See also my repost of this from Craig yesterday – RB
Interestingly, Mark Urbans’ book on Sergei Skripal was available to pre-order on Amazon in July. It is no longer available. It has been pulled. From memory, the book’s description said that Mark had interviewed Skripal ‘extensively’ during 2017 and also mentioned the ‘new’ spy war now happening between Britain and Russia. A quick search revealed a new version of the book (with an altered title) will be available in early October, named The Skripal Files
– Craig Murray comments
Salisbury poisoning: Skripals ‘were under Russian surveillance’
Mark Urban, Newsnight, Jul 4 2018
My meetings with Sergei Skripal. I met Sergei on a few occasions last summer and found him to be a private character who did not, even under the circumstances then prevailing, wish to draw attention to himself. He agreed to see me as a writer of history books rather than as a news journalist, since I was researching one on the post-Cold War (ie Putin-era – RB) espionage battle between Russia and the West. Information gained in these interviews was fed into my Newsnight coverage during the early days after the poisoning (ie implicating Putin – RB). I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion (huh? – RB). As a man, Sergei is proud of his achievements, both before and after joining his country’s intelligence service. He has a deadpan wit and is remarkably stoical given the reverses he’s suffered in his life; from his imprisonment following conviction in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain, to the loss of his wife Liudmila to cancer in 2012, and the untimely death of his son Alexander (or Sasha) last summer. His domestic routine appeared settled and quiet, with regular visits to the cemetery, favourite shops, and lately the Railway Social Club. Certainly he did not seem to feel himself under great threat. He was making occasional trips to lecture or advise friendly intelligence services. Russia’s spies might have regarded Skripal’s activities of this kind as evidence he had re-entered the espionage world.
Both he and his daughter must now make difficult decisions about their future. Yulia has spoken about her hopes of returning to Russia “one day”. Her visit in March was only supposed to last a fortnight but now it is unclear what will become of her. Certainly, she is committed for the time being to helping in her father’s recovery. For Sergei the equation is different. He was not expecting to go back to Russia, and now he knows he will not be returning to his home in this country either. His house in Salisbury has been bought by the government both as a crime scene and a place still in need of extensive decontamination (bullshit – RB). Will he make a new life under an assumed identity in the US or a Commonwealth country? That promises to be an extremely difficult decision. Certainly in Pindo witness protection schemes, people are often asked to cut themselves adrift completely from their past. Having seen the peaceful life that he was enjoying in Salisbury last summer, I would imagine that will be very hard for Sergei. From the British government point of view, there is both an acknowledgement that Sergei and Yulia will be free to make their own choices and but also a hope that these will not trigger further political rows with Russia. Should the police name suspects for Salisbury in the coming months, either in the poisoning or the surveillance of the Skripals that preceded it, then the issue will return to the world’s front pages.
BBC News is not biased in Brexit reporting, says John Simpson
Robert Booth, Guardian, Aug 28 2018
Photo by Murdo Macleod, for the Graun. Behold a complacent prick – RB
BBC News is being unfairly attacked for bias as Britain goes through the nastiest period in its national life since 1945, according to John Simpson, its world affairs editor. The 74-year-old journalist has said he is fed up with the complaints and criticisms being directed at the corporation’s news output, which has been attacked by senior figures in the Conservative and Labour parties as well as campaigners on both sides of the Brexit debate. Simpson told the Radio Times:
(It isn’t just the extremists, but) the middle-of-the-roaders. Maybe it’s because they’re so used to social media, and hearing only the kind of views they like, that they’re enraged by having to listen to arguments they hate. At present it’s Brexit. Before that it was Scottish independence. People have allowed themselves to be persuaded that there’s something wrong with being given open and unbiased information from BBC journalists.
In recent days, leading politicians who have accused the BBC of bias on Twitter include the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, and the Tory Brexiter MP John Redwood. The Labour peer Andrew Adonis has mounted a months-long campaign against BBC coverage of Brexit, complaining to OFCOM about the number of Question Time appearances by the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and opposing the policy of the director general Lord Hall of no longer reporting on the binary choice of staying or leaving the EU but “accepting the government’s view that the decision is irreversible.” In July, the two BBC broadcasts that received the most complaints were both items on Newsnight and related to allegations of political bias. A total of 172 people complained that the programme’s presenter should not have described Facebook facilitating illegal campaigning by Vote Leave during the referendum as an “allegation”, and 109 people thought its coverage of claims of anti-Semitism within Labour was biased against the party. Simpson said:
It’s the broadcasters’ job to give people the range of opinions they won’t necessarily get in their newspapers, and it’s also our job to hold politicians’ feet to the fire, whether they like it or not.
He said he would like to see a fact-checking team attached to every single news programme, to counter each false statement that is made. Will Moy, the director of fact-checking organisation Full Fact, gave qualified support to Simpson’s view. He said Full Fact had noticed that people had become quicker to assume bad faith by the media, as opposed to genuine errors. Politicians have also worked out that they can use social media to communicate directly with their constituents, which allows them to avoid their messages being interrogated and challenged. Moy added:
The BBC is not perfect. There are reasonable criticisms to make, including that they don’t have enough people who understand what is going on on Brexit, although that is true of all media. The more we throw mud at these institutions, the more we risk obscuring the value of their effort to be a neutral voice for all of us. They can get things wrong without compromising their underlying ethics.
Simpson’s comments follow an argument between the Radio 4 Today programme presenter Nick Robinson and the LBC radio presenter and remain supporter James O’Brien. O’Brien said that in reality, impartiality in news coverage was all too often bias, since it required broadcasters to give false equivalence to those speaking objective truth and those making baseless assertions. Robinson countered that to follow that logic would create the circumstances for a British version of Fox News, the overtly right-wing Pindo network that presents pro-Trump opinion as fact.
Niqnaq 