I hope everyone will be watching tonight’s Panorama. Journalists like John Ware and Andrew Gilligan are too few and far between.
However, it’s the shenanigans behind the scenes that are hugely troubling. You’ve got to read the piece that is cross-posted on Harry’s Place and Trial by Jeory
This affair should be ringing governmental and journalistic alarm bells. Together with other corrupt scandals and practices such as the plot outlined in the infamous Trojan Horse letter (even though its authenticity is suspect, its substance is demonstrably valid) these emerging third-world tactics represent dots that the government and the media seem reluctant to join up.
There will surely have to be a tipping point when merely dismissing everyone who speaks out as ‘Islamophobic’ and right wing isn’t an automatic gagging device. Let’s hope this programme ruffles a few feathers, and that this time they stay ruffled unlike Undercover Mosque which now seems a distant memory.
Andrew Gilligan thinks this edition of Panorama "might possibly be a turning-point, that an organisation with the BBC’s clout is finally taking notice of this scandal."
ReplyDeleteIt's just finished, and very damning it was too. John Ware did a very fine job, I thought.
DeleteWhether it will finish Rahman off is another matter though. His strategy may see him win another election on another tiny turnout, and it may be Eric Pickles who holds the key to holding him to account.
John Ware mentioned the Bangladeshi researcher who made off with confidential docs and gave them to Rahman's office, and the accusations of "racism and bias" against 'Panorama' [he didn't mention the accusation of "Islamophobia"]. He said that most of the programme's information came from Bangladeshi sources.
So an all-Bangladeshi cabinet, most of the mayor's faith funding going to mosques, £25,000 going to a mosque that hosted an extremist IJew & Christian-hating) Saudi preacher, £100,000 to a mosque/community association, and a huge displacement of money to Bangladeshi/Somali projects at the expense of the other Tower Hamlets communities...
Yes, very interesting. Let's hope it does lead somewhere positive.