An incredible Smoking Gun! Big Talk’s Kenton Allen tweets “Now off to the Foreign Office for a historic read through”. The exposure of Mitchell & Webb’s Our Men as state sponsored propaganda for the alliance with Uzbekistan is thoroughly confirmed. That the BBC is a party to this kind of insidious propaganda is disgusting.
Phillip Challinor commented on Our Men that now we have invented state-controlled satire.
I have also now received a further denial, now in writing, from Big Talk that Our Men is based on Murder in Samarkand, where they repeat that “it is also significantly informed by a large amount of research carried out with a number of the FCO’s staff, many of whom are serving diplomatic officers”. They further claim again that it is not set in Uzbekistan, but in a fictional country, Tazbekistan. They do not respond to the fact that their instructions to cast told them to study Uzbek people’s actions and manners.
With thanks to Mary for tracking down Kenton Allen’s tweet
Pictures speak volumes in Oscar-nominated Israeli films
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2013-02-20/pictures-speak-volumes-in-oscar-nominated-israeli-films/
Craig said, “the security services monitor this blog” – best we wise-up then…
You can check your connection activity using ‘wireshark’ – get it here free:
http://www.wireshark.org/download.html
After installing ‘wireshark’ click ‘capture options’ and untick ‘capture in promiscuous mode’ – then select your interface and ‘start’ capture.
You will have a log of all your web traffic activity which you can save as evidence.
Thank-you
@Fred About the unemployment figures
Don’t be fooled: record high employment is not all it seems
By Louisa Peacock | Telegraph – 2 hours 14 minutes ago
Employment may be at another record high, but with GDP growth flat, isn’t there something seriously wrong with the labour market, asks Louisa Peacock .
I hate to spoil the party, but the continued rise in UK employment reaching another record high in the latest quarter is yet to translate into meaningful GDP growth. More of us are working, yes, but with less output overall. If that’s the case, isn’t there something seriously wrong with the labour market?
Naturally, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has spent the morning welcoming the fall in long-term unemployment and hailing the news that there are more people in work than ever before .
But the productivity elephant in the room is still lurking in the shadows and won’t go anywhere fast.
As one economist pointed out this morning, the resilience of the labour market has been going on for so long now it’s not a surprise anymore but it ought to be. “It remains hard to equate employment growth of 154,000 in the three months to December and 584,000 over the past year, with an economy that was only flat in 2012,” said Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight.
Experts have begun referring to this ballooning dilemma as the “productivity puzzle”; arguing the rise in employment coupled with sluggish GDP figures is a consequence of a structural change in the UK jobs market.
/..
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/dont-fooled-record-high-employment-112354255.html
Fred, Brilliant joke about the Israeli Embassy at 11.21a.m.
The jury in the Pryce trial has been discharged and a retrial will take place on Monday.
We will have that again nonstop coupled with the South African furore. Good diversions from the main agenda.
Well I never!
David Dimbleby was a member of the Bullingdon Club
David Dimbleby has chaired Question Time since 1994. From the age of 7 until he graduated from Oxford in the early 1960s, he spent his young life in an all-male world of privilege: he went to the Glengorse School in Sussex and to Charterhouse School in Surrey: he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was President of the Christ Church JCR, editor of the student magazine, Isis – and a member of the Bullingdon Club, the exclusive society for getting very drunk and riotous for the very wealthy or very aristocratic. From Dimbleby’s background – his great-grandfather Frederick William Dimbleby was one of the Late Victorian press barons – he seems to have got in by the “very wealthy” clause. Whatever he smashed in his student rampages, one may suppose his family paid for it. He acts like a member of the Bullingdon Club. It’s a good thing he’s sober.
/..
http://edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/david-dimbleby-was-a-member-of-the-bullingdon-club/
Anent Fred’s joke about the Israeli embassy – I may nick that!
Chapeau, Fred.
??
BREAKING NEWS: Off duty police officer found shot dead at north London home
The 43-year-old was found at Camden address
He worked for Specialist Protection Command
Unit protects VIPs including the Royals and PM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281828/BREAKING-NEWS-Off-duty-police-officer-shot-dead-north-London-home.html#ixzz2LSvQWXqR
Very little coverage is given, or attention paid, to the plight of Jeremy Hammond.
[..]
Jeremy Hammond’s case is showing how broken the rule of law has become in our time. Like Bradley Manning, Barret Brown and the late Aaron Swartz, this is another case of a high profile activist being severely targeted by having the book thrown at them with generally specious charges. The courts have become part of a rigged system that favors corporations and those politically connected to them. One thing that these activists seem to have in common is that they actually never really hurt anyone and are driven by one of the higher ideals that this country has been founded on -that of a truly informed populace, while those that are politically targeting them regularly harm and exploit innocent people.
Holding those who abuse power accountable is becoming nearly impossible with the current system. More than ever, checks and balance will only come from the people. It was in response to a public uproar that Manning was moved from Quantico where he had been subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment.
This Thursday, February 21, Preska will make a decision on the defense motion to recuse herself from the case against Hammond and supporters plan to pack the courtroom to demand a fair trial. We all have to stay awake and support those who have passed the twilight gate, who are rendered invisible, marginalized from the rest of the population. A broken rule of law can be corrected through the vigilance and conscience of ordinary people; witnessing injustice and challenging it from all sides. We will be watching.
For information on the Jeremy Hammond Courthouse Support Rally, go to Revolution News!
Author: Nozomi Hayase
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/02/jeremy-hammond-and-the-broken-rule-of-law/
Fred
20 Feb, 2013 – 11:43 am
The figures you refer to are indeed misleading to any reasonable reader. They are not complete or properly explained in the BBC report.
I see that Habbabkuk tries to give the impression that he knows what the figures mean and we are all thick.
“…is it possible that the apparent discrepancy you point to could arise from the difference between the unemployment and employment rates (the definitions of these two are different)?”
Habbabkuk can you please explain the following to the posters of this blog who may be rather confused by the BBC report.
The employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 for October to December 2012 was 71.5%, up 0.3 percentage points from July to September 2012. There were 29.73 million people in employment aged 16 and over, up 154,000 from July to September 2012.
The unemployment rate for October to December 2012 was 7.8% of the economically active population, down 0.1 percentage points from July to September 2012. There were 2.50 million unemployed people, down 14,000 from July to September 2012.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html
The ONS said that between October to December 2012, full-time employment was 378,000 lower than in the April-to-June quarter in 2008, the first quarter of the recession. But part-time employment was 572,000 higher compared with the same period.
Economists are puzzled by the divergence of economic activity and job creation. It could be that employers are holding on to staff, or recruiting in anticipation of an upturn.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21517854
I think Biden must be suffering from early onset senile dementia.
He is supposed to be leading the drive to reduce gun ownership yet he now advises Americans to get shotguns. So ther are good guns, ie shotguns, and bad guns, ie rifles and automatics. What a crazy country.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-joe-biden-shotgun-20130220,0,1822293.story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/feb/20/joe-biden-buy-shotgun-video
Apparently there were no suspicious circumstances in the death of the officer. Much like the death of Sean Hoare, just as the Graun exposed the hacking scandal: not dodgy at all. It must be me. Often when a death looks a bit, well, odd, the police come along and assure us that there were no suspicious circumstances. They do so very quickly as well, which is even more reassuring. I should be less suspicious, clearly. Unless we are talking about Dr Kelly, who was obviously murdered.
If Assange has a heart-attack, I for one already know there is nothing suspicious about his demise. Nothing at all.
“Very little coverage is given, or attention paid, to the plight of Jeremy Hammond.”
Indeed, I for one had seen nothing on this; the battle to control information, and to protect corporate copyright profits, is being waged in Total War style, no tactic or measure is considered too extreme or unwarrented in this ruthless fight.
“When you look at it soberly, the very concept is absurd. How in the world can any person claim ownership of an idea? In a world that is built on collaboration, populated by human beings whose key to survival has been our instinct to collaborate, has there ever been an “original idea”? Yet almost all law is based on that distorted and artificial concept, ignoring the combination of vast experience, conversations, reading, and research that hones every idea.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/20/aaron-swartz-and-the-fight-for-information-freedom/
Just a reminder…
On February 25, at Horsham Magistrates Court, documentary film maker Tony Rooke, will present detailed 9/11 evidence through the mouths of a formidable team. The BBC will be challenged over the inaccurate and biased manner in which it has portrayed the events and evidence of 9/11.
Over the last two years the BBC has been challenged by individuals in the UK over two documentaries that they showed in September 2011 as part of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, namely ‘9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip’ and ‘The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 Ten Years On’. Formal complaints were lodged with the BBC by ‘Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth’ over the inaccuracy and bias of these documentaries, which, according to 9/11 activists, was in breach of the operating requirements of BBC through their ‘Royal Charter and Agreement’ with the British public.
Notwithstanding two scientific and analysis teams, sworn to give expert evidence, including a Danish professor, a UK intelligence agent and an American team headed by a NASA director, no mention has been made of this legal challenge in the media.
http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/647-the-bbc-campaign-shifts-into-second-gear.html
While Cameron has been in India, Hague was in Qatar. A predictable agenda.
Britain’s Hague discusses Syria war in Qatar
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130220/britains-hague-discusses-syria-war-qatar
From Amritsar to Eastleigh in one move. My word, he’s a one.
From the twitter of the Guardian’s SW England reporter
steven morris @stevenmorris20
After the Boris roadshow in #eastleigh David Cameron is in town later to try to get the Tory campaign on track
and the very same illusionist Cameron plans to convert overseas aid spending into weaponry.
David Cameron gives green light for aid cash to go on military
Hundreds of millions of pounds may be diverted to peacekeeping defence operations in bid to placate backbenchers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/21/david-cameron-aid-military
What a horror we have as PM, and so shallow. The Indians saw through his PR initiative.
Her Maj’s press management team will be busy if the latest P Harry romance comes to anything.
……
The prince’s rumoured fling’s father, Jeffrey Bonas, was forced to borrow money to cover the payout to his first wife Elspeth after their divorce in 1986.
As he was unable to pay the £1.2m settlement he borrowed £350,000 from NatWest Bank, according to re-surfaced court documents.
Despite ‘a number of arrangements’, the Oxford graduate was unable to repay the bank, increasing the debt to £578,000 and risking the flat of a friend who has stepped in as guarantor for the loan.
In the High Court judgement from 2003, Mr Bonas, an entrepreneur, businessman and historian according to his website, is branded ‘unreliable’ and is said to have ‘cloaked his affairs’ with offshore Isle of Man trusts and Swiss bank accounts.
Although Mr Bonas reached a settlement with NatWest, the judge said that someone who is known to deposit money in offshore accounts should not be complaining if people around him believe him to be richer than he claims to be.
In his judgement Mr Justice Lindsay said:’ I have preferred the evidence of persons other than Mr Bonas.’
‘He was, for a short span, a man of exceptional wealth and, perhaps to protect that position, cloaked his affairs with offshore Isle of Man trusts and Isle of Man and Swiss bank accounts.
‘Anyone who goes to such lengths to achieve opacity but then later finds himself in debt can hardly complain when others conclude that it might be that he has more resources than he is claiming to have.
He added: ’I cannot regard Mr Bonas as a reliable or candid witness.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2177144/Prince-Harry-Cressida-Bonas-Jeffrey-Bonas-father-princes-new-beauty-slammed-unreliable.html#ixzz2LWA8kDsK
P Harry’s fat uncle Andrew, the arms salesman, is also in Verbier for his 53rd birthday with Fergie and the daughters.
Do the Royal family employ a travel agency for all their globe trotting holidays?
If anyone needed an illustration on Aaronovitch operates. In a decent society he would never be heard of again.
Iraq and David Aaronovitch: then and now
Posted by The Editors on February 21, 2013, 8:23 am
2003: ‘If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again.’
(Guardian, ‘Those weapons had better be there …’, 29 April, 2003; http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,945381,00.html)
2013: Today’s Times: ‘Now we know why it was right to invade Iraq.’
article in full.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1361435019.html
s/be on how Aaronovitch. Note his ennui with the march, the protests and us in general.
~~~
Cameron’s faithful little poodle, the voluble one with the heavy framed spectacles, often heard breathlessly chattering from the HoC or outside No 10 tweets:
Nick Robinson@bbcnickrobinson
Congrats to @BBCiPannell, Paul Wood, Fred Scott, Darren Conway for inspirational reporting from Syria – rightly won #RTS award
It was retweeted by one of his pals at the Guardian – Retweeted by Jonathan Freedland
@ Doug Scorgie
No, I’m not “trying to give the impression that I know what the figures mean”. I was just wondering whether the discrepancy might have something to do with the difference between the employment and unemployment rates, that’s all.
Ok, Dougie, now that you’ve squirted your daily quota of bile, perhaps you could – having quoted at length from some source or other – now go one step further and tell us how WE should interpret the figures you supply and which conclusions YOU draw from your source….and perhaps answer the original question while you’re at it?
Thank you in advance!
********
La vita è bella, life is good! (more people employed than ever before)
Mary at 9.32 am. Thanks you for the two incongruous Aaronovitch quotes. He’s as fickle as the North Wind. There was that radio programme on him discussing Orwell that you posted.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qhb8b/The_Real_George_Orwell_The_Road_to_Nineteen_EightyFour/
Not even two minutes in and he’s lying about his thoughts on 1984 as a schoolboy in the sixties. “It was, it seemed to me, deployed as the great warning of what could happen if the radical left with its pro-state tendencies were to come to power”. As everybody knows Aaronovitch started off on the left and these opinions show how he has distorted his current views into believing he held them as a schoolboy. I could hear no more.
Important news not seen (by me) on telly. It’s yesterday’s news and shows what can be done if people oppose the outrageous increases to family outgoings. They’ve done it in Bulgaria.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21516658
Yesterday I got my renewed car insurance policy quote. I have never made a claim. My circumstances have not changed. It is up 30%. In my lifetime as a car-driver I have had a couple of bumps, so long ago I cannot recall exactly, but about forty years ago. On both occasions it was cheaper to pay for the damage myself than to claim. In my lifetime I have paid these extortionists thousands of pounds because there is a legal obligation to have car-insurance. I suspect that is true of nearly everybody.
I am currently with Tesco. I was told if I had a loyalty card that with sufficient use I could get up to 20% off. No companies operate at a loss on any of their clients which tells me they would still be making a good profit. The time has come for people to put pressure on these bankers and insurers! Long overdue in fact.
“I am currently with Tesco. I was told if I had a loyalty card that with sufficient use I could get up to 20% off. No companies operate at a loss on any of their clients which tells me they would still be making a good profit. The time has come for people to put pressure on these bankers and insurers! Long overdue in fact.”
I don’t use loyalty cards. If you have a loyalty card they have your name and address, they know everything you buy they build up a profile and they sell the information for targeted advertising.
I had one once, kept getting adverts for Carlsberg Special in my letter box.
Why not put these points directly to the comedians involved:
@RealDMitchell
@robertwebb
#ourmen
Fred, that’s true about loyalty cards, and indeed I said that to the person to whom I spoke. He said there is an option not to receive advertising. But I’m not trying to promote Tesco so much as point out how all insurance companies use a legal framework to charge extortionate prices. I was also trying to show, as Bulgaria has done, that we hold the power to change things. No wonder MSM has not given this much, if any, coverage.
I am sorry that such gloomy events that you witnessed while being Ambassador in Uzbekistan will now be presented in such stupid manner by stupid comedians. Satire sometimes is the only way to express social issues (remember Bulgakov) but in this case it is blunt ignorance.
I am also sorry for British public which no doubt will consume this stupidity and will laugh on the events that killed hundreds, imprisoned thousands and make millions live in fear.
David Mitchell has chatted with Johnathon Ross about this thing and it will be broadcast this Saturday on the ITV chatshow.
“Congrats to @BBCiPannell, Paul Wood, Fred Scott, Darren Conway for inspirational reporting from Syria – rightly won #RTS award”
‘Inspirational reporting’? What, as opposed to that lesser form called factual reporting, which requires no imagination or creativity?
It seem they can’t even be bothered to pretend they are journalists these days. No wonder most people do not believe them, but they will soldier on in their little back-slapping bubble, convinced by their own conceit.
Oh that infantile jerk, Wossie, who with Russell Brand, played a very nasty smutty trick on Andrew Sachs. On that occasion the BBC acted promptly and correctly and gave them the order of the boot. Unfortunately they are both seen and heard on the screens and radios of the nation on other channels.
I never knew that the BBC ie we the licence fee payers, had to cough up £150k to OFCOM. Where did that money end up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russell_Brand_Show_prank_telephone_calls_row
Yeh I heard it live, just because i find brand can be entertaining (sorry). The phonecall was poor taste in itself but what blew it up was Ross shouting “he fcked yer grandaughta” and the end. It sounded like they were both on coke.
Ross’s chatshow can still be quite watchable, i cant bring myself to reject every last bit of this sort of communal celeb watching thing. It might be instinctive.
In the advert for the show Mitchell says something like “there are meant to be some funny bits” – like hes not billing it as an outright comedy. I have to admit im eager to see what a traversty or coupe it turns out as.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella)
21 Feb, 2013 – 10:03 am
Your original post to Fred:
“…is it possible that the apparent discrepancy you point to could arise from the difference between the unemployment and employment rates (the definitions of these two are different)?”
I have noticed that you make statements as if they are facts then follow them with…?
Anyway for your information:
Unemployed people are:
Without a job, want a job, have actively sought work in the last 4 weeks and are available to start work in the next 2 weeks, or out of work, have found a job and are waiting to start it in the next 2 weeks.
In general, anybody who carries out at least one hour’s paid work in a week, or who is temporarily away from a job (e.g. on holiday) is in employment.
Also counted as in employment are people on government-supported training schemes and people who do unpaid work for their family’s business.
Those who are out of work but do not meet the criteria of unemployment are economically inactive.
All very confusing don’t you think?