UKIP Threaten BBC With Judicial Review

Leader's Office

United Kingdom Independence Party

Room 230

10 Greycoat Place

London

SW1P 1SB

020 7960 6773

Mark Thompson, Esq.,
Director-General,
British Broadcasting Corporation,
White City,
201 Wood Lane,
LONDON,
W12 7TS.

27 April 2010

By email to markthompsonandpa@bbc.co.uk

Dear Mark,

Proposed claim for judicial review

I wrote to Sir Michael Lyons at the BBC Trust on 22 December, asking that UKIP should be allowed to participate in the televised debates between party leaders. Sir Michael wrote explaining that you rather than the Trust were the appropriate point of contact, and you wrote to me on 15 January 2010, conveying to me your decision and that of the BBC to reject my request on the following grounds:

"The basis on which judgements are made about relative levels of coverage rests on past and current electoral support. For the election to the House of Commons in 2010, the starting point is the last General Election, in 2005. Similarly, the starting point for coverage of the 2009 European election was the previous European election of 2004. This means that UKIP - on the basis of its strong performance in 2004 - was given the same level of coverage in the 2009 election as the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. In 2005, however, at the last General Election (notwithstanding its performance at the European election less than a year before), UKIP attracted just over 2% of the vote and won no representation at Westminster.

"It is, therefore, appropriate and consistent for the BBC - and other broadcasters - to offer the opportunity to take part in the Prime Ministerial debates only to those parties which have substantial electoral support in the context of Westminster. There will be additional opportunities across the BBC for other parties to receive appropriate coverage responding to the Prime Ministerial debate."

We have been given no adequate opportunity to respond to the first two debates. What arrangements is the BBC making to address this? How can the coverage be "appropriate" if we cannot reach the leaders' audience?

The first two of the party leaders' debates have been held and, as I feared, have given spectacular prominence to the three parties whom you, ITV and Sky TV allowed to take part. The unfairness in our being excluded from the party leaders' debates is now all too evident.

Most recently, I wrote to you on 23 April, sending you my recent correspondence with Sky TV, and inviting you to rectify the lack of impartiality which broadcasters have demonstrated in refusing to allow UKIP to participate in the televised leaders' debates. I have not had a reply to my letter to you. The final leaders' debate is in just two days' time. The matter is now urgent, and I have done my best to pursue it timeously.

Since time is now short, I have taken advice, in the light of which I should like to draw your attention to the following provisions in the BBC's own election guidelines:

"3. Due Impartiality in coverage of parties and issues

"3.1 Coverage of the Parties

"To achieve due impartiality, each bulletin, programme or programme strand, as well as online and interactive services, for each election, must ensure that the parties are covered proportionately over an appropriate period, normally across a week. This means taking into account levels of past and current electoral support.

"Due impartiality must be achieved within these categories:

 "clips;
 "interviews/discussions of up to 10 minutes;
 "longer-form programmes.

"Previous electoral support in equivalent elections is the starting-point for making judgments about the proportionate level of coverage between parties.

"However, other factors can be taken into account where appropriate, including evidence of variation in levels of support in more recent elections, changed political circumstances (e.g. new parties or party splits) as well as other evidence of current support. The number of candidates a party is standing may also be a factor."

These election guidelines - as you may know - were approved by Jenny Watson, the chairman of the Electoral Commission, in a letter dated 11 January 2010 to Ric Bailey, the BBC's Chief Adviser for Politics (Editorial Policy), as follows:

"In addition we are satisfied with the draft Election Guidelines, and the approach taken regarding the participation of candidates in constituency items during the election period."

In the last "equivalent" election, the 2005 General Election, UKIP won 2.2% of the national vote, as you have pointed out. However, in the more recent European Election of last year, UKIP came second in the UK, with 16.5% of the national vote, compared with 15.7% for Labour and 13.7% for the Liberal Democrats. This surely constitutes compelling "evidence of variation in levels of support in more recent elections". In the circumstances, I should have expected your correspondence to have referred to this provision within your election guidelines. You have allowed Labour and the Liberal Democrats to participate in the leaders' debates, though they received smaller shares of the vote than UKIP in the most recent test of national opinion, which was the European Election of last year. Yet you have denied UKIP the chance to participate.

Furthermore, UKIP - as of today - is fielding 560 candidates, a number not far short of those fielded by the three parties whom you are allowing to participate in the leaders' debate. As your own guidelines say, "The number of candidates a party is standing may also be a factor." I should have expected your correspondence to have referred to this provision of your electoral guidelines too. Certainly, UKIP - in the number of candidates we are fielding in this General Election - is close to parity with those parties whom you are allowing to participate.

Both these circumstances are directly relevant to any decision whether to allow UKIP to participate in the leaders' debates. Yet you do not seem to have taken account of them in your decision as conveyed to me, or in any of our subsequent discussions.

There is also the question of the BBC's obligations under its charter, which has been the subject of correspondence between us on many previous occasions. In the leaders' debate so far, the question of our EU membership, its lack of democratic accountability and its heavy financial and constitutional cost has not been debated at all. Mr. Brown has been allowed to get away with saying, unchallenged, that three million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union. Nor has there been any discussion of our proposal to introduce binding initiative referenda at local as well as national level, which is the only effective way to allow us, the people, to rule once more, as well as to address the issue of corruption in Parliament, to say nothing of the increasing gulf between government and the governed.

It is reasonable and proportionate, having regard to the election guidelines as cited above, and having regard to the absence of UKIP from the first two leaders' debates, that UKIP should be allowed to participate fairly and fully in the final leaders' debate.

Since you did not adopt my original suggestion that UKIP should at least be allowed to participate in some part of each debate, and since all other avenues available to me have been exhausted, and since UKIP has been denied the opportunity to participate at all in either of the first two debates, and since time is running out, I must now ask you to reconsider your refusal to allow UKIP to participate in the third and final leaders' debate, to be aired on Thursday evening, 29 April 2010.

Should you and the BBC fail to accede to this request by noon tomorrow, Wednesday, 28 April, 2010, please take this letter as notice, in terms of the pre-action protocol in judicial review proceedings under the Civil Procedure Rules, that the United Kingdom Independence Party, of PO Box 480, Newton Abbot, Devon, TQ12 9BG, and I as UKIP's leader, as claimants, will apply to the Administrative Court at or as soon as practicable after 2 pm tomorrow afternoon for judicial review of your decision and that of the BBC, as defendants, expressed in your letter to me of 15 January 2010, to refuse to allow UKIP to participate in the third and final leaders' debate, and for an injunction requiring you and the BBC to permit me, as UKIP's leader, to participate in that debate on an equal footing with all others whom you and the BBC shall have permitted to participate.

I regret that the notice is very short, but time is pressing and I have not had an answer to my letter to you of 23 April.

Details of our legal advisers will be notified to you in due course. In the meantime, any reply and any court documents should be sent to me at the address below:

The Lord Pearson of Rannoch,
Leader's Office,
United Kingdom Independence Party,
Room 230,
10 Greycoat Place,
LONDON,
SW1P 1SB.


Yours sincerely,


[signed] Malcolm


Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Farage vs Paxman

This is how you do it.

BBC Cuts

A knowing co-worker nudged me this morning, "here, what about this Dan?".... 

from Sky News:

BBC To Axe Two Digital Radio Stations
Hazel Tyldesley, Sky News Online

The BBC has confirmed plans to close down the digital radio stations 6 Music and Asian Network as part of wide-ranging cuts....

Ahhh the BBC.... where to start?

OK, let's start with my broad sentiment on the BBC. I think the BBC is completely outdated in every sense of the word, and it is my belief that everything it touches and involves itself in is worse off for the BBC having been involved… Or, at least could be better off if an alternative to the BBC were the broadcaster. The notion of the "Licence Fee" is an infringement to every adult and every house in the country. What’s more, I do genuinely believe that there are individuals operating from within the BBC with motives are using the public broadcasting as a shield to further their own agendas. Everything about the BBC is in my eyes wrong.

The announcement of two digital radio stations shutting is music to my ears. For years now the BBC has been using the licence fee to involve themselves in radio space that just does not need them. There are local radio stations all around the country that are doing a very good job without public subsidy, yet must compete with the local BBC station which is completely immune from market forces. There are national and digital radio stations that have been set up that you could argue filled a space before an independent broadcaster got on the scene. The licence fee maybe less than my Sky subs in a month, but at least I have a choice if I want to pay for Sky or not. With the BBC I have to pay for them before I can look at alternative offerings. If I do not pay for the BBC but put a TV in my home I risk being put in prison and no market where one large player is basically a wing of the government can be without distortions.

I really do believe that if we closed the local and regional BBC radio stations down tomorrow, everyone would see the benefit as independent radio would lose its subsidised rival. Those working for the BBC that are of a genuine talent will find work in private sector based on their value in the market.

As for TV channels, I have to ask what the hell are we paying for? I load of old tosh normally. The BBC does not in my view make any good dramas or thrillers. We do not need to pay to produce documentaries, when channels like Discovery and the History Channel (to name two of many) do a brilliant job of producing factual documentaries. Sky Arts has recently launched a second channel because it found an audience willing to pay to see art's programmes. If the BBC were not providing free to air competition there would be a whole world of programming available to competitive programming. There are probably 20 Kids channels, and only a few that have regular English and British accents. That's because, unless you are with the BBC there is little opportunity, despite there being a market for Children’s shows. Again, lift the BBC out by selling CBBC and its brands and let the shows compete on an even keel with all the other channels. The news arena is much the same with other companies such as Sky and CNN available, why should we be paying to prop up a company that is more interested in promoting an editorial line than reporting news?

You may disagree, but I think that there is nothing the BBC makes that other channels don’t make better, or at least would do if they didn’t have to square up against the corporation.

My ill will towards the BBC goes further than just not being very good at making and broadcasting TV and radio, but as I alluded to above, and as I think is now recognised by just about everybody the BBC is neither impartial nor balanced. To be impartial would be neutral or unbiased and the BBC just cannot help itself but promote a left of centre political bias; and of course this is not limited to its news and politics shows but is evident in very nearly every show it makes. It is not even typically a broad left wing bias, it is a honed metropolitan left wing bias that is probably heartfelt by many in central and west London, but does not resonate much further. I would imagine that it would be very hard for any corporation to be impartial, as it is not easy to cover one’s self from criticism. But it would instead be very much possible for the BBC to be balanced in the absence of impartiality; that is to say to provide both or all sides or the argument. However, despite claims to the contrary the BBC is incapable of balance as it editorially limits itself to a narrow viewpoint. Why should anybody have to pay for this? We do not need a State Broadcaster tell us how to think about Climate Change and about Conservatism. In a truly free society, we would be able to make our own minds up if we were free from the overarching propaganda machine that is auntie.

Further still, I deplore the fact that the Licence Fee is basically a poll tax on the population, with women and the elderly targeted for non-payment so that their fate is held as an example to the rest of us that we must pay our fee’s or go to gaol. The BBC commissions adverts that inform us that they are looking into our houses and have no problem with the symbolism of helicopters and tracking dogs in their relentless pursuit of my money. If such adverts were the trade of North Korean or Chinese Ministry staff they would be reputedly shown at the UN as an example of how repressive these countries are; we would use the numbers of people in prison for not paying the broadcast tax as reason to denounce them. Instead we have none of the three formerly independent parties (now all a factions of the one “Westminster Party”) who think it illiberal, immoral nor just plain wrong to carrying on with the BBC.

So what would my recommendation be?

Make available for sale every channel of the BBC to private firms, including allowing exploration of employee cooperatives. Keep back a few of the more recognisable brand shows and sell those separately, i.e. Postman Pat, Top Gear, Eastenders. The BBC Archive which I understand to be extensive should be included in the individual sales with it a condition that the new owners all are able to and willing to keep the archives in good condition.

We should immediately release anybody from prison who has not paid their licence fee. Should in future any Government feel the need to push TV and radio broadcasters for a certain type of programme, then it can do so via Parliament and the public purse. That way these decisions are done with consultation to Parliament and to the people in elections who can withhold their vote, and also so that we can let our pensioners enjoy a bit of snooker on telly without fear that they will be banged up.

Failing a amicable sale and carve up of the BBC I would favour closing it down, and being done with it to carrying on.  It is a shame that none of the main political parties would advocate the same or even drastic reform, but there in lies the point that the BBC is not just a part of the establishment it is a powerful leftwing tool that the right wing, and pretend right wing parties will not touch.
For more reading on the BBC with a similar line to this blog post, see Biased BBC and The All Seeing Eye who are more frequent, passionate and more eloquent about the BBC and how crap it is than I am.

Who Is Backing Gordon Brown?

Gordon Brown Quotes:

"at root our economy is better placed to weather the global storm than it was in
the seventies, the eighties and the nineties". – To North West of England
Business Leaders (see here.)

"It's a financial global recession everybody knows and started out of America,
we are having to deal with the fall out. We are better placed in Britain than we
have been in the past and are better placed that many other countries" – BBC
Interview (See here)

So, do people share your views Gordon?.....

What about Ed Balls? Well, let’s look at who he is first. He worked for the Financial Times as an economic leader writer (1990 – 1994), before going on to work for Gordon Brown in 1994 in the then Shadow Cabinet. After Labour won the 1997 election he worked for the then Chancellor (again, one Gordon Brown) in a position called “Chief Economic Advisor” where he allegedly earned the title “The most powerful unelected man in Britain”.

It would be fair to say then, that Ed Balls is intimate with Gordon Brown, familiar with the internal workings of the treasury department, the Government and of the national economic position.

Last night, Ed Ball told a Labour conference that these were "seismic events that are going to change the political landscape". He also said the current economic situation is "more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s" (See here.)

Oh dear. That doesn’t sound very supportive of Mr Brown or this Labour Governments official position.

Ok, well let’s look at someone else then… how about Nikolas Sarkozy. Well again let’s look at who he is. He is the democratically elected President of France (means he won an election of the whole country, Gordon may not be familiar with this concept).

Any way, what did Mr Sarkozy have to say on Gordon Browns Economic competence? Surely as a European leader, he will look at what Gordon brown was quick to do, and follow his leadership.

"The British chose a recovery plan by boosting consumer spending, notably by
cutting VAT by two per cent. It is plain to see that it has brought absolutely
no progress. "

Doesn’t sound very supportive, maybe we should look at what else he said…

"The reason is simple: because it's in people's heads. If the consumer no
longer consumes, he won't change just because we add or subtract one VAT point,
it's because he's scared for his future, he's scared for his job and says to
himself: 'I must save, because bad times are coming'.

"In France, we chose investment because when we put France into debt by
taking money to invest, in return we have assets, infrastructure. When you put
your country into debt to pay for operating costs, you have nothing in return
for your debt and you ruin the country.

"If the English did that it's because they don't have any industry
left. Gordon Brown cannot do what I am doing with carmakers [giving them up to 6
billion euros]... in construction and other industries, because they haven't got
any left."

Oh dear. Well let’s look at the IMF then. They have effective control on the world’s supply of money, they must recognise that “Gordon Brown has not only saved the world….” Ooops, he didn’t mean to say that did he.

Anyway, the IMF know what they are talking about, they must agree that the UK is well positioned economically. They have a report here. Oh, I forgot, they placed the UK at the very bottom in their outlook of developed nations, and are predicting that the UK economy will shrink by 2.8% in 2009.

Ok, maybe these are too specific. How about House owners?

No, wait, house prices have fallen an average of £22,000 per house hold in the last year or so.
What about the Unions? They love Labour Prime Ministers.

Hmm, forgot, they though when Gordon Brown said “British Jobs for British Workers” he was going to do that. He didn’t thell them that the EU won’t let him.

Labour voters?

Well, admittedly they might be hard to find now, as only 28% of the electorate is considering voting for Labour.

Polly? Getting mixed signals from Pol. Best not disturb her today; she is getting a bit of a kicking today from her readers.

My Blogs readers… No, wait, this is getting embarrassing… I almost forgot, but 92% of them want Brown to resign.

What about Gordon Browns Cabinet, they must support him and his claims on the economy…

Let’s see, The Foreign Secretary? No, that’s David Miliband, he was going to run a campaign against Gordon Brown Last year. Nobody, not even Gordon Brown thinks David Miliband trusts Grodon Brown.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary? Well she is supportive, but then again she is making massive amounts of money from the position Gordon put her in, she would have to back him, he is probably keeping a public enquiry from her door.

Jack Straw? haven’t heard from him in a while… hmmm, wonder where the Justice Secretary is?

Ed Balls? No, done that one already.

Labour MP’s. They will of course support their leader. They have to, it’s their job to, and they wouldn’t want to make dear Gordon cry again. Come to think of it, a lot of them will be out of a job soon, they are probably less happy..

I t seems I may am struggling to find a credible example of somebody who will back Gordon Brown’s economic policies, and actually for him to remain as Prime Minister. Is there anybody left that does?

Oh wait of course there is. I forgot, there is the BBC and the EU.

Government Advocates Population Controls

Just been over at The Times, when I saw this story.

Jonathon Porritt who chairs the Government's Sustainable Development Commission, and was formerly the Chairman of the Green Party has come out in favour controlling population growth in the UK through contraception and abortion. He does so because he feels that parents who have more than two children are being irresponsible by creating an unbearable burden on the environment.

A report from the commission will recommend that the Government must reduce population growth through family planning. Porritt is quoted in The Times as saying,

“I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate,”

“I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the “p” word.”

I am not sure where these people feel they get the right to dictate such measures to anybody at all, let alone aspire to make this Government Policy the sheer temerity and inappropriateness would normally be sufficient to see a popular uprising.

However, I really hope that Gordon Brown listens to the advise of the "unapologetic" Porritt, because it is perhaps the most ludicrous advice that a Western European government is ever likely to receive. The way the Times has reported this implies that the report serves warning to the Government of the dangers of overpopulation, yet does not speak to immigration policy or the other elephant in the room, The EU which dictates the free movement of people within its own external borders.

I look forward to seeing this Government say that it wishes to join Iran and China in implementing a restriction on the number of births allowed to UK families, whilst simultaneously leaving the policies of the EU unchallenged so that families from anywhere else can move to the UK and have as many children as they like.

I wonder what feminists like Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears will make of such a policy, especially as they are Gordon Browns favourites to advocate Government policies on TV. Surely this a direct contradiction upon a persons right to choose, and any policy that advocates population control is incitement from the state upon young women to commit infanticide.

I can't wait for Government ministers to appear on TV and be asked which of their kids they would have aborted in support of their new socialist doctrine. That will really spice up Question Time. Of course, The BBC will have to carry this debate, as the report is making recommendations from Porritts commission to improve the environment.

The Optimum Population Trust, for which Porritt is a patron has however answered what must be one of humanities most pressing and searching questions. How much Carbon will the average person burn in their life time, in comparison to the number of trees required to offset that persons Carbon Footprint. They say the answer is two-and-a-half acres of Oak Trees which they compare to a size the same as Trafalgar Square.

Perhaps when the population policy is flouted by those allowed to exempt it (I am guessing, Labour Politicians, Green Party Advocates, Full Members of The Optimum Population Trust) perhaps they can be forgiven from breaking that law if they plant enough trees.

It could be the policy announcement that will forever seals in the minds of the many just how loony this Labour Party has really become.