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
FYI—-http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/02/19/sars-like-virus-kills-another-patient-in-u-k-whose-immune-system-was-compromised/
Re this “smoking gun” in the form of a Twitter (and therefore using Twitter appropriate language):
“Now off to the Foreign Office for a historic read through”.
What precise meaning do people here give to the word “historic”?
Ditto “read through”?
*****
La vita è bella, life is good! (well, Mitchell and Webb seem to think so)
A kickstarter project could potentially raise the kind of funding you need for a low budget movie, especially with a well known director attached.
Habbakuk
A read-through is an accepted term in acting when the actors read through a script at the start of the rehearsal process, putting some characterisation into it.
Craig referred to Zero Dark Thirty earlier. This is a good critique of it on Orwellwasright.
http://orwellwasright.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/zero-dark-thirty-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-torture/
Lwtc247 When I was speaking about the BBC earlier, I was really referring to the entertainment output. I do know of its propaganda function from the early days of Reith and get told off by some visitors here for calling it the state broadcaster.
Again Orwellwasright writes – http://orwellwasright.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/auntie-beeb-or-the-big-brother-corporation-part-1-origins-and-establishment-ties/
The Trust members are now:http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/who_we_are/trustees/
Lord Williams of Baglan was one time Special Adviser to Robin Cook and Jack Straw!
Also odd is David Liddiment’s position. In a varied career, he was once BBC Head of Entertainment and ‘With old Granada colleagues he also co-founded All3Media, for which he is Creative Director. Over the six years since it started, the company has grown both organically and by acquisition to become the largest independent production house in the UK.’ They produce many BBC programmes (see their website) and formed a joint company in 2009 called Tower Productions in assocation with BBC Worldwide.
A conflict of interest surely?
The Trustees’ Register of Interests makes interesting reading, especially some of the longer lists of directorships and other placements they have found for themselves. Especially interesting is the fact that Lord Williams’ wife works at Wilton Park, another branch of the FCO.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/trustees/2012/register_of_interests.pdf
There is a staff of 50 or so supporting the trust under the director Nicholas Kroll. Ex Civil Service and ex DCMS he arrived at the BBC in 2004 when Ms Jowell set up the Trust. His total pay in 2011 was £280k.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/who_we_are/trust_unit/nicholas_kroll.html
‘What a shower’ as old Terry Thomas would have said and aren’t we the mugs for funding them. There is no transparency on the financial arrangements with these many production companies or who decides to use them.
PS We know that the latest state demonisation of China is well dodgy when they get Gordon Correra on to elaborate as he did just now on the Ten O’Clock News. I see their Mr Marcus puts his two penn’orth in here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21502088
Agent Cameron would have done better to stay at home with his children for half term instead of traipsing around India, playing cricket and turning up for ‘interviews’ with the embedded BBC James Landale and Sky Joey Jones. The Indian PM gave Cameron short shrift on the helicopter deal. Saw through the spiv that Cameron is.
Ms Sophie Raworth who I think of as the Head Prefect of the girls’ high school was preparing us all for big hikes in energy prices. She’s enough to scare the horses.
Night all.
Mary wrote:
My guess is that members close to the executive level know well in advance that the Beeb is going to be privatized sometime in the near future, and what is happening is the rats in position are siphoning off the family silver into their own little annexes, before the main body [the denuded rump] goes up for sale.
SNAFU Craig.
‘James Bond’ is a dirty pedo-enabler/voyeur/blackmailer/torturer. By induction, so is the entire establishment.
“Ken Livingstone, Kincora boys home, MI5 filming”
https://soundcloud.com/gypsumfantastic23/ken-mi5
Thank you Craig. Genuine question : how should one read “historic”? First time it’s happened? Checking for historic (and by extension, general) accuracy/realism? Other?
Thanks.
Comedy is very much a group-think thing and an ideal platform for slipping in your agenda under the radar to young impressionable people that have absolutely no idea what really goes on in the name of their so called ‘freedom’.
Mock the Week seemed to operate on a quota system for getting in stereotypes of Arabs as irrational suicide bombers. Frankie Boyle who was the funniest man on the show by a country mile ended up having to go to court for making a couple of jokes about the IDF. I think he was trying to tell us something within the confines of a very closed and very controlling BBC that constantly exhibits the most diabolic bias towards that “shitty little country” run by “such a liar” (The French seem less reticent about critiquing the fake nation than the Zionist dominated British).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7660232/Frankie-Boyle-letter-about-BBC-in-full.html
Anyone notice how most of the ‘financial service’ companies are now falling over themselves to get comedians in their adverts? Truly sad for those of us that still remember ‘alternative comedy’ in the 1980s. Where are the dissenting public voices now? Keeping mum in their tax-dodging Surrey and Hampshire mansions.
As an aside I see that indicted war criminal Tzipi Livni has been made Israel’s ‘minister of justice’ – a truly pathetic attempt to wash away her direct culpability in the mass murder of defenceless men, women and children and allow her to once again go shopping in Paris and London using her fake disguise.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/14/tzipi-livni-israel-gaza-arrest
Finally, just a quick reminder of the piece of shit we have as ‘Foriegn Minister’ who is of course a ‘life long friend of Israel’ and is not a closet gay, has not engaged in inappropriate relationships with his staff and was not buggered by a senior Tory in return for addressing the Party conference before he even reached puberty. He was also not the Minister for Wales who engineered the cover up of the North Wales/Wrexham paedophile ring. Rest assured that he is an upright man with impeccable credentials and fully deserving to be representing the British people abroad. Notice he only ever climbs out the woodwork to attack Arab leaders, who could he possibly be working for?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8d5_1351277566
Genuine answer Habbabkuk – discover a fucking dictionary.
Methodist Dorkshireman Habba posted – “Thank you Craig. Genuine question : how should one read “historic”? First time it’s happened? Checking for historic (and by extension, general) accuracy/realism? Other? Thanks.”
Craig, with due respect to your patience and wisdom, this cuninglinguist clown deserves the Kempe treatment too – enough of this trivialisation, digression, etc but above all NO positive contribution or intent.
David Cromwell one of the Medialens editors writes:
BBC ‘News’
Posted by The Editors on February 20, 2013, 9:18 am
‘She’s roughly four months pregnant now, and behind those clasped hands there’s certainly evidence of a rather more rounded stomach than before.’
What happened to the career of Nicholas Witchell? It started so promisingly all those years ago with his investigative reporting about the Loch Ness monster.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21508408
DC
🙂
Someone in the BBC must agree with P Charles’ opinion of Witchell for this to have stayed up on the website.
Transcript: Princes’ comments
Watch the photo call
The Prince of Wales has made comments about the media during an arranged photo call at a Swiss ski resort with his sons. Here is a transcript.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4397667.stm
Here’s a link to the BBC’s Royal Charter, which may be useful when writing complaints:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/charter.pdf
I found this in an article about how the BBC supports DRM technology, to deny you control over your own hardware – remember that digital TVs, set top boxes and recorders are all computers these days.
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/02/bbc-attacks-the-open-web-gnulinux-in-danger/index.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2234461/David-Mitchell-marries-girlfriend-Victoria-Coren-lavish-ceremony-Peep-Show-star-Robert-Webb-best-man.html
I had better not comment on the dress but no show without Ms Winkleman. All feeders at the BBC trough.
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Craig Murray » Blog Archive » That Mitchell & Webb Crook
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/…/that-mitchell-webb-crook/
23 hours ago – This approval by the foreign and commonwealth office of Mitchell and Webb’s Our Men shows the deplorable state the UK has reached in its support for despotic …
Re: Yet more state sponsored satire – Media Lens Message Board
members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1361290631.html
2 posts – 1 author – 15 hours ago
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 …
That Mitchell & Webb Crook – Topix
http://www.topix.com/forum/uz/tashkent/T4B5K9J7KFTOA73RD22 hours ago – That Mitchell & Webb Crook. Full story: Craig Murray. Our Men , commissioned by the BBC, is a hilarious comedy about the drunken and incompetent British …
Smoking Gun For Foreign Office/BBC Propaganda | Politicus – UK …
http://www.politicus.org.uk/…/smoking-gun-for-foreign-officebbc-propag...
16 hours ago – 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…
I gave up watching TV in 1991. Dunno how some of you lot can bear it.
“I gave up watching TV in 1991. Dunno how some of you lot can bear it.”
Do you still get the computer generated threatening letters addressed to “The Occupier”? I’ve been getting them every week for 20 years now and the Lybster branch of the TV licensing enforcement division haven’t shown up as promised once.
I wonder if the Israeli Embassy has a TV license. If they don’t the BBC will be sending them letters addressed to “The Occupier”, bet that would really piss them off.
Me too.
Turn off the TV people, and spend the hours digging for the truth on non-MSM internet sites, like this one.
More BBC propaganda.
Headline on BBC web site:
“Scottish unemployment falls by 13,000”
However the text says:
“The number of people in jobs also fell by 11,000 over the same period.”
So how come that wasn’t the headline and how come the maths don’t add up?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-21510375
Here’s another smoking gun. Weep with me for these victims of the US/NATO holocaust.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1d0voQ_6I
Our erstwhile friend writes. So the danger is that the terrrrrists get hold of the drones, is it? No mention of Obomber’s Kill by Drone policy then.
http://charlescrawford.biz/blog/we-enter-the-age-of-cyborg-insects-robo-rats
and a LOL ‘I am helping work up some ideas for a speech on human rights’.
No laughing at the back please!
I can’t quite see why my question about “historic” should attract so much opprobium, especially since one might have to factor in the consideration that tweets apparently have their own language; I believe in considering all the possibilities before reaching a conclusion and am sorry that this seems to upset some people.
One test might well be to wait for the programme(s) to be broadcast and then make a judgement? Surely some of the comments are a little speculative at the moment (or have I missed something)?
@ Fred at 11h43 : 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)?
Judge will accept a majority verdict on Vicky Pryce. Jury sent back after judge’s direction. Obviously verdict in balance and a retrial possible. Lawyers’ paradise.
~~~~
Ex-officer investigated over Savile
A former policeman is being investigated over claims he “acted on behalf” of Jimmy Savile before the late TV presenter was interviewed about sexual assault allegations.
A police inspector has been arrested for acting for Jimmy Savile in 2009.
~~~
And a lovely photo of Agent Cameron in training for Workfare down at the local curry takeaway.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/02/cameron-india-temp_2486818k-460×288.jpg
‘This Youtube video of a Mitchell and Webb sketch is billed as hilarious. Whatever it is it is not that.’
Agreed. Enfield & Whitehouse often include ‘2 doctors’ sketches in their shows; OK they portray them as stereotypically haut-bourgeois prats, but at least their sketches induce the odd knowing titter in the TV audience. For Mitchell & Webb, on this evidence, comedy is clearly a serious business, and no laughing matter.
Mary, 12.16pm
No, I’m not laughing. Charles Crawford, to my mind, is much more deserving of the “Our Men” label than Craig ever was. Here’s Charles towing the Establishment line following Ecuador’s grant of asylum last August:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/charlescrawford/100178120/julian-assange-where-is-australia-in-all-this/
I was a bit vocal about what I thought of Charles Crawford down in the comments (page 3), which you might enjoy.
I find it hard to conceive that anything put-out via the BBC is not just (a load of) statist propaganda (though when it comes to the ‘sponsoring’ bit I fear it is just the dumb old tax-slaves doing that).
I am serious; I think the effect of all corporate and state media output is well understood and its goals thoroughly controlled and defined well in advance of production. If not so, why would the government keep soldering on with the BBC if it was not simply an effective pan-global means of perpetuating a status quo for a certain ruling oligarchy (whosoever that may actually be).
There are some parallels worth perhaps considering between this Mitchell & Webb’s ‘Our Men’ and Sacha Baron Cohen’s films ‘The Dictator’ and ‘Borat’. With Cohen’s work it is clear to me his raciest portrayals help further a Zionist agenda.
… Cohen grew up in West London and was active throughout high school in Habonim Dror, a Zionist youth group. “He was very Zionist, very involved in Habo,” said the fellow Israel seminar participant, who has known him since they were babies …
See: http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-nerd-factor-in-sacha-baron-cohens-past/
State controlled media is much the same as with state controlled schooling: would the state perpetuate these systems if they caused the population to be empower with knowledge and the cognitive ability to draw their own sound reasoned conclusions from gathered information. Would the state perpetuate these systems if they cause the public to question the very necessity for the state to exist at all. Not likely!
So the flap is not really about insidious propaganda, because that is a continuous process anyway. It is about the potential of plagiarism and character deformation.
Arbed. Not laughing, jeering actually. Crawford used to arrive here from his pretentious Blopgoir with the right wing stuff.
Revolting. Surprised he has not had one of those gongs. Just think if Craig had conformed and had stayed schtum, he might have been a knight of the realm by now.
I looked at p 3 of the 469 comments but could not locate yours.