AS SIKKA AS A PARROT

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The Today programme didn't completely ignore Labour's protectionist 'Cadbury's Law'. Justin Webb, in the course of a surprising - and admirably - strong grilling, got support for the proposal from Vince 'more-Labour-than-Labour' Cable.
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Later Justin talked to Prof Prem Sikka of Essex University on the subject. My heart sank as soon as I saw his name. I knew immediately that he was on to back the government. I've written about him before:

Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex, was on this morning's Today programme, talking to James Naughtie about Lehman Brothers.
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Prem and Jim got on like a house on fire.
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Prof Sikka was also recently on The World Tonight (1/3/10), causing mischief for the Tories over the issue of non-doms and tax. You may not be surprised to learn that Prem Sikka also blogs for The Guardian and holds left-wing views - for a full flavour of which please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/premsikka.

Prof Sikka indeed backed the government over the matter. "I think it is a good idea", he said, before talking lots of socialist tripe. Justin, again to his credit, refused to take the Esler approach and just accept what he said without challenge.
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No-one from Labour "was available" to talk about the matter.
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PROFESSORS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

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Are all professors of industrial relations far-left in their politics, or is it just the ones the BBC invites onto its airwaves? Whether it's John Kelly, professor of industrial relations at Birkbeck College and member of the Socialist History Society, or that old BBC stand-by Roger Seifert, professor of industrial relations at Wolverhampton Business School, they keep popping up across the BBC. Today's PM had another - Gregor Gall, professor of industrial relations at the University of Hertfordshire. Prof Gall's Wikipedia profile came as no surprise to me when I looked him up after listening to the militancy of his contribution to PM. A regular columnist for The Guardian and the Morning Star, he's also a member of the Scottish Socialist Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Gall
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What about professors of employment relations invited to appear on the BBC? Well, when there's one of them it's usually Professor Ralph Darlington of Salford University. He's appearing on tonight's The World Tonight, also to discuss the current strikes. The university's website informs us that he's about to edit an issue of the journal Socialist History.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_History_Society
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HIM AGAIN

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I blogged yesterday about one of the ways the BBC was trying to deflect the latest parliamentary scandal away from Labour - by turning from Labour to the issue of lobbying, bringing in the left-wing Alliance for Lobbying Transparency to generalise the story and attack the Tories. http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2010/03/two-ways-to-deflect-story.html
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Professor David Miller from the organisation was on yesterday's Today programme. He was back again on today's World at One, talking to Martha Kearney. Which party, despite its not being the party most culpable in the current scandal. was on the receiving end of the corporate-bashing prof's stringent criticism?: "There are about 60 prospective parliamentary candidates in the coming election who have not yet been elected who have links to the lobbying industry, who work as lobbyists. Of those the large bulk of them are Conservatives." Prof Miller then aggressively attacked some of these Conservative candidates, singling out "David Cameron's former press secretary George Eustace" and Priti Patel. He is clearly no independent expert.
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Earlier a Labour activist called John Knight railed against his MP Geoff Hoon and those middle-class Blairites who had "usurped" his party, and acted against the working class.
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Sir Christopher Kelly followed.

ONE-PART-OF-THE-WORLD-IN-PARTICULAR TONIGHT

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After discussing Mark Easton's 'they're all as bad as each other, so Labour's not the worst of the lot by a long way as you might think' story, The World Tonight moved swiftly on to discuss its favourite subject, Israel (the subject is its favourite of course, not Israel!)
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It was discussed, inevitably, with a liberal American academic, Michele Dunne, senior research associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (the programme's favourite US think tank) before yet another report on this plight of the Palestinians - this time from Paul Wood on how "unarmed" Palestinians, "just coming home from college", were being shot with real (rather than rubber) bullets by the wicked Israelis. A Palestinian medic said, yes, he was sure they were shot with real bullets. The Palestinian case was made at considerable length, the Israeli denial considerably more concisely.
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The BBC are just obsessed about this. I am deeply, deeply bored by their obsession. I want to hear about Cambodia, or Gambia, or Canada, or Tunisia, or Fiji...there's a whole world out there BBC! Let's hear about it!
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(The World Tonight at least does spread its wings a bit wider than its companion programmes.)

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TWO WAYS TO DEFLECT AN UNWELCOME STORY

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Fair's fair, Norman Smith was on this morning's Today to talk to John Humphrys about the 'cash for access' scandal involving those senior Labour figures, and Nick Robinson discussed it with Justin Webb.
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The 7.10 spot today, however, showed the BBC moving firmly to change the focus away from Labour and onto the evils of lobbying itself. JH talked to Prof David Miller of Strathclyde University, one of the founders of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency. This alliance's definition of 'lobbying' seems to mean 'corporate lobbying'. Here are its members:

Action Aid
Campaign Against Arms Trade
Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom
Corporate Watch
enough'senough.org
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
National Union of Journalists
Pesticides Action Network
Platform
SPEAK Network
SpinWatch
Unlock Democracy
War on Want
World Development Movement

Yes, it's that sort of alliance! http://www.lobbyingtransparency.org/content/view/2/7/. Don't these groups lobby too?

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Prof Miller said, "I see yesterday the Labour Party said it was introducing a manifesto commitment so the question now is 'What would the other parties do?'" - which would have surely pleased any Labour Party people listening!

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The second predictable strand of the BBC's approach to this story (predicted by Cassandra on the Biased BBC blogsite as early as yesterday morning) was that it would try to say that all the political parties are at it, the Conservatives as much as Labour. Over the many, many months that the BBC pursued the Conservatives over Lord Ashcroft I don't recall hearing many BBC interviewers adopting this 'they're all as bad as each other' line - at least until they had too in the last couple of weeks! Only when Labour get caught in the mire do the likes of Justin Webb start pushing it to the fore.

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Here are two of Justin's question to Sir George Young:

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"There is a convenient distinction, isn't there though, that is made between advice that is given and lobbying? One of the things that Geoff Hoon appears to have said is that 'one of the challenges I'm really looking forward too', this is a direct quotation, 'is translating my knowledge and contacts about the international scene into something that frankly makes money'. Well that's what former ministers of both parties have done for decades. I mean Lady Thatcher became advisor to Philip Morris." (If in doubt blame Mrs Thatcher!!)

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"But just on the wider point though, a lot of people will see it only as a difference of degree. The fact is that a lot of former cabinet ministers of both parties (his emphasis) advise and have advised companies and what they're selling is access."

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And here's one he put to Nick Robinson:

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"I do wonder though whether the public really see much of a distinction between this issue of lobbying on specific issues, going to government, saying 'I on behalf of a company want you to do this, that and the other' and the sort of general advice that, as I was suggesting to Sir George Young, cabinet ministers and former cabinet ministers have done for decades."

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Justin Webb's interview with Sir George Young (Conservative) resulted in an interruption coefficient of 1.2. His interview with Labour's Kevin Brennan on the same subject resulted merely in an I.C. of 0.4. That's Justin Webb for you!

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The Today programme (and its website) was keen to stress throughout that the calls for an investigation into Stephen Byers were coming from the Conservative Party. This neglects the fact that the Lib Dems are also making those calls and risks falsely implanting in the public's mind the idea that this whole story is turning into a party-political point-scoring exercise by the Tories. Perish the thought that anyone at the BBC would think of trying to imply that!!

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UPDATE: The World at One, in fairness to the BBC, is leading with the Stephen Byers story and digging into his discussions with Lord Adonis. Martha Kearney interviewed a questioning Norman Baker of the Lib Dems (I.C. of 0), the BBC's favourite transport expert Christian Wolmar, who glossed things favourably for Lord Adonis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Wolmar), and Labour loyalist Tony 'Father of Ben' Wright MP (I.C. of 0), who will doubtless find his knighthood in the post soon after the general election and who kept trying to implicate the Conservatives.

'BH' ON BA

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Broadcasting House (R4) featured a fascinating ICM poll that shows that only 25% of the general public support the BA cabin crew strike, with 60% opposed. The issue was discussed with Bob Crowe and former GOAT Lord Digby Jones after a report from "John Kelly, professor of industrial relations at Birkbeck College." Professor Kelly would be one among the 25% minority, as it was quite clear from what he said that he was a strong union supporter. A little research shows him to be just another of the BBC's vast cast of left-wing academics. He's a member of the Socialist History Society, for example. His report was accompanied by a song by Billy Bragg.

ALL PREM AND PROPER

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Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex, was on this morning's Today programme, talking to James Naughtie about Lehman Brothers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8565000/8565669.stm
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Prem and Jim got on like a house on fire.
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Prof Sikka was also recently on The World Tonight (1/3/10), causing mischief for the Tories over the issue of non-doms and tax. You may not be surprised to learn that Prem Sikka also blogs for The Guardian and holds left-wing views - for a full flavour of which please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/premsikka.

THE WORLD TONIGHT'S TYPE OF ACADEMIC

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The tendency of The World Tonight to tilt strongly towards the Liberal Left makes it the Leaning Tower of Pisa among the various Radio 4 current affairs programmes -though Today can of course make a strong case for the same status too. (Though in saying that said, this week has seen two Conservative politicians appearing on the programme. That doesn't happen very often!)

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When last night's programme discussed the coolness between China and the US over Obama and the Lama, Robin Lustig talked to two American experts. The first was Ken Lieberthal, former advisor to Bill Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. The second was George Perkovich, a former aide to Joe Biden who now heads the Nonproliferation Program(me) at the liberal-learning Carnegie Institute for International Peace. Both sounded like serious figures, but both come from the same place, politically-speaking.

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THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS STRIKES PAST

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Unite, the union at my own workplace (of which I am not a member), are continuing their campaign to return Britain to the 1970s. Following on from their set-back over B.A., this morning's Today highlighted that they are also leading a strike of electronics workers at Fujitsu. Correspondent Judy Hobson spoke first to two of the workers, then John Humphrys spoke to "Roger Seifert, professor of Industrial Relations at Wolverhampton Business School", asking him, "Is there anything in what that lady said there that they're just using the recession, companies like that, to push down wages and conditions?" Prof Seifert replied, "Oh absolutely true" and went on to attack business ("big multi nationals"). He sounded like a true old-style leftie and, checking him out, it turns out that he's just that - an academic 'socialist' (see
http://solidaritymagazine.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/hazards-conference-2008/ and http://www.sochealth.co.uk/confs/labreform.htm). He was so far-left even John Humphrys baulked at some of the simplistic things he was saying! (A professor! God help his students!)
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*****

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Evan Davis discussed serial killers with another leftie academic, introduced as "Professor David Wilson, a criminologist at Birmingham City University and author of A History of British Serial Killing". He often pops up on the BBC whenever a serial killer is in the news, discussing the subject from a left-liberal perspective - just how regularly can be guaged by his reaction to Evan's salutation, "Good morning": "Good morning Evan, nice to talk to you again." Not mentioned, though, is the fact that he's also 'Vice-Chair of the Howard League for Penal Reform'. (The BBC are always talking to them again!). Today though he pretty much struck to telling stories about serial killers past.
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