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Friday, 3 November 2023

Laura - K Is For Kourtier

The BBC has joined the news podcast race. Back in the day, this would have meant applying the most rigorous standards to fact checking and a dispassionate approach to what Robin Day rightly and memorably called Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians. But today, it has brought a prime example of a Beeb talking head peddling falsehood and misinformation.


And to no surprise at all, that talking head is former political editor Laura Kuenssberg, wiping the backside of disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in no style at all on the subject of the Covid pandemic and vaccine rollout. Bozo has attracted seriously adverse publicity for his callous attitude to the crisis. But not from the Beeb.

So over to the BBC Newscast and Ms K: “I should mention also, just, on that, some backers of Boris Johnson would also say that although the UK could have gone on its own on the vaccine if we were in the EU, it was much more likely to go on its own having left the EU, so … the UK’s huge success of the vaccine programme is not … maybe tangentially, but probably, linked to the fact that we had left the EU by that point”. And to which I call bullshit.

She appears to be trying a little too hard to “both sides” the issue, but here a problem enters: you cannot “both sides” a fact. The UK was, at the time, still in the Brexit transition period. And as June Raine, then the head of the MHRA, told, “We’ve been able to authorise supply of this vaccine using provisions under European law which exist until January 1st [next]”.

Not only that, Ms Kuenssberg’s claim has been debunked by none other than the, er, BBC. Ros Atkins told “The UK remains in a Brexit transition period, under which it follows most EU regulations and processes, and under EU rules, a vaccine has to be authorised by the European Medicines Agency”.

There was more. “However, individual countries can use a procedure that lets them diverge from that, in health emergencies. The head of the UK agency that took today’s decision has said [see June Raine quote above]”. Back in June this year, pundit Marina Purkiss had pointed this out to Brexit booster Carole Malone, who had made the same untrue claim as Ms Kuenssberg.


Others passed adverse comment. Prof Colin Talbot said simplyWe had not left the EU medicines regime at the point ours was approved. This is simply a lie”. Another observer musedFirst time Laura Kuenssberg is seen in weeks and she can’t but help defend Boris Johnson”, which was telling in itself. The general consensus was that Ms K was in need of the nearest extinguisher.

One comment readArrant nonsense from LauraK here. This has been debunked more times than many people have had hot dinners”. AnotherShe is not a journalist, simply a mouthpiece. Courtier reporting. Hopeless. This is how we got into such a mess with Johnson - these gutless, supine, gossipy media serfs. In this case, repeating a long debunked Brexity fabrication”.

Former BBC Panorama man Meirion Jones pointed out “This is absurd - UK could & would have made same decision in EU because EU does not control this aspect of health. Other blunders in Covid, care-homes, ‘eat out to help out the virus’ etc meant [for instance] Germany has 83M people = 176K deaths … UK has 67M people = 231K deaths”. And who was PM?

That would have been Bozo. The same useless politician whose ascent to power was fuelled by a Brexit campaign featuring industrial scale falsehood and misinformation, and whose principals, notably Matthew Elliott, had direct access to the likes of Ms Kuenssberg, who effectively took dictation from him on the subject of Vote Leave braking the law. Which they did.

Not that the BBC would have told you that at the time, mind: Ms K told only that Vote Leave had “broken the rules”. Robbie Gibb must have been proud of her. But all those who look on in increasing desperation and disappointment are anything but. And dredging up an already disproved claim about vaccine rollouts just emphasises how far the Corporation has fallen.

Bozo was unsuited for high office. And you still can’t “both sides” a fact.


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Years ago I warned Bozo was/is a dangerous buffoon. Handcock even worse.

Kuentssberg?.....We still don't know who she fellow-travelled with and what she "studied" at Georgetown Uni. The woman's an utter far right propaganda fraud, which is why she has a bought-and-paid-for sinecure in British corporate media.

Pendragon said...

"Brexit Britain’s victory over the EU on Covid vaccination is not what it seems" is the title of the Guardian article from which the excerpt below is taken.
It tells a different story from that of most other UK newspapers about how the UK acquired large supplies of vaccine doses so quickly in early 2021.
"…Britain got a month’s head start on the EU … [with the MHRA*] … approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the start of December [2020], and then AstraZeneca’s at the end of that month. It had to accept the terms offered by the pharmaceutical companies, however, both in paying a higher price per dose, and by waiving their civil liability in the event of adverse effects…. "
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/feb/14/brexit-britain-eu-covid-vaccination-fiasco
* The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) was formed in 2003 and followed EU pharmaceutical law enforced by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) until the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. This meant that pharmaceutical companies could continue to carry out activities in the UK until the end of the year. The AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by the MHRA on 30 December 2020, one day before the end of the transition period.
The UK finally left the EMA on 31 January 2021.

Anonymous said...

She’s disgusting and can’t be trusted

Mr Larrington said...

When Amber Rudderless was found to be telling whopping great porkies over the Windrush scandal, Taury Kuenssberg said “that wasn’t quite true” rather than “that was a lie”, mealy-mouthed spawn of the pit that she be.