GB News Pushes Wacko Covid Remedy

Its chairman Andrew Neil said on the channel’s opening night that Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) would not be pushing conspiracy theories, and that any host so doing would be suitably dealt with. Ten weeks later, GB News is indeed dealing in wacko conspiracy theories, and no admonishment is being administered.

Calvin Robinson

Simon Clarke of the University of Reading, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, observed the other day “Can't quite believe that in August 2021 I've been told by some jumped up wannabe on [GB News] all about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and possibly some other bullshit for Covid-19”. Uh-oh. And there was more.

“I might just as well have been quizzed on the effectiveness of leeches and the therapeutic uses of mercury … Oh yeah - vitamin D, that was the other [crap]. Clear breach of Ofcom's expected standards during the pandemic”. So would a GB News host care to raise head above parapet? Supremely glib Calvin Robinson would. “You okay?” he sneered back.

He added this summary of his superior insights. “Interviews now available on Facebook and Telegram … Vaccine coercion … Vitamin D … Ivermectin … Hydroxychloroquine … Dr says ‘there’s no evidence’ and flaps when confronted with evidence. Almost as if there’s some kind of narrative?” Clarke didn’t “flap”. Let’s see what happened, shall we?

After Clarke had told Robinson what was, and wasn’t, available for treating Covid-19, the host asked “and hydroxychloroquin, for example?” The Doc firmly rejected that one. “Show me it works. There is zero evidence that it works”. “We have a report from Harvard” countered Robinson. What say Dr Clarke? “No, really, there is zero evidence that it works. I’m not going down this path with you. It doesn’t work”. Come on Cal!

“You said give me the evidence, I’m willing to give you the evidence. If you’re a scientist you should address the evidence. Yale University is well respected around the world. Harvey Risch PhD, professor of epidemiology at Yale, says this … evidence of the benefit of HCQ used in high risk outpatients is extremely strong”. Except that Dr Risch’s article was an opinion piece and was later strongly criticised by his colleagues.

One of Robinson’s adoring Twitter followers swallowed his argument whole, responding “Isn’t Yale a tad bit better than…. Reading…?” to which Robinson replied “I think that's why he got so upset”. No, he didn’t get upset, merely exasperated at someone pushing wacko and easily debunked nonsense. And, as to Ivermectin, well, it gets worse.

This is what the US Food and Drug Administration has said about Ivermectin: “There seems to be a growing interest in a drug called ivermectin to treat humans with COVID-19. Ivermectin is often used in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals. The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses”.

The use of Ivermectin was pushed by hosts on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). And Calvin Robinson has now shown that GB News, far from eschewing wacko conspiracy theories, has gone down the same rabbit hole. Will Ofcom now act?

And what about all those advertisers? Who wants to be associated with that idiocy?

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Right Wing Media Poster Boy EXPOSED

A succession of right-wing media people have, in the recent past, given a platform to far-right agent provocateur Andy Ngo, despite warnings that he is an enabler of violent and indeed openly fascist groups. This minor detail does not appear to trouble them. But now that there is very obvious evidence of Ngo’s dishonesty, maybe they will reconsider.

Andy Ngo - never knowingly honest

The far right had descended on Portland, OR last weekend, and Chad Loder documented the routine dispensing of gratuitous violence. “Proud Boys rampaging through a parking lot, destroying parked vehicles and stealing items … destroying a truck and beating up the driver … The bloodied driver, covered in bear mace, escapes the truck and stumbles as he is shoved from behind by a baseball bat-wielding Proud Boy with a ‘Press’ sticker”.

And then came Andy Ngo. “Far-right propagandist Andy Ngo claimed several times yesterday that this van ‘crashed into a rally’ before the Proud Boys destroyed the van and flipped it over. This video shows that Andy is lying. Proud Boys surrounded the van and car-jacked the driver”. That’s who Andy Ngo pals around with.

Moreover, it has been known for some time that Ngo pals around with the far right. Back in 2019, “Andy Ngo was a key participant in a filmed Nazi attack on a Portland bar on 5/1/19 in which an antifascist had their neck broken”. He doxxed people and got them on an Atomwaffen hit list. Later that year, the loathsome Toby Young sympathetically told of “A gay Asian man [Andy Ngo] beaten up by Antifa thugs in Portland”.

But perhaps this was an isolated incident? Sadly not: in June last year, Andrew Neil, who was at the time still working occasionally for the BBC, Retweeted the Spectator USA’s dubious content: “‘We are witnessing glimmers of the full insurrection the far-left has been working toward for decades. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was merely a pre-text for radicals to push their ambitious insurgency,’ writes [Andy Ngo]”.

This, too, was not an isolated incident: self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Dooda also gave Ngo a platform, telling that she “invited him on my show to discuss his book about [covering violent protests]”. For some reason, she managed not to interrogate her interviewee, and missed Ngo’s more than peripheral role in many of those protests. The haughty deflection when she was called out was something to see.

Could the platforming of a neo-Nazi agent provocateur get any worse? As if you need to ask: along came the deeply unpleasant Dan Wootton of Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) to give Ngo a free hit at the airwaves. Worse, Ngo was praised by Wootton’s fellow host Neil Oliver, and the Tweet doing the praising was Retweeted by Colin Brazier. All giving credibility to an enabler of lawless neo-Nazi thugs.

So maybe, after Ngo was once again caught lying last weekend, some of these less than totally august individuals might reconsider making him their poster boy. After all, his last foray into covering events in the UK, a flagrantly dishonest piece for the Murdoch Wall Street Journal claiming that London’s Whitechapel district was subject to Sharia Law, was laughed out of court. Maybe the penny will drop. Or maybe it won’t.

Andy Ngo demonstrates the difference between news and propaganda. Those giving him a platform demonstrate which of those two they are promoting. I’ll just leave that one there.

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Jess Brammar And Right-Wing Hypocrisy

The appointment of Jess Brammar to a senior role at BBC News appears to have moved from being a strong possibility to imminent. This was confirmed at the weekend as the increasingly wayward Mail on Sunday ran a bad faith and unfeasibly mean spirited hit job not just on her, but also her partner Jim Waterson. The sign of bedrock being reached was the MoS calling Waterson, seven years Ms Brammar’s junior, a “toyboy”.

Jess Brammar

Here’s the MoS’ suitably snarky take: “Relations between Downing Street and the BBC have been plunged into fresh turmoil after the Corporation ignored opposition to the appointment of a Left-wing [no citation] journalist as head of its news channels. Jess Brammar, who posted a series of now-deleted tweets critical of Boris Johnson, Brexit and Britain’s imperial past, is expected to be confirmed as executive news editor”.

This was “despite objections from Sir Robbie Gibb, a member of the BBC board”. Despite objections from a rabid Tory Brexiteer, more like. But this virulently unpleasant slice of spite was justified because one of those whose name appeared on the by-line, Katie Hind, was an “award winning” journalist. So for what did she garner her award?

Katie Hind - butter wouldn't melt

As Jon Dryden Taylor has observed, she got her gong for an “enviable exclusive”. Which consisted of another mean spirited hit job, this time on Victorian Beckham. She also got a mention for an article on Sky News host Kay Burley breaking lockdown rules. Well, slow handclaps all round. Woodward and Bernstein rolled into one. Or maybe not.

Robbie Gibb - in his natural habitat

What value those awards have, given the MoS’ self-pitying Glenda Liz Jones also won one, is debatable. They may come in useful for propping doors open. As Dryden Taylor concluded, seeing the headline of Ms Hind’s Vicky Becky hatchet job “is perfect proof of how sick our newspaper culture is”. And the MoS attack on Ms Brammar wasn’t all.

Today, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog have continued to go after her, with chief creep and next-generation teaboy Christian Calgie proclaiming “BBC Dodges Questions On Jess Brammar Hiring Process [no it hasn’t and, so what?] … Goodall Breaks BBC Rules During Latest Brammar Row [irrelevant]”.

Lewis Goodall was smeared as a “Labour spokesperson” [no citation], Ms Brammar is smeared as “divisive” (yes, The Great Guido called someone else “divisive”), and still no-one is mentioning the elephant in this particular room - the stench of right-wing hypocrisy. Henry Dyer has a prime example - courtesy of, yes, Robbie Gibb.

Christian Calgie - another pretend journalist

“BBC Board member Sir Robbie Gibb did not declare role on board of top Tory lobbying forum in BBC register of interests. Enterprise Forum say Gibb is no longer a member of their board, but neither they nor BBC nor Gibb will say when he left board”. Gibb should already have been sacked from the BBC Board for interfering in the recruitment process for the job which appears likely to go to Ms Brammar. But he gets a free pass.

Tim Davie - will he realise that appeasement is pointless?

All of which shows, in case there is anyone out there who still doesn’t get it, that the right bleats about “cancel culture” while trying its damnedest to cancel anyone who is not One Of Them. Ms Brammar is attacked not for being left-wing, but for not being right-wing.

But point out their hypocrisy and watch the right whine. No change there, then.

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GB News - Not Waving But Drowning

In another vain effort to bolster its dwindling ratings, Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), which claims to be British but is financed substantially by interests in other countries, has been celebrating ten weeks on air, while some of its more easily led supporters in the Tory Party have tried to kick campaign group Stop Funding Hate for having the audacity to exist, an exercise as mystifying as it is pointless.

Neither the celebration, nor the SFH bashing, have achieved anything. Nor will they, except to suggest that GB News is not in the business of news, nor in the business of journalism, but is a straight up right wing propaganda outfit. This revelation came following the attack on SFH, promoted by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph.

The Tel claims “In a letter to Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, ten Conservative MPs called for an investigation into Stop Funding Hate, which they said advocates a ‘cancel culture’ by pressuring firms into pulling advertisements from the new broadcaster and several tabloid newspapers … Stop Funding Hate is registered as a Community Interest Company (CIC) … but CICs must not be formed ‘for political purposes’”.

In other words, ten Tory MPs wrote a letter and tipped off the Tel. But one look at SFH’s successful CIC application, where its activities are defined as “To promote ethical advertising”, and detailed appropriately, shows that it is doing nothing wrong. This has not stopped GB News host Colin Brazier approvingly quote Tweeting the Tel with the comment “Who would’ve thunk it”. His pal Alastair Stewart went with “We knew they were stupid and malicious but this is even more interesting”. Which is one dead giveaway.

Instead of doing some actual journalism, they merely took the Tel’s evidence-free drivel and shovelled it on. Thus they appear to reveal themselves not to be in the the news or journalism business, just propaganda. And talking of propaganda and GB News, there is the 10 week celebration. These are the claims made in support of that celebration.

“Today marks our 10th week on air! Already we’ve … Beaten Sky News’ peak audience ratings - 5 times [so they didn’t beat it 65 times] … Got the highest watch time of any UK news channel [maybe the viewers fell asleep] … Had almost 1 billion hits online [meaningless without comparison to other broadcasters] … We give a voice to people who felt left out of the national conversation [no citation]”. More witless propaganda.

But still they peddle it:”We’re punching above our weight - thanks to you! Our viewing figures are on the up against big establishment channels”. Enough. Let’s see just how “on the up” GB News really is. Former BBC man Robert Says has some figures for us.

“Average number of people on 19.08 who watched … BBC News Channel: 104k … Sky News: 62k … GB News 24k … Average number of people on 19.08 who watched from 19h00 to 20h00 on … BBC News Channel: 174k … Sky News: 88k … GB News: 78k”.

In other words, their average audience last Thursday was less than 40% that of Sky News, and less than 24% that of the BBC News Channel. Their star host Nigel “Thirsty” Farage trailed in third behind both of those broadcasters. After 10 weeks, they are nowhere.

The time of GB News was for a time, but not for all time. Just rejoice at that news.

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Tony Blair - Imbecile Yourself

Guaranteeing that any future warm welcome he receives in Washington DC will mean someone has set fire to him, Tony Blair has waded into the debate on the withdrawal of US and other troops from Afghanistan, claiming “We didn't need to do it. We chose to do it”, while somehow missing that Combover Crybaby Donald Trump and his idiot Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had already sold out the Afghan Government to the Taliban.

Forward ... not back. Sentences ... without verbs

But what will ensure he gets no change out of Joe Biden this side of hell freezing over was this gem: “We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars', as if our engagement in 2021 was remotely comparable to our commitment 20 or even 10 years ago, and in circumstances in which troop numbers had declined to a minimum and no allied soldier had lost their life in combat for 18 months”.

Which would have been a more credible attack line had he (a) taken the Trump-Pompeo sellout into account, and more importantly (b) looked in the mirror first. The mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, the associated exodus of refugees, and the continuing incidence of terrorism (11M in Madrid, 7/7 in London, for instance) can be traced back to military interventions to which Blair was a party, and against which he was warned repeatedly.

Blair went full-tilt into the Iraq adventure on the basis of dud intelligence: Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress knew what Blair and Dubya Bush wanted to hear, and so he told them, pocketed the money and ran. Tone and his pals somehow missed Chalabi’s conviction in absentia in connection with the Petra Bank scandal in Jordan.

What Tone also seems to have missed, but Biden has not, is that had there been an easy way out of Afghanistan, it would have been found and acted upon by either Dubya Bush, Barack Obama or Trump. He also missed the brutal reality of day to day US internal politics. Chris Mason of the BBC has not, and added this coda to their report.

Tony who?

“The issue, though, in western countries - in democracies - is that long term, open-ended military commitments do require public support”. The USA has, effectively, a perpetual electoral cycle: next year brings a round of elections, with all of the House up for re-election, and a third of the Senate. What happens then will feed into the run-up to the 2024 Presidential Election. That is where a Democrat President will be looking right now.

The Dems hold the House, and they would like to keep it that way. The Senate is tied 50-50, with the Dems able to get legislation passed, providing it is not filibustered out, by the casting vote of the Vice-President. Winning a few more Senate races would be highly beneficial to Biden and his team. Which brings us to a Business Insider poll.

This is what they had to say last week: “A strong plurality of Americans - 48% - support President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan by September amid disturbing scenes as people try to flee the unexpectedly fast Taliban takeover. That's according to a new Insider poll conducted in conjunction with SurveyMonkey Audience, which reached 1,105 respondents on August 16-17”. Think about that.

Yes, US opinion polls are fluctuating as to public response. But a 48% to 26% lead shows that Citizens are not enthusiastic about continuing wars halfway around the world. There’s nothing imbecilic about politicians in power wanting to keep it that way, eh Tone?

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Tory MP’s Casual Libel Backfires

In a routine demonstration of the lamentable quality of 2019 intake Tory MPs, the new member for the Guildford constituency, Angela Richardson, has casually defamed a well-known broadcaster, and in the process has both trashed her own reputation, and guaranteed that the local Lib Dems will be on her case with a view to removing her.

There's only one James O'Brien

Angela Richardson. Now repenting at leisure

What happened can be put directly: Dominic Raab had committed himself to making a parachute jump to raise money for Shooting Star children’s hospices. The JustGiving page is HERE. Someone called James O’Brien had contributed a caustic comment to the page but had not donated. But it was not the same James O’Brien as the LBC host.

Ms Richardson, it seems, did not concern herself with name verification: “James O’Brien is an arse! But many of you knew that already [thus attacking the LBC host - there isn’t anyone else well known with that name]. Fancy going onto someone’s fundraising page intended to help make the last weeks and months of a dying child’s life easier, making a sarky comment and not donating. The lengths some will go to is astonishing. Arse!”

Except the James O’Brien whose comment she had identified was not the LBC host. So the one who was the LBC host responded “I & many others think you may be referring to, & therefore clearly libelling, me here [Angela Richardson]. Unchallenged replies to your tweet add to that impression. Please confirm that you are talking about a different James O’Brien or delete & apologise immediately. Thank you”. What say Ms Richardson?

“I have not tagged you. But I am happy to delete my tweet if your assumption that I meant you has caused you offence and I apologise as requested”. It’s intercoursing obvious who she meant, and the idea that she would have had to tag him to make it defamatory is just talking the piss. O’Brien was less than totally satisfied with the response.

So he tried another gentle nudge. “Thank you for deleting your libellous tweet, [Angela Richardson]. Please apologise & explain to your followers in a tweet of similar prominence that you were wrong to post it. Thank you”. This time, she apologised properly. “Earlier this afternoon I posted a tweet attributing behaviour to [James O’Brien] that I now accept was not him. I would like to unreservedly apologise to him for the implications of that tweet and promise not to repeat those remarks again”. After dragging her feet a little too long.

The serially tenacious Tim Ireland reminded her - and everyone else - on that point. “Angela Richardson took far too long to arrive at this point, and her behaviour in the first instance was a shocking departure from what we should expect from a Member of Parliament. Even if she posted it thinking it true, what does that say about her judgement?”

Guildford Lib Dems will need no prompting to redouble their efforts to remove Ms Richardson at the next election. Not only is the Tory majority fewer than 3,350 votes, before becoming an MP, she defended one of three Tory seats in the Cranleigh East ward of Waverley Borough Council. She lost it. To the Lib Dems.

Angela Richardson may think she has drawn a line under this little local difficulty. On the contrary, she has just opened it wide for the Lib Dems. She chose … poorly.

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