The BBC’s ‘on the ground’ piece for the Christmas junior doctors’ strike is based almost entirely on uncritical quotes from two BMA officials who are not named as such. This is the award-winning journalism you pay for on pain of prosecution…
Yesterday’s article in the South of England section was titled “I am sleep-deprived, overworked and deserve more” and carried quotes from three people, one of whom was the chief executive of the Royal Berkshire NHS Trust in Reading. The only two junior doctors consulted were called Heather Gunn and Matt Bilton. Gunn said “I do not want to be strike, I want to be at work helping my colleagues. Unfortunately the reality is that many doctors like myself face the prospect of not having a job”…
Bilton said “The government… put an offer this past week but it was too little, too late, and so unfortunately we have no alternative.” Nice line that, wonder who came up with it…
Nowhere in the piece does the BBC care to mention that Gunn is deputy chairman of the BMA’s South Central Regional Council and Matt Bilton is longtime Chairman of the BMA’s Thames Valley Regional Resident Doctors Committee. Pop that piece in the bin would you darling…
Downing Street has been busy promoting a swish video of Starmer’s speech yesterday at the Jaguar Land Rover plant, including praise-filled testimonial from someone dressed like a local staff member:
“He could have done an announcement from London, in front of the television cameras, he chose to come to Solihull… He’s taking manufacturing seriously, I’m glad he’s come here today, I’m glad they’ve reacted quickly, and I’m really pleased to hear that they’re going to support manufacturing and the car industry. He’s going to have everyone’s back who’s employed in manufacturing in the UK.”
Imagine Guido’s shock on discovering that the anonymous layman is in fact Labour councillor Steve Evans, serving the party in his elected post since 2006 and currently Deputy Leader of the Wolverhampton Labour Group. No time to add that detail to the heavily-edited video?
A classic case of communications skullduggery. Can Downing Street find one actual member of the public who is a fan of Starmer?
UPDATE: Downing Street has deleted the offending video from Facebook, Instagram, and X.
Yesterday’s episode of Countryfile featured a segment on Labour’s farm tax. Steve Reed got to make his case…
Within minutes the programme introduced “tax expert” Arun Advani to discuss claims from “farming groups” that thousands of farms will be dragged into IHT payment. Advani peddled his own figures which effectively ignore one half of the Farm Tax’s relief removals…
Co-conspirators will remember Advani is director of radical-left think tank CenTax – which consistently pushes for broad and extensive tax hikes. The BBC programme failed to specify that Advani’s numerous reports pushing for the Farm Tax have formed the basis of Reeves’ policy – something admitted by the Treasury. The Countryfile producers also didn’t think it was worth specifying that Advani has pushed for the state expropriation of farmland that is sold as a result of APR’s removal…
The programme made no allusion either to the fact that Advani says Labour is “genuinely listening” to him, all while Treasury minister James Murray spoke at CenTax’s launch and said he seeks “to make sure that collaboration between CenTax, Treasury and HMRC continues for many years into the future.” Advani is writing Treasury policy…
As Guido has long documented, left-wing wonks political positions are rarely contextualised by the BBC on screen and in print. Imagine the uproar from the left if someone from the Institute of Economic Affairs got interviewed without it being mentioned that they were pro-free market…
Matt Chorley is making waves in his new role presenting BBC 5 Live. His first interview with Prime Minister Starmer unearthed the explosive story that Keir’s daughter was getting a Siberian kitten, and today he was discussing the ins and outs of the benefits of Labour’s new Renters’ Rights Bill. Chorley brought on the director of Generation Rent, Ben Twomey to heap praise on the new policy. Though the top hack forgot to mention the rest of Twomey’s resume…
Twomey stood as the Labour candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in Warwickshire in 2021. He’s also a long-standing member of the Labour Homelessness Campaign. No surprise that the activist was so supportive of Labour’s plan, then…
Nigel Farage has had his fare share of critics, and now he has another one to add to the roster: former counter-terrorism police chief Neil Basu. Basu accused Farage of inciting violence after he posted a video asking “whether the truth is being withheld from us” over the Southport stabbings suspect. As Nigel says, it’s “quite legitimate to ask questions” about the vile stabbings of young girls, three of whom are now dead…
Basu hit out at Farage last night: “Nigel Farage is giving the EDL [English Defence League] succour, undermining the police, creating conspiracy theories, and giving a false basis for the attacks on the police.” His criticisms have been framed by mainstream media as authoritative due to his background as a former counterterrorism officer. Though Guido reminds his readers that just a few months ago he came out and endorsed Keir Starmer at the launch of his ‘pledge cards’. No surprise the Labour luvvie has come out swinging against Nigel then…
The BBC brought human rights lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie onto the Today Programme this morning to chat about the first voluntary Rwanda removal this week. What the BBC seems to have forgotten to mention is that McKenzie also has a role advising the Labour Party as a member of their “Race Equality Taskforce”. She spends her time on Twitter urging failed asylum seekers not to respond to the Home Office if they are contacted about voluntary departure, as well as accusing the Tory Party of launching “racist pile-ons” against her. Would have been useful for the BBC to mention…
Apart from vaguely rubbishing the story, she also failed to answer the fundamental question involved:
“What should happen to people who are here who have exhausted every effort to stay here, who are not here legally because they have failed to gain the right to be here legally?“
McKenzie eventually argued we shouldn’t worry about it because a “very small number” don’t get asylum and that “the UK doesn’t have a major problem with asylum seekers” – instead this country simply does not want to “do its bit“. Is that soon to be the official Labour position?
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”