauling people. Aspinall also believed that there were too many people around. He said the British population should be only eight million. However, he definitely wasn’t a communist of any description. He declared that what the country needed was a ‘counterrevolution, Francoist in spirit.’ So his green views were closer to Hitler’s than the WEF. And almost certainly pretty close to Jim’s and Bloom’s.

Correct, Not Political’s Jim therefore seems to have read or watched much material about the woke ideology, especially Queer Theory, and mixed this up with old conspiracy theories about the masons. I also think there might be a touch of anti-Catholicism in their as well. When he was voicing his objections to drag queens reading to children as getting them used to nonces, one woman asked him about Roman Catholic priests abusing children. He didn’t agree with that, either, but said he didn’t agree with established religions as ‘they’re from Satan’. But some of the other things he has said, and they’re nothing I can put a precise finger on, suggests that he might have the same conspiracist views about the Catholic church, which is supposed to be doing the work of the antichrist, as some as the bigoted Protestant writers of the 19th century.

Correct, Not Political aren’t physically violent, and while Jim’s sneers about socialism are irritating, he personally has an affable manner. I can’t say that they present a physical danger, unlike National Action or the BNP, for example. What is dangerous is the mad anti-vaxxer views and the deranged paranoia about the WEF, which he also shares with the Lotus Eaters, Alex Jones and any number of others on the right. And these views are a danger to democratic politics, if only because the undermine proper democratic views in favour of suspicion and paranoia.

Now Dominic Cummings Has Got Coronavirus

Oh, the irony! As Mike says in his article, it’s poetic justice. After all, Cummings privately told people that Boris shouldn’t impose a lockdown because of the effect this would have on the economy. And if a few old people died, it was just too bad. He wanted Brits to develop herd immunity by allowing the virus spread unchecked until about 80 per cent of us had it. Now he himself has contracted it, and, as Ash Sarkar has dryly commented on Twitter, welcome to the herd. Have I Got News For You has recommended that he should immediately go into isolation for a certain period. They’ve decided five years should do it. Mike comments that because of Cummings’ vile complacency about the death toll from the virus, no-one can possibly be blamed for thinking that it’s just too bad that he’s suffering from it. And the great commenters on Mike’s blog have the view that, well, karma’s tough, and if it doesn’t kill him, he should be asset stripped and sacked from government and made to live on PIP or Universal Credit. They’ve also pointed out the hypocrisy behind the Tories expressing deep concerns over the casualties of the Coronavirus, while they have also been responsible for the deaths of over a hundred thousand through austerity and benefit cuts and sanctions.

Unfortunately it’s not just Cummings who holds such odious views about letting people die. So does the vile Toby Young, Scum hack Trevor Kavanagh, Telegraph hack Sherelle Jacobs, Brexiteer Godfrey Bloom and others on a long list of right-wing morons.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/03/covid-19-godders-is-moron.html

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/03/toby-young-jumps-virus-shark.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/03/sun-pundit-lies-about-covid-19-deaths.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/03/toby-young-goes-full-nazi.html

Poetic justice: Dominic Cummings has contracted coronavirus

You’d hope that with Boris, Cummings and other members of his cabinet now infected, these idiots might wake up and have some sympathy for the victims of the disease, that they were content to write off and let die. But I doubt that’s going to be the case.

I can seem them still continuing to believe that the country shouldn’t have a lockdown and the poor should be allowed to die for the sake of the economy, even after it affects them.

The Beeb’s Biased Reporting of NHS Privatisation

The Corporation’s General Right-wing Bias

The BBC is infamous for its flagrant right-wing bias. Writers and experts like Barry and Savile Kushner in their Who Needs the Cuts, academics at the media research centres of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Cardiff Universities, and ordinary left-wing bloggers like Mike and Zelo Street have pointed out time and again that the corporation massively prefers to have as commenters and guests on its show Conservative MPs and spokespeople for the financial sector on its news and political comment programmes, rather than Labour MPs and activists and trade unionists. The Corporation relentless pushed the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. But it has also promoted the privatisation of the NHS too through its biased reporting.

Biased Towards NHS Privatisation

Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis’ book on the privatisation of the NHS, NHS – SOS, has a chapter by Oliver Huitson, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’, discussing the biased reporting of the NHS’s privatisation by the media in general. Here, however, I will just confine myself to describing the Corporation’s role. The Beeb was frequently silent and did not report vital pieces of information about successive privatisations, such as the involvement of private healthcare companies in demanding them and conflicts of interest. On occasion, this bias was actually worse than right-wing rags like the Daily Mail. Although these ardently supported the NHS’ privatisation, they frequently reported these cases while the Beeb did not. When the moves towards privatisation were reported, they were often given a positive spin. For example, the establishment of the Community Care Groups, groups of doctors who are supposed to commission medical services from the private sector as well as from within the NHS, and which are legally allowed to raise money from the private sector, were positively described by the Corporation as ‘giving doctors more control’.

Lack of Coverage of Private Healthcare Companies Role in Privatisation

David Cameron and Andrew Lansley did not include Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill in the Tories’ 2010 manifesto, because they didn’t believe they’d win the election if they did. But in all the two years of debate about the bill, the Beeb only twice reported doubts about the bill’s democratic mandate. (p.152). In October 2010, Mark Britnell was invited to join Cameron’s ‘kitchen cabinet’. Britnell had worked with the Labour government and was a former head of commissioning for the NHS. But he was also former head of health for the accountancy firm, KPMG, which profits greatly from government privatisation and outsourcing. He declared that the NHS would be shown ‘no mercy’ and would become a ‘state insurance provider, not a state deliverer’. But the BBC decided not to report all this until four days after others had broken the story. And when they did, it was only to explain a comment by Nick Clegg about how people are confused when they hear politicians stating how much they love the NHS while at the same time demanding its privatisation. (pp.153-4).

On 21 November 2011 Channel 4 News reported that they had obtained a document which showed clearly that GP commissioning was intended to create a market for private corporations to come in and take over NHS services. But This was only reported by the Groaniad and the Torygraph. The rest of the media, including the Beeb, ignored it. (pp. 156-7).

Lansley was also revealed to have received donations from Andrew Nash, chairman of Care UK, another private healthcare firm hoping to profit from NHS privatisation. But this also was not reported by the Corporation. (pp. 157-8).

In January 2011 the Mirror reported that the Tories had been given over £750,000 from donors with major connections to private healthcare  interests since David Cameron had become their chief in 2005. But this was also not mentioned by the Beeb. (pp. 158).

The Mirror also found that 40 members of the House of Lords had interests in NHS privatisation, while the Social Investigations blog suggested that it might be as high as 142. The BBC, along with several papers, did not mention this. (pp. 158-9).

Sonia Poulton, a writer for the Heil, stated on her blog that 31 Lords and 18 MPs have very lucrative interests in the health industry. But this was also ignored by the Beeb, along with the rest of the media with the exception of the Guardian. (p. 159).

The Tory MP, Nick de Bois, was a fervent support of the Tories’ NHS privatisation. He is a majority shareholder in Rapier Design Group, which purchased Hampton Medical Conferences, a number of whose clients were ‘partners’ in the National Association of Primary Care, another group lobbying the Tories for NHS privatisation. This was also not reported by the Beeb. (pp. 159-60).

The Beeb also chose not to report how Lord Carter of Coles, the chair of the Co-operation and Competition Panel charged with ensuring fair access to the NHS for private healthcare companies, was also receiving £799,000 per year as chairman of McKesson Information Solutions, part of the massive American McKesson healthcare company. (p. 160).

There were other links between politicos, think tanks, lobby groups and private healthcare companies. The health regulator, Monitor, is dominated by staff from McKinsey and KPMG. But this also isn’t mentioned by the press. (pp. 160-1).

Beeb Falsely Presents Pro-Privatisation Think Tanks as ‘Independent‘

The BBC, along with much of the rest of the media, have also been responsible for misrepresenting spokespeople for pro-privatisation lobby groups as disinterested experts, and the organisations for which they speak as just independent think tanks. This was how the Beeb described 2020health.org, whose chief executive, Julia Manning, was twice invited onto the air to discuss the NHS, and an entire article was given over to one of her wretched organisation’s reports. However, SpinWatch reported that its chairman, former Tory minister Tom Sackville, was also CEO of the International Federation of Health Plans, representing of 100 private health insurance companies. Its advisory council includes representatives of AstraZeneca, NM Rothschild, the National Pharmaceutical Association, Nuffield private hospital group, and the Independent Healthcare Advisory Services. (p. 162).

Another lobby group whose deputy director, Nick Seddon, and other employees were invited onto the Beeb to discuss the proposals was Reform. Seddon was head of communications at Circle, the first private healthcare company to take over an NHS hospital. Seddon’s replacement at Circle was Christina Lineen, a former aide to Andrew Lansley. None of this was reported by the Beeb. Their corporate partners included companies like Citigroup, KPMG, GlaxoSmithKline and Serco. Huitson states ‘Through Seddon’s and other Reform Staffs’ appearances, the BBC may have facilitated private sector lobbying on a publicly funded platform without making relevant interests known’. (163).

Beeb Did Not Cover Protests and Opposition to Bill

Pages 164-5 also discusses the Beeb’s refusal, with few exceptions, to interview critics of Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill, the rightwing bias of panels discussing it and how the Beeb did not cover protests against it or its discussion in parliament. Huitson writes

At the BBC opportunities were frequently missed to provide expert opposition to the bill on a consistent basis. the RCGP’s Clare Gerada was largely the exception to this rule. Many of the most well-known and authoritative critics of the bill – the likes of professors Allyson Pollock or Colin Leys, doctors Jacky Davis and Wendy Savage from Keep Our NHS Public – never appeared on the BBC to discuss the plans. Davis recalls being invited to appear on the BBC a number of times but the item was cancelled on every occasion. ‘Balance’ is supposedly one of the BBC’s primary objectives yet appearing on the Today programme of 1 February 2012 to discuss the bill, for instance, were Shirley Williams (who voted in favour of the bill, however reluctantly), Nick Seddon of ‘independent’ Reform (pro-Bill), Steve Field (pro-Bill) and Chris Ham (pro-Bill). It’s difficult to see how that is not a breach of BBC guidelines and a disservice to the public. One of the fundamental duties of an open media is to ensure that coverage is not skewed towards those with the deepest pockets. And on that issue the media often performed poorly.

Further criticism of the BBC stems from its curious lack of NHS coverage during the climactic final month before the bill was passed in the House of Lords on 19 March. One such complaint came from blogger and Oxford Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology Dorothy Bishop, who wrote to the BBC to ask why it had failed to cover a number of NHS stories in March, including an anti-bill petition that had been brought to the House by Lord Owen, carrying 486,000 signatures of support. In reply, the BBC confirmed that the bill had been mentioned on the Today programme in March prior to the bill’s passing, though just once. Bishop replied:’So, if I have understood this right, during March, the Today programme covered the story once, in an early two-minute slot, before the bill was passed. Other items that morning included four minutes on a French theme park based on Napoleon, six minutes on international bagpipe day and eight minutes on Jubilee celebrations.’

Other BBC omissions include Andrew Lansley being heckled by angry medical staff at a hospital in Hampstead, as reported by both the Mail and Sky News. On 17 March a peaceful anti-bill march took place in central London. Those out protesting for their national health service found themselves kettled by riot police despite being one of the most harmless-looking crowds you’re ever likely to see. The protest and the shameful police response were completely ignored by the media, except for a brief mention on a Guardian blog. On social media numerous examples have been reported of protests and actions opposing the bill that were entirely absent from national coverage.

Then, on 19 March, the day of the final vote on the bill, the BBC ran not a single article on the event, despite this being one of the most bitterly opposed pieces of legislation in recent history – it was as if the vote was not taking place. The next day, with the bill passed, they ran a full seven articles on the story. Three days after the bill passed, Radio 4 broadcast The Report: ‘Simon Cox asks: why is NHS reform mired in controversy?’ Why this was not broadcast before the Lords’ vote is a mystery. 

When the Bill was passed, the bill scrolling across the BBC News’ screen ran ‘Bill which gives power to GPs passes’. (166). Huitson remarks that when the Beeb and the other news networks reported that the Bill gave power to GPs and allowed a greater role for the private sector, it was little more than regurgitating government press releases. (p. 168).

Beeb Bias Problem Due to Corporation’s Importance and Domination of Broadcast News

Huitson also comments on the specific failure of the Beeb to provide adequate coverage of NHS privatisation in its role as one of the great British public institutions, the dominant role it has in British news reporting. On pages 169-70 he writes

Campaigners may not expect more from the Sun but they certainly do from the BBC, given its status as an impartial public service broadcaster whose news gathering is supported directly by licence fee payers. The BBC accounts for 70 per cent of news consumption on television. Further, the BBC accounts for 40 per cent of online news read by the public, three times that of its closes competitor, the Mail. Quite simply, the BBC dominates UK news. The weight given to the BBC here is not purely down to its dominance, however, but also because, along with the NHS, the BBC remains one of our great public institutions, an entity that is supposedly above commercial pressures. Many of the stories ignored by the BBC were covered by the for-profit, right-wing press, as well as the Guardian and Channel 4, so the concern is not that the organisation failed to ‘campaign’ for the NHS, but that it failed to report facts that other outlets found newsworthy.

The BBC’#s archive of TV and radio coverage is neither available for the public to research nor technically practical to research, but there are a number of reasons for confidence that their online content is highly indicative of their broader output. First, BBC online is a fully integrated part of the main newsroom rather than a separate operation. Consequently, TV and radio coverage that can be examined is largely indistinguishable from the related online content, as demonstrated in the examples given above. During the debate of Lansley’s bill, the BBC TV and radio were both subject to multiple complaints, the figures for which the BBC has declined to release.

Beeb’s Reporting of NHS Privatisation as Biased as Coverage of Miners’ Strike

He also compares the Beeb’s coverage of the bill, along with that of the rest of the media, to its similarly biased reporting of the miners’ strike.

The overall media coverage of the health bill brings to mind a quote from BBC radio correspondent Nicholas Jones, on the BBC’s coverage of the miners’ strike: ‘stories that gave prominence to the position of the National Union of Miners could simply be omitted, shortened or submerged into another report.’ (pp. 172-3).

Conclusion

The Beeb does produce some excellent programmes. I really enjoyed last night’s Dr. Who, for example. But the right-wing bias of its news reporting is now so extreme that in many cases it is fair to say that it is now a propaganda outlet for the Tory party and big business. It’s utterly indefensible, and in my view it will only be reformed if and when the newsroom and its managers are sacked in its entirety. In the meantime, Boris and the rest of the Tories are clamouring for its privatisation. Godfrey Bloom, one of the more prominent Kippers, has also put up a post or two in the past couple of days demanding precisely that.

If the Beeb was genuinely impartial, it would have defenders on the Left. But it is rapidly losing them thanks to its bias. And to the Tories, that’s also going to be a plus.

Thanks to the Beeb’s own Tory bias, it’s going to find it very hard to combat their privatisation.

And in the meantime they will have helped destroy the most valued of British institutions, the NHS, and free, universal healthcare to Britain’s citizens.

Pop Music: Ministry of Merkin Send Up Godfrey Bloom

This is another video I discovered on the SlatUKIP Facebook page. It’s the comedy pop band, Ministry of Merkin, spoofing Godfrey Bloom of Kipper infamy. Bloom is responsible for many offensive comments and views, but is probably most notorious for his remark about immigrants and ‘Bongo Bongo Land’.

The Merkins portray Bloom as a beer-swilling upper class boor with a brutal, domineering attitude to his secretary and a massive gay crush on Farage.

Warning: there’s very strong language in here almost from the start, so as they say, it’s not suitable for those of a nervous disposition. Mind you, neither is Bloom, Farage, or indeed, the rest of UKIP.

The Complete Guide to the Bigots, Racists, Islamophobes and Weirdoes in UKIP

The website Angry Meditations has put up this post, Your definitive guide to UKIP’s racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, anti-Semites, paedophiles, animal abusers, and violent bullies. listing every every racial and religious bigot, misogynist, paedophile, animal abuser and general weirdo in UKIP and their offensive statement and views, or their crimes against children and animals. And there’s a very long line of them, from the Fuhrage downwards.

They include not just the Purple Duce himself, but also senior party officials, such as Steve Crowther, Neil Hamilton, Matthew Richardson, Misty Thackeray, Christopher Monckton, Stuart Wheeler, and Winston Mackenzie; the party’s MP, Mark Reckless; their MEPs, Janice Atkinson, Diane James, Julia Reid, Stuart Agnew, Patrick O’Flynn, Roger Helmer, Bill Etheridge, Mike Hookem, Gerard Batten and Godfrey Bloom; their parliamentary candidates, Bill Walker, Donald Grewar, Przemek Skwircynski, John Rees-Evans, Dr Jonathon Munday, Martyn Ford, Lynton Yates, Rev. George Hargreaves, Ted Strike, Philip Rose, Julia Gasper, Kerry Smith, Mark Walker, David Evans and John White; local chairs and party secretaries, Steve Kendall, Pamela Preedy, Neil Whitear, Richard Crouch, David Challice, Peter Entwhistle, and Andy Lovie; local councillors, Trevor Shonk, Martyn Heale, Tiggs Keywood-Wainwright, Donna Edmunds, Chris Paine, Eric Kitson, Rozanne Duncan, David Silvester, and Dave Small; council candidates, Geoff Courtenay, Anne-Marie Crampton, John Lyndon Sullivan, Dean Perks, Iain McLaughlan, Paul Rimmer, Magnus Nielsen, David Wycherley, James Silverfox, Gary Port, William Henwood, Matt Pavey, Ronald Loebell, Heino Vockrodt and Keith Woods; ordinary UKIP members and affiliated groups and individuals, David William Griffiths, Jan Zolyniak, Douglas Denny, Timothy ‘Dusty’ Miller, Christian Soldiers of UKIP, Demetri Marchessini, Richard Desmond, Robert Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, Bjorn Soder and Mike Read.

The article begins

As a historic election looms in Britain, a self-described anti-establishment party which wants to leave the EU and cull immigration is beginning to make waves. UKIP promises to restore lost British glory by renegotiating trade deals and placing restrictions on immigration, and insists that it is an inclusive, libertarian, non-racist party.

So, one would expect an exposé list like this to be full of candidates taking on the most powerful and greedy: Media elites, corporate CEOs, stockbrokers, bankers, and anybody else with significant money or influence. And yet, this “non-racist” party instead seems to be riddled with hate-filled bigots whose sole delight is targeting minorities and those with absolutely no power.

Perhaps this list is part of some big Lib Dem-Labour-Tory-BBC conspiracy to discredit the opposition and maintain the status quo. Or perhaps its evidence of a pervasive lack of compassion and a rife infestation of hatred.

Unfortunately, I have to update this list nearly every week, and it’s therefore divided into sections to make it easier to read.

It’s at https://angrymeditations.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/your-definitive-guide-to-ukips-violent-racists-sexists-homophobes-benefit-haters-anti-semites-islamophobes-and-extremists/ if you want to take a look at the list yourself and see the really disgusting ideas and actions of the people listed themselves.

And after reading that long list, you’re left wondering if there’s anyone, anyone at all in UKIP, who isn’t a raging bigot who hates just about marginalised group around, and who isn’t a threat to children and livestock.

Tory Humour: Just in Case You Thought the Only Racists Were in UKIP

One of the political programmes planned by Channel 4 is a drama-documentary, 100 Days of UKIP, about the possible results of Fuhrer Farage and his blackshirts winning the election. The drama is about the events surrounding the first 100 days of a UKIP government. The story centres around a young, female Asian MP for the Kippers, who becomes increasingly disillusioned with the vicious racism in her party and its policies. The programme predicts the eruption of race riots, caused by the police rounding up and deporting immigrants. Interspersed with the fictional drama is real footage from the Kippers, including Godfrey Bloom and his notorious comments about ‘Bongo-Bongo Land’.

It’s already generated controversy. The Fuhrage himself was due to be interviewed by Paxo as part of the programme, but the Mussolini of embittered, pro-smoking reactionaries pulled out of it. Bloom and other senior Kippers have become notorious for racist and misogynist comments. However, just in case people start to think that it’s only the Kippers, who make comments worthy of the late Bernard Manning, here’s this story from Private Eye. It’s from Private Eye again, for the 11-24 January 2013. It reports how the Tory MP Conor Burns was extremely upset about the coarse nature of the humour in the Big Fat Quiz of the past year during the festive season. It also reminds readers of a racist joke he told at a Tory meeting ten years previously in 2003.

Tory MP Conor Burns led the condemnation of Channel 4 for screening the controversial Big Fat Quiz of 2012.

“I actually watched some of the broadcast because we are staying with family for the holidays and I found it quite distasteful. Sadly, this sort of gauche, vulgar ‘anything goes humour’ that appeals to the lowest common denominator in society is becoming more common,” Burns told the Daily Mail. “it was base, unfunny comedy and in some ways I thought its greater crime really was that it just wasn’t funny… I will be writing to Channel 4 and asking for its editorial explanation for broadcasting such unpleasant output”.

So what does tickle his funnybone? This the same Conor Burns who, as we revealed in Eye 1262, brought the house down at a right-wing dinner in 2003 with a gag Denis Thatcher had told him about how CHOGM did not, in fact, stand for Commonwealth heads of Government Meeting but for Coons Holidaying on Government Money. Boom! Boom!

This was, of course, coming when Dave Cameron was trying to clean up the Tories racist image, ostentatiously getting rid of Tories with very obvious connections to the BNP and severing ties to the Monday Club.

My guess is that despite all this, the racism and racist jokes are still there, and that UKIP don’t by any means have a monopoly on them.

Vox Political: Mirror Reports Farage Stating Wants to Privatise the NHS

Another piece from Mike that definitely needs repeating. Farage has been campaigning for the Rochester and Strood election stating that he is opposed to the privatisation of the NHS. The Mirror, on the other hand, shows how Farage two years ago stated that he would feel much more comfortable replacing it with the American, insurance-led system. The article’s entitled Farage admits he’d replace NHS with US-style healthcare – Daily Mirror.

It begins

Nigel Farage has been caught on camera admitting he wants to replace the NHS with a US-style private insurance health system, according to the Daily Mirror, which states:

The Ukip chief insists that he and his party are against privatising the health service and are fighting next week’s Rochester & Strood by-election promising to protect it.

But Mr Farage was left red-faced when footage of him saying he would feel more “comfortable” if Britain’s healthcare system was opened up to the “marketplace” emerged today.

Health unions and Labour MPs accused him of secretly plotting the end of the NHS.

Farage’s second in command, Paul Nuttall, has said exactly the same thing. And yet amazingly there are still working class voters who somehow think that the party of ‘Thatcherism on steroids’ actually cares about and represents them.

It doesn’t. And their attitude to the disabled, along with women, the unemployed, immigrants is equally disgusting. The monstrous and grotesque Godfrey Bloom in a debate with a young disabled student at the Oxford Union, asked him if he’d ever been mistaken for Richard III(!)

Three thousands years ago the ancient Egyptians thought it was impolite and immoral to mock the disabled. Along with sayings like

Manners, remember, will make people love you,
Rise for your elders and those set above you.

They also had this advice against sneering at people suffering from epilepsy or mental illness:

Do not jeer at one possessed by a god,
Nor laugh at him when he goes astray.

Afrocentrist historians like Basil Davidson and Bernal, the author of Black Athena, and Poe, the author of Black Spark, White Fire, believe that the ancient Egyptians were the founders of Western civilisation. It’s a controversial claim. What does seem to be clear is that they were a dam’ sight more civilised than Farage’s crew of right-wing loudmouths.

UKIP: Dragging Britain kicking and screaming back to the Bronze Age.

After Godfrey Bloom, Another Crazed UKIP Loony – Patrick O’Flynn

Just after the media reported the misognynist comments by UKIP’s Godrey Bloom yesterday about women being ‘sluts’ comes this report in Pride’s Purge of the intention of Patrick O’Flynn of the Daily Express to stand for them for parliament. The internet political purgative notes that Flynn also seems to have some of Godfrey’s own views regarding Non-Whites. Pride’s Purge states that he ‘is after all the person who once called for the Notting Hill Carnival to be banned.

On the grounds that the cost of policing the event is too high you understand – nothing at all to do with the fact that Notting Hill is a celebration of afro-caribbean culture.’

Bloom, you may remember, was the UKIP politician, who criticised Britain sending aid to the developing world, calling it ‘Bongo-Bongo land’. He also seems to share Bloom’s contempt for women. Pride’s Purge states that ‘in a 2008 Express article criticising maternity rights, Mr O’Flynn also once described women in employment who get pregnant as a ‘disaster’.

Pride’s article attacking O’Flynn can be read here: http://tompride.co.uk/ukip-candidate-notting-hill-carnival-should-be-banned-and-pregnancy-at-work-a-disaster.

Now O’Flynn’s comments aren’t about pregnant female employees putting extra expense on their employees aren’t by any means confined to him. The Daily Mail has been running stories like this since, well, as far as I can remember, as did the Express itself long before O’Flynn came on board. You can find the same attitude amongst certain members of the American Libertarian Right. Reactionaries like O’Flynn would like to return us to the traditional gender roles in which women stayed at home and men went out to work. I’ve no doubt that on this, as on their views about the Notting Hill Carnival and Africa being ‘Bongo-Bongo land’, Bloom and O’Flynn don’t see themselves as being racist or misogynist. They probably see themselves as simply solid Brits standing for traditional values against the encroachments of ‘political correctness’. This is, however, what they are. Unfortunately, I can see UKIP gaining even more popularity because of their comments, for the same reason that a lot of people would vote for Jeremy Clarkson. In the meantime, these two remind me of nothing more than Alas Smith and Jones’ ‘Just a Bigot’ sketch. This was a spoof panel game in which four swivel-eyed loons competed to have the most outrageously offensive bigoted views. Questions included ‘they’re sick, evil, I hate them and they ought to be banned’. That, however, was simply a bit of satirical TV. UKIP unfortunately are the living reality.