That Was Kind Of The Point...

Alan @ B-BBC notes a certain difference in tone in the BBC's reporting of South Yorkshire Police's two adventures in creative writing.

He's got a point, but coming back at you, Al!

Up until a week ago, anyone saying the official story of Hillsborough was total balls was clearly a tinfoil hat wearing loon. Besides, Scousers! Even though, well,...you know.

Now we know that the main mistake us sceptics made was lack of imagination. Who knew that even the families' own lawyers were in on it? Are we supposed to be shocked that, contrary to popular mythology, SYP aren't an otherwise blameless organisation driven mad by the strain of dealing with Scousers?

The whole point folks like me were making was that you can't be slightly corrupt. Once you accept that it's OK for police officers to file false reports, destroy CCTV footage and release bogus press statements, there's no getting off the bus. That's Conservatism 101. It's the left and their libertarian pals that keeps telling us, hey, a little bit of corruption/perversion/cannibalism etc doesn't make someone a bad person.

Well, not necessarily, but that's the way to bet.

Fort Apache: Salford

Now is this not the perfect metaphor for modern liberalism ? Britain's state broadcaster shifts some facilities from one part of Britain to another part of Britain, but let's not go crazy and expect them to start rubbing shoulders with the locals.

Hey, some of these people have never even heard of hummus.

Personally, I could almost live with the BBC making like Stanley Baker in Zulu, if only we didn't have to listen to their endless jibber jabber about diversity. Their staff roster looks like the United Colours of Liberalism, but they'd rather drink the local water than risk hiring someone who may once have gone to see a non-Premiership football match.

That Ferry Has Already Sailed Jenny........

Via Julie, we find out that leftists in Liverpool are playing the Scouse nationalism card.

Hey, it's like they've never heard of Luciana Berger. Who she? The beyond Cameronesque rich kid who was parachuted into a Liverpool constituency despite not knowing much of anything about the place she supposedly represents - although, on the plus side, her defence that you can't ask a girl a football question at least means Andy Gray's got one supporter in the house.

In fact, she hadn't even been elected before she started giving the finger to the Scouse trash - and folks like Jenny sucked it up and said 'please sir, can I have some more'?

Pretty much the defining feature of a proud and self-confident peoples is that they don't accept being treated as latter-day rotten boroughs by rich families in the capital. In so far as Jenny and pals have no issues with this, they're in no position to lecture anyone else about pride.

....

Oh, and by the way, here's a question for Jenny and the rest of her 'proud Scouser' friends: if the Army was full of people from Hampstead and Dibden Purlieu, would the Guardian still be as keen on its 'All War Crimes, All The Time' coverage?

Projection, Much?

Well said, Sir! Plus who's the Uncle Tom anyway? An MP who's risen to be a minister while still eating loads of pies, or a journalist who lives in Richmond, but gets paid to go into London and appear on TV, dressed in a Magpies shirt, while drinking a bottle of dog and talking about gan dan the toon?

Anyway, what does it say about the BBC that when they need a Northerner, they hire the Al Jolson of Surrey? Nothing we didn't already know!

As I Was Saying...

Proof of the stopped clock hypothesis: while the rest of the MSM was busily redbranding Hillsborough as a series of unfortunate events, the Guardian (!!) had a pretty good run-down of just why this is still a live issue on Merseyside, all the more effective for the way it bends over backwards not to ram home any of the loopier issues (seriously, only 3 out of 42 ambulances made it there? What could have happened? An attack by a giant ambulance-eating monster? Or something else)?

That's the flip-side of it all. Almost from the moment it happened, a conga line of sleazy idiots have been claiming to be Jesus on the Cross, boldly standing up for the important principle of.... what, exactly? That, say, a public body facing serious charges should be allowed to issue false press releases without consequence? That's an important principle of British law?

To ask it is to answer it. The Hillsborough grave dancers aren't defending any important principle, in fact, they're happy to trash the basics of British justice, just as long as some Scousers get killed.

Unlike certain David Camerons I could mention, I'm a real conservative, so I think morons should have the right to free speech just as much as anyone else. Hey, like I said before, it's good to have these people tell us who they are. But let's not pretend there's anything virtuous or bold about what they believe. Buying tickets for the South Yorkshire Police Evidence BBQ pretty much kills that line. These people are bloodthirsty bigots and they enjoy seeing people die. Well, whatever. Just don't tell me they're principled.

20th Anniversary Of Something Happening To Some Folks

I've always been sceptical of mass displays of emotion. A mob is a mob, whatever particular form of mass hysteria they're experiencing at a particular time. Still, the whole Hillsborough thing has reminded me of the flip-side of that, the way the whole ceremonial, feel your pain, let's all hold hands side of things can become a displacement activity to deflect from having to deal with the real issues.

Just as the more 9-11 memorials there were, the more it seemed the Twin Towers must have been struck by a meteor, so there's been a strangely passive quality to the MSM's Hillsborough coverage. True, I understand that for several second during the BBC's ten hour Hillsborough marathon, it was possible to hear Sports Minister Andy Burnham being heckled by people chanting 'Justice for Hillsborough' but what form that justice would take, and why they didn't think they had had it already, who could tell? No one dependent on the MSM, that's for sure.

That's why I bit down on the urge to write an obscene comment to this post. Given the MSM's coverage, DV's reaction is fair enough - the only thing I'd say to him is this: given what a bang up job the MSM has done on reporting the grievances of Ulster Protestants, why exactly would you trust them to report fairly on what motivates Hillsborough protesters?

No, that's not a demand that broadcasters get deep into the details of the Gate Tape and the 3.15 cut-off every time they cover Hillsborough, but there's something utterly repellent in this determination to bury serious issues under a ten foot layer of psychobabble.

Guardian Finds Guilty Person

Hallelujah! It had to happen eventually: the Guardian is enraged! by a show of support for someone they call a 'convicted criminal'.

Just to spell it out to the Guardian, Shields may indeed have been convicted, but a 'criminal'? Didn't the Guardian used to be in favour of actual trials? Still, let's check the scorecard here, guy captured by US troops on Afghan battlefield and sent to Gitmo: obviously innocent. Guy arrested in Fourth World hell hole and sentenced by kangaroo court: guilty!

It's actually an interesting question: is Guardian hack Daniel Taylor truly aware of how desperately he's having to scrabble round to try and make his case, or does this kind of bias just come naturally?

The FA's disciplinary department fined Norris £5,000 and is alarmed that Liverpool should also publicly back someone convicted of a serious crime and, in the process, open themselves to allegations of playing judge and jury.

Unlike the Guardian, which never questions the decisions of the courts.

For the record, Norris was fined for supporting somehow who really had committed an offence, which is such a blindingly obvious difference it probably explains why the Guardian can't actually quote a single named person from the 'concerned' FA expressing actual concern. Hell, you know it's gotten bad when the house journal of the elitist left is forced to cite radio phone-ins as proof of public concern.

But It's True!

See, I couldn't have said this without looking like a bitter Northerner.

Arrogance Or Delusion ?

Don’t laugh, but the Tories have decided to go after votes in the North. This, lest we forget, from the party whose list of preferred candidates – supposedly designed to produce a ‘party that looks like Britain’ – managed to include more councilors from Kensington and Chelsea than from the whole North-West plus Yorkshire. Still, at least they’re strong in the North-East. Oopsie – looks like not only do they have to parachute in candidates but …..well, you know. Not that all this implies any kind of contempt for Viz country. No, siree. Just how STOOPID do they think we are ?

The BBC's Other Bias

There's an old story about a philosopher and an actress who meet at a party. The philosopher asks the actress 'would you sleep with me for $1 million ?'. 'Ok' says the actress. The philospher then says 'How about $10 then ?'. The actress is enraged: 'what do you think I am ? Some kind of prostitiute ?', and the philosopher says 'well, we've already determined that, now we're just talking about the details''.

I remembered that story when I heard about the latest happenings at the BBC. In a move sure to shock millions, it's been revealed that some senior BBC staff are opposing plans to move some departments north:

[BBC director general, Mark Thompson]is fantastically supportive of the move, but at the same time there is enormous resistance to the idea from the highest levels in the BBC, despite the obvious political advantage of moving to the north," the source said.

"These people are in incredibly powerful positions and are absolutely committed emotionally to stopping it from happening.

So here we have an organisation that's the epitome of Liberal PC, morally equivalent, multi-culti, 'who are we to say' drivel, but they're comfortable having senior management who won't move north, 'cause, y'know, it's full of those people. A better example of the essential snobbery at the heart of Liberalism you will not find.

But there's something more here. The BBC disavows charges of cultural and political bias by claiming that their critics are all hyper-partisan loons. Well, OK, but now we have a form of bias where we really can measure it objectively. There it is: the BBC insists on basing virtually all its operations in the most expensive city in the known universe, even while zealously defending its right to rake off the TV tax from oop north. More to the point, the objective BBC has, objectively, done nothing about this. The BBC is happy having executives who openly discriminate against a large chunk of the country. So much for all their pretty talk about their integrity. The BBC is fine with bias in principle, they're just quibbling about the details.