The British Brexit Biased Brilliant Betraying Boorish Brazen Bought-off Broadcasting Corporation

There’s a persistent belief among many that the BBC is inherently biased. That’s nonsense.

No group the size of the British Broadcasting Corporation can be absolutely impartial at all times, but to claim that the largest broadcasting organisation in the world has deep-rooted and deliberate bias is a bit off.

BBC or Stalin?

A royal charter and 95 years...all down the pan?

Impartiality is one of the BBC’s core values, and has been since they were invented as a radio network in 1922. The Royal Charter - which lays out the principles and way they’re run - opens with the importance of neutrality. It's physically is built into the BBC's constitution. But does that mean anything?

In clause 3 of 72, the BBC demands absolute independence

A lot of people would say 'no'. The most common anti-BBC claims are made by the tabloid newspapers (Mail, Sun, Express, etc.), and they say the 'beeb' is anti-Conservative and anti-Brexit.

The flaw with these claims is that the papers are owned by a pro-Conservative, pro-Brexit media tycoon: Rupert Murdoch. Obviously, he's biased against neutral news. But also, he doesn't like the BBC.

Pro-Tory...

He wants his media empire (including Fox, Sky, The Times and the Mail) to control all news broadcasting so he can make more money. As long as the BBC is powerful, it'll attract his audience away, and keep revenues low. 

So there's a hidden agenda in their anti-BBC-ness?

A bigger flaw with the way people attack the BBC is that they all have different issues with how it reports. 
A quick search on Twitter and hundreds of people believe the BBC is anti-Tory (Conservative) and hundreds more believe it’s pro-Tory. 
Same again on Brexit (although quite a few more believe it’s anti-Brexit).

Or anti-Tory?

There's often a basic ignorance of facts. The Sun went crazy over the BBC inviting 'vocal defenders of the EU' to its proms. This includes 'remain-supporters' Theresa May, Phillip Hammond, Jeremy Corbyn, and Sadiq Khan. The Sun sees this as further proof the BBC is deeply anti-Brexit. 
OR, maybe they were invited because they’re three of the most important politicians in the country...?

These arguments are often poorly researched, have a hidden agenda, and can be disproved or explained easily. The BBC is built on rules, regulations and principles that means it’s very hard to be consistently biased.

Laura Kuenssberg

The first female political editor at the BBC

This is Laura Kuenssberg. She’s the BBC’s Political Editor. And she comes under more abuse than probably any other journalist nationally. 

She had to have a bodyguard at Labour’s party conference in autumn, and has faced online petitions demanding that she's sacked.

All this because she's apparently biased.



Depending on who you believe, she's either an arrogant Conservative, disgusted by Corbyn, or an anti-Tory, out to stop Brexit.

Text is too small to read, but it's slamming her coverage
of the Labour manifesto

While bloggers and the Labour Party yell at her for being against Corbyn, the newspapers defame her for apparently attacking anything vaguely right-wing.    

I can't believe she's pro-Tory: her most recent blog posts on the BBC website have been over Brexit, and she’s definitely not supportive of the government. A lot of her articles remind us of the weakness of the Conservative majority: ‘Theresa May’s government...[has been] folding, budging, or making new promises to avoid losing actual votes’. 

Daily Express attacks an interview with Theresa May

And the weakness of Theresa May’s government, and their incompetence at Brexit negotiations, is fact, and Kuenssberg is only reporting the news in saying so.

On the other side, her distaste of Corbyn may be explained by the fact that she’s more used to working with more efficient, personal, MPs. 

Corbyn, for all his strengths, is neither efficient nor personal, despite his show persona. She got into hot water over editing an interview with him poorly, but the response from his supporters and the Labour Party has been disproportionately aggressive. Many question whether, as a woman, she's suitable for the role.

Angering both sides is very common in journalism. That's what journalists do, after all; they pose annoying questions and uncover uncomfortable reports. It's clearly a measure of her success and tenacity at balanced reporting that she won the Press Gazette's ‘Best Journalist of the Year’ award in 2016.

She said that she would ‘die in a ditch for BBC impartiality’. That says it all, really.

I honestly can't believe that the BBC is biased. It works so hard to maintain press impartiality, and in doing so has infuriated all sides of the political spectrum. 

Maybe it's the critics who are biased; do they need to learn some hard truths about their own point of view?

The Church and the world

From Guatemalan hilltop towns to China’s social revolution, the Church is going strong.

(*Note on terminology* sometimes I talk about 'Protestants'. This is a denomination of Christianity and is within that religion, rather than being separate.)

Guatemala



Almolonga

The Economist recently published a special report on Almolonga, a town of 14,000 in Guatemala’s highlands.

Guatemala is not a prospering, peaceful country. In 2014, it was 31st of 33 Latin American/Caribbean countries on the Human Development Index. A former leader has been convicted on charges of genocide.

 

But in the 1970s there was a revival of the Christian faith in Almolonga. And that revival has changed the town. In 2003, they opened a secondary school which sends graduates to national universities; the school board talk seriously about students working at NASA.


Guatemala's in Central America

Three-quarters of the town are now members of the Church, and farmers in Almolonga earn two times more than farmers in a neighbouring town (where religion hasn’t taken off).

Down in Guatemala City, the capital, almost all of the 200 drug rehab centres are run by Christians; having a faith has been linked to a rise in earnings among male workers; the Church has had a prominent role in anti-corruption campaigns and gang ceasefires.

The Church is on the rise in Guatemala.
 It’s easy enough to shrug this off as a an accident; a small country changing amidst a struggling world. It's not all success; the Church there has been politically clumsy at times (e.g. allowing the state more power over its affairs).
But I don't buy the 'accident' story. Because it's not the only place where change is happening so fast, and with such great effects.

 

China

One of the more tightly controlled states in the world has one of the most rapidly expanding Christian populations. As people become richer, they want their modernisation to have a moral framework.



Pastor Wu Weiqing of the state church.
He believes that Jesus 'would be a member of
the Communist Party'.

An bloody attempt at suppression and destruction of Christianity in the 1960s failed, and there are now more than 80 million Christians in China.

There could be as many as 160m by 2025, which will make it the world’s most Christian country, and the number of Protestant Christians will outstrip Europe's significantly (currently standing at 100 million). 
True Christianity seems to have no problem with the fact that the state dislikes (read: 'hates') it and tries to dilute it by running a false, 'state-before-God' Church. Which is good.



One large cathedral in Wenzhou (a coastal city) being demolished

Because this persistent growth worries China’s leadership. They see Christianity as an organisation outside their all-knowing control. Its different ethics and codes could make it a problem (there's sure to be conflict in the future).

So they’ve started to clamp down on open Churches, investing into their own brand of Christianity while demolishing buildings linked with the original faith.

But the Church thrives under persecution. People are simply going 'underground'. If this new round of repression goes anything like the last one, I’m not sure it will be very successful.

The developing world...throughout history

Okay...It's a generalisation. But there's so many different examples, and data is rather hard to come by so I've thrown them all in. What is clear though, is that a Church based on Christian love remains constant in the past, present, and probably the future.

In our more science-based, ‘rational’, Western identities, religion is certainly on the decline. Yet that trend runs opposite to the worldwide shift.


The spread of people who at least identify as Christian


As Mike Davies (an activist and writer) puts it, ‘Marx has yielded the stage to Mohammed and the Holy Ghost’.

Instead of embracing Karl Marx (the founder of communism) and launching revolutions or insurgencies, people are turning to Christianity and Islam for support.

In Colombia, scene of a Church revival, where a man would spend 40% of his earnings in a bar or brothel, he now invests it into his family. This has been linked to a rise in living standards and democracy, because women are more able to speak up.

William Wilberforce, an activist, successfully lobbied the government of the biggest slave trading nation in the world (Great Britain and its Dominions) to be the first to ban the practice in 1807. He then met the King of Russia and persuaded him to pass a similar law. All this was done with other notable Christians such as John Newton and Thomas Clarkson - the Church coming together.


And my favourite example: in East Germany in 1989, a Leipzig prayer movement sparked mass protests against an oppressive and ruthless regime. 

The police let the 70,000 people who'd gone to the prayer meeting campaign for change in East Germany's first ever mass protest.
The protests snowballed, and next month the country collapsed under pressure, leading to a united Germany and the end of the Cold War.

The Church is ridiculed in the UK. It's seen as backwards, comical, and stubborn. And it's gotten things wrong in the past. Badly wrong. But if people were to see the amazing things that it does, around the world and for all people, I think we'd be amazed.

 

A Stubborn Donkey

After damaging losses last year, the Democrat Party is re-emerging and gaining ground again. 

It’s had successes in Virginia and New Jersey, and may do well in Alabama.

Virginia:

(Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Attorney-general, House of Delegates up for election)

The New York Times called the Virginia elections the “purest form of grassroots anger” at President Trump. The convincing vote for the Democrat Party suggests that the people are getting fed up with his leadership.

Ralph Northam - staying on as Governor -  beat rival Ed Gillespie by a margin of 231,715 votes; that’s an 8.9% lead. 
Northam is not a typical Democrat. He has vowed to work with President Trump, and admits to twice voting for George W. Bush. But this stance seems to have secured many swing voters, attracted by his more moderate style.

Northam (left) and Fairfax (right) celebrate

Meanwhile, Justin Fairfax became Virginia’s new Lieutenant-Governor, while Mark Herring held onto his attorney-general seat. They are both Democrats. 

Then in a vote almost too close to count, they took the House of Delegates (i.e. the House of Lords) from the Republicans, who'd previously had a 2:1 majority.

This is a big success for the Democrats. Yes, the opposition normally does well in the local elections, and yes, they were already strong in Virginia. 

But they’ve shown an ability to take the more moderate centre ground with well-chosen candidates. Mr Northam is polled to have won votes on healthcare and opposition to Trump. The Republican Party doesn’t have a convincing answer to either of these issues.


New Jersey:

(Governor, Senate, Assembly, Mayors)

Election map -
New York is in the top right.

In a state that traditionally bucks the trend, former President Barack Obama and native rock star Bon Jovi both supported Phil Murphy to his first political victory: the Democrat candidate soundly beat Kim Guadagno to the Governorship, enjoying a 13.3% margin.

The victory here was slightly more expected: there are 900,000 more Democrat members than Republican members, and the Democrats won here comfortably last year. 
Also, neither candidate was overly-exciting. Turnout was low, inevitably favouring the Democrats.

But any victory is welcome for the Party right now, and the success will hold off internal squabbling and divisions. They have majorities in the State Senate and Assembly, facing down Republican opposition, and giving them a secure base for the next election.







Alabama:

(Senator, State House)


After one of Alabama’s senators, Jeff Sessions, became Attorney-General to the United States, a new senator was needed. Cue a special election in this deeply Republican state.

The Republican front-runner is Roy Moore. Mr Moore is a revolver-waving, twice-suspended Chief Justice seen as a religious Conservative. His Democrat opponent is Doug Jones, a former Prosecutor from a blue-collar background. 

The Democrats are encouraged by their recent success in special elections (see above) and Moore’s odd inability to perform well in the general vote (he scraped through in 2012).
The Democratic National Committee has sent research reports and a personal profile on Moore. (Former Vice-President) Joe Biden has visited. The Party has sensed they may have a chance.

It’s an outside chance in this deeply religious, Bible-bashing territory, but it’s a chance nonetheless. A victory here would be a critical defeat for the Republican Party -  even a narrow defeat would enhearten the Democrats. 

Jones is fishing for those apathetic about Trump - maybe 37% of the electorate - but his traditional Democrat beliefs may hold him back: he’s energetic over renewable energy, education reform, and abortion. 

It’s too close to call.

Stay tuned for December 12th.

David Cameron: Clumsy Etonian or Modern Leader?

When we think about politics now, we think of Corbyn, Brexit, and Trump. 

David Cameron announces his resignation
(June 24th 2016)

We have little time to judge the UK’s 75th Prime Minister. He served for one and a fifth terms, and has been associated with huge change in healthcare, education, and welfare. 
Yet he resigned abruptly in 2016, attacked from all sides after defeat in the EU referendum vote. 

He split opinion decisively, and I believe his strengths (passion, morality, leadership) were too easily dismissed. However, he certainly rushed into things, and could seem out of touch at times.

So what were his main achievements; what were his big failures, and how do they add up?*

Achievements:

1) NCS

His flagship 'Big Society (1)' idea is the 'National Citizens Service', a youth scheme for 15-17 year olds, funded by the government and cheap to join. He wanted young people of all backgrounds to integrate, exploring different opinions and cultures, taking that experience into adulthood. 

As a recipient of the program, my experience did live up to that ideal, and certainly challenged the way I live and behave. With a financial overhaul, it could become a world leader of its kind. A big success for Cameron.

2) Aid budget

While suffering a lot of calls to stop doing so, Cameron continued sending 0.7% of our budget to developing/fragile nations - honouring commitments made by many major economies in recent years (while being the only one to keep that promise - we give more than the USA proportionally). 

The funds go to countries struggling with natural disasters or civil war, and reflect the British tradition for generosity and charity during crises like the spread of Ebola and famine in Africa.

3) The Scottish Referendum

His success in securing a ‘No’ vote over Scotland leaving the UK in 2014 has put the divisive issue to rest for a while. After concerns over a possible ‘Yes’ vote, he made a late emotional, and possibly vital, push for Scotland to stay. He made no attempt to disguise his patriotism in the campaign, and was visibly relived when it ended successfully. His passion for the country was evident and powerful.

Failures:

1) EU Referendum

His career breaker: the decision to leave the European Union. He confidently expected an easy, sensible campaign resulting in a 'Remain’ vote. What happened was a messy; controversial; tough four months, resulting in a slim, but disastrous, loss. 

He struggled to co-ordinate potential allies (Jeremy Corbyn dragged his feet throughout, and the Lib Dems had no strategy), and misread the mood of the people. The only part that he executed well was his resignation.

2) UKIP

His party never had any idea how to combat the anti-EU, anti-immigration party, preferring to ignore it until it was too late. Even though Farage struggled in the 2015 election, his mere existence kept the Conservatives talking about the EU so much that  Cameron decided to launch a referendum. UKIP also attracted many Tory voters and two of its MPs, causing damage to Cameron's reputation.

3) Education

Michael Gove - a close friend of Cameron's

His second education secretary, Michael Gove, led a huge reform of the education curriculum, emphasising exams and grades over individual-based learning. 

The result? A great increase in the burden and mental pressures on both students and teachers. No teaching body has thought well of the changes. 

Cameron certainly encouraged this, and gave Gove too free a reign in this area, so I partially attribute this failure to Cameron.

Summary:

He certainly can't deserve all the flak directed at him: he was undeniably compassionate and kind as a person, and took Britain in a much more progressive direction. Yet he was also misguided in his grasp of what the people thought, and struggled when events were moving at speed (see Libya). The choice is yours - what do you think? 

(Comment your opinion below.)

*Obviously, this is all my opinion and are the things I feel the keenest about; there are other big topics (e.g. gay marriage, Chinese relations, austerity, Libya) which all could be on here, but would make it too long. I'm also not going to refer to any scandals or tabloid stories - just policies.

Harvey vs. The Monsoon

Special Report

Massive flooding.

High rebuilding costs. 

Livelihoods destroyed.

The devastation across the Caribbean, Florida, and Texas in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is nothing compared to this year's rains in Asia.

Over a hundred people died in the two storms: roughly 70 in Hurricane Harvey, and over 50 in Hurricane Irma. These figures are alarming, but seem paltry compared to the wreckage across South Asia:

• At least 1,200 people across North India, Bangladesh, and Nepal have been killed by the monsoon so far this year.(1)

• A third of low-lying Bangladesh is reported to be underwater (3).

• The International Red Cross has said that the floods are the worst for forty years - including the rains in 2014 and 2005 (which brought Mumbai to a standstill).

Flooding in India's western Gujarat state

The monsoon is the yearly rain season in South Asia, stretching from July to September. The concentration of rain is 70% of India's yearly rainfall; it's vital to maintain agriculture and farming, in order to supply one billion people with food. Not enough rain means less food, potentially causing an economic crisis (2). Yet too much rain is also a problem. 

While monsoon rains are often violent and destructive – they tend to occur in poorer states where infrastructure to handle the rain isn't available – this one is devastating even by normal standards, and surpasses the ruin from 2014. (6)

1.8 million children are unable to go to school; whole states are flooded; clean water is scarce: people are forced to drink disease-infested, filthy water, which leads to epidemics of cholera and typhoid. Mumbai, a city in West India and the country's financial hub, has seen buildings collapse and electricity cut. (7)

It’s not hard to grasp that this is a major problem.      

Mumbai underwater

What's worse is the lack of attention that such a disaster has caused. This is far from the lavish social media attention following the United States' natural disasters, which have caused fewer fatalities and far more international sympathy.

Houston underwater  

The total GDP of the USA is $18.57 trillion. The total GDP of India/Bangladesh/Nepal is just over $2.5 trillion, so it's the Asian nations which have less capability to handle the crisis, and are working on a yearly deadline to repair and rebuild.

Where’s the 24-hour news coverage and donations from across the world? (8)

(N.B. This isn’t to say that the hurricanes were over-exaggerated or their effect was minimal - nor the people who died in them were unimportant and meaningless. Few would deny that they caused massive disaster.)

Most news organisations only began to show an interest when two toddlers died in the floods (5), reckoning that stories of dead children would ‘sell’, but general destruction and chaos wouldn’t. Leading up to the end of August, Texan floods secured three times as much media attention as the Indian monsoon - this was non-American media alone.  

Within America, Harvey was mentioned one hundred times more than India. (9)  

Why is there such a disparity in the media? Do they think that we care more for the affairs of white, 'civilised' nations more than Asian 'peasant' countries? Is it less effort to report from New York than New Delhi? Or do they simply not care? 

A more famous case of media bias, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, when terrorism in France dwarfed more serious bombings in Beirut, even though casualties were significantly less.

Of course, it's less common for hurricanes to hit the USA - and never in such a short space of time - but already people are rebuilding and rehousing. There's little more to be gained from covering the States.

But the monsoon still hasn't finished.

There needs to be a very good reason for this bias, because right now it's ensuring that hundreds of people are dying and without the slightest flicker of concern from our media - and consequently, us.

War...what is it good for? Making us a ton of money.

Special Report

From 2010 to 2015, Britain sold £7.9bn worth of arms (weapons) to 22 certain nations around the globe (among others).

Why are these 22 nations so important?

Because they make up 73% of the Government's ‘Human Rights Priority Countries’ - the list of regimes that oppress freedom and human rights (1).

The Government has decided to sell massive quantities of weaponry to nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, infamous for their oppression and crackdown on free speech, despite clear signals that they are using this equipment for immoral means - it's estimated that Turkey has 152 journalists in prison, with more being constantly assaulted.(2)

This is wrong. It is morally reprehensible, and a total violation of what the United Kingdom is meant to stand for: tolerance, respect, and protection of personal freedom. Yet the government insists that '[it] takes its arms export control responsibilities very seriously', and the foreign office website claims that 'British diplomats put human rights at the heart of everything they do...to promote safer, more inclusive, prosperous societies'.(3)

This is hard to believe, when Saudi Arabia - a main beneficiary - is using UK-made missiles and bombs to destroy civilian infrastructure in Yemen, possibly utilising the illegal ‘cluster bomb’*, as well as receiving advisory support and military training. They revived 83% of the UK's arms exports in 2015.


While Yemen slides into famine and disaster (4) and UN aid convoys are blocked by both sides, UK-manufactured planes are being used to destroy all opposition on the ground with Saudi Arabia’s usual regard for human life. (5)



Yemeni aid workers rescue wounded from Saudi-made rubble

Conversely, the UK also sells to Israel (5), supplying them with drone parts, and targeting equipment. This, combined with the vague political support that arms sales

come with, suggests that the Government is backing both long-term enemies Saudi Arabia and Israel, which is likely to cause chaos and confusion among governments if they ever come to a head in the future.

The UK refused export licenses to Egypt in 2015 for small-arm training ammunition and machine gun components, then promptly approved the sale of much heavier armaments such as snipers and assault rifles - complete with live ammunition. This is in a country where the police and the armed forces can detain and arrest a suspect with little reason, and have effectively ended the work of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International.(6)

The countries on the Human Rights Watch-list -
two-thirds of them buy weapons from the UK (credit to BBC Newsbeat)

As well as this, the Government (or UK-based firms) have in the past supplied machine-guns to Bahrain, tanks to Indonesia and jets to India. A company called ‘Matrix Churchill’ tried to supply parts capable of making a ‘super-gun’ to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s. They breached an international arms embargo(*) and tried to disguise the parts as oil pipeline units. (7)

This blatant disregard of humanity - the gun could have targeted Israel, as well as help Hussein persecute minorities and dissidents in Iraq - is rather worrying, suggesting that profit is all that matters in an industry where human life is so central, and that the UK has abandoned its 'champion of human rights' title, preferring 'champion of human rights, when they don't conflict with our interests'.

*A cluster bomb is a projectile that releases multiple bombs on impact, spreading the devastation over a wider area. Hard to aim and control, it often causes large civilian casualties, and is outlawed by 108 countries, including the UK.

(*) An arms embargo is when a group of countries - often encouraged by the UN or the EU - refuse to sell weapons to certain countries because of crimes they've committed.