If it wasn't a plug for Labour, it was a plug for Islam.

I FINALLY saw the offending Border News clip around lunchtime yesterday. Now I know why our Cumbrian Press Officer, Clive Jefferson, was so outraged by the blatant anti-BNP propaganda.

I banged off an email to Border News to complain. I wrote:

"I was disappointed in your report on last night's news regarding the Labour councillor for Currock ward.
Although this was dressed up as story about Carlisle's first Muslim councillor, it was in fact a blatant plug for the Labour Party and deliberate anti-BNP propaganda.
In the light of the forthcoming by-election in Upperby, which like Currock is a key political battleground between Labour and the BNP, it can best be viewed as an ill-timed report.
The very same same story appeared in the Cumberland News just a week before the local elections on May 1st and it almost seems as though someone is manipulating the media in Cumbria at election time for the benefit of the Labour Party."

Steve Lambden, the Editor of Border News, replied:

"Thank you for your e-mail. I don't accept that this was either a plug for the Labour Party or anti-BNP propaganda.
If you believe that and your worries of media manipulation, you should contact the television regulator, Ofcom. Their contact details are on their website, ofcom.org.uk"

To that I responded:

"I'm surprised that you are so adamant that Border News hasn't been used in some way by an influence from inside or outside Border TV.
"I would be interested to know who chose the soundtrack for the final shots of the Muslims coming out of Brook Street Mosque.
"That music was a clear indication what the report was designed to portray and I believe to use such deliberate sentimentality in what should be unbiased news reporting is a cynical abuse by someone of the responsibility Border News has to the public."

Not surprisingly Lambden didn't answer that. If the programme wasn't a plug for the Labour Party then it was a plug for Islam which in today's climate is ill-advised to say the least. Our soldiers being killed by Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and Muslim bombers are targeting ordinary British people to promote their doctrine. Such pro-Islam propaganda something that a television news programme shouldn't be broadcasting.

There was an excellent report by Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Chronicle this morning regarding the bizarre decision of the Police to prosecute the makers of the Channel 4 documentary programme Undercover Mosque.

He wrote:

"The apologies given in the High Court last week by the West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service to the makers of an extraordinary documentary have thrown a welcome light upon that species of malign political correctness that is eating away at British tolerance and respect for minorities.
On January 15, 2007, Channel 4 aired a documentary entitled Undercover Mosque. The film-makers distilled, into one hour, content from more than 25 hours of footage filmed secretly and at great risk at a number of mosques in the West Midlands. These recordings made very public what some of the imams at these mosques had been preaching to their congregants:
- “Whoever changes his religion from al-Islam to anything else — kill him in the Islamic state.”
- “Allah has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect is incomplete, deficient. She may be suffering from hormones that will make her emotional.”
- “If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech.”
- “You have to bomb the Indian businesses, and as for the Jews you kill them physically.”
Other footage showed one imam lavishing praise upon the murder of a British soldier in Afghanistan, while another encouraged violence against non-Muslims. Marriage with pre-pubescent girls was also advocated, as was the physical punishment of girls who refused to wear the hijab. Muslims were exhorted not to integrate into British society. The deputy-headmaster of an Islamic high school in Birmingham was filmed telling an audience at the Sparkbrook mosque that he disagreed with democracy and with the word democracy.
“They should call it... kuffrocracy [kuffir means unbeliever], that’s their plan. It’s the hidden cancerous aim of these people.”
No sooner had the documentary been aired than there was launched against it a sustained campaign of vilification, aimed primarily at its makers — Hardcash Productions — and at Channel 4 for having had the courage to authorise its transmission. The Muslim Council of Britain claimed that the film-makers had edited their footage so as to “misrepresent” the content of speeches. The Islamic Human Rights Commission condemned the film’s “inherent Islamophobia”.
You might have expected the police and the CPS to have ignored these responses, and, instead, to have objectively evaluated the chilling evidence that Undercover Mosque presented. But they didn’t. Using taxpayers’ money, the CPS actually began investigating the producers of the film, and it was they — the producers — who were accused of undermining good community relations, by alleged selective editing and distortion.
The police, meanwhile, referred the documentary to the media watchdog, Ofcom. But Ofcom praised the manner in which the evidence gathered in the film had been edited and presented. Hardcash and Channel 4 launched a libel action against the CPS and the West Midlands Police. And last week the defendants had to issue an unreserved and grovelling apology. An undisclosed six-figure sum has been agreed in damages. Again, the taxpayer will foot this bill.
But the last chapter in this sorry tale has yet to be written and, before it is, there are a great many questions to be answered. By what twisted logic — for example — could the police and the CPS have concluded that it was the film-makers who needed to be harried and pursued, rather than the imams and the mosque trustees who afforded them platforms from which to launch batteries of hateful invective which, in any commonsense view, must have amounted to incitement to violence?
A few of the British-based preachers filmed for the documentary have been prosecuted, but not those who facilitated the dissemination of their views. Why?
Then there is the Saudi connection. Many of the mosques featured in the documentary were funded by, or from, Saudi Arabia, and reflected the primitive Wahabist form of Islam officially sponsored by that country. We have already seen, in the history of the bribes and kickbacks said to have been paid to Saudi officials by BAE Systems (in order to win lucrative defence contracts), that political sensitivities at the highest levels in British government led to the Serious Fraud Office being ordered to drop corruption inquiries. Did these same sensitivities dissuade the CPS from pursuing the truths revealed by Undercover Mosque?
Many of us are dismayed at the strong support for the British National Party reflected in the recent local elections. Given the official attitudes reflected in the story of this documentary, is it any wonder that the BNP should be doing so well?"

Of course readers of the Jewish Chronicle should be delighted, not dismayed, that the British National Party are doing so well, because it is only the BNP that will stem the growth of Islam in this country.

I'm hoping for a weekend in the garden, weather permitting. First job is to dig over another area that is to be turfed and to prepare another part of the front garden that can be used to park our car.

There's also some good TV and I'm afraid I have to admit I'm a Eurovision Song Contest buff and have been hooked on it ever since Waterloo and Abba won in Brighton back in the Seventies. My first memory was even further back than that with Sing Little Birdie by Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson. I've seen both semi-finals and must admit the standard this year seems pretty grim, but I'm hoping on the night that there will be at least one song that stands out and will stimulate some memories of 2008 in the years ahead.

There's also the Football League play-offs over the Bank Holiday weekend and for what it's worth I shall be supporting Stockport County, Doncaster and Hull City because they all have strong links with my team Workington Reds.