TWO SIDES..

I get the feeling we`re being softened up by the BBC.  In the last few days and weeks I`ve noticed a concentration of effort in their reporting of issues such as the `migrant crisis.` For example, yesterday we heard the scale of net migration to the UK for the past year - 330,000 is the figure quoted - and they`re just the ones the Government knows about. The BBC`s report suggets, however, that this is a good thing because, according to worthies such as the Institute of Directors, without people coming to work here our economy would collapse.

Other representatives of industry and commerce are peddling the same message - the chap who runs recruitment for the NHS says that nurses should be allowed to come and work here unfettered by restrictive rules because, without them, the care of the elderly and patients in hospital cannot be sustained.

I`ve noticed too that the BBC reports from the Serbia/Hungary border, from Kos, Calais and other key migrant destinations all seem to pull at the heartstrings by emphasising the plight of the migrants  and the awful conditions they find themselves in as they are determined to start a new life in the northern states of Europe.  

Now I do not deny that there`s a problem - a crisis even - and on a human level I have great sympathy for those forced to flee war torn countries and find a better life for themselves.  But there are two sides to every story, of course, and I am still waiting for the BBC to tell us (as if we didn`t know already) what the other side of the coin looks like.

Seems to me the BBC news and current affairs output is institutionally left leaning and thus not fulfilling its duty to be impartial and report a wider, balanced context on most of the big issues of the day.   I quite expect them to come out, quietly but determinedly, and start softening us up for the next great debate - Britain`s relationship with the EU. 

And it may have started already with the BBC recent report that one of the bigwigs running the TATA Steel Group assuring their reporter that Britain voting to leave the EU will be disastrous as we rely so much on the benefits of the common market.  Excuse me, but all those decade ago we agreed ot join the Common Market rather than the Superstate the EU is fast becoming.   I wonder if, one day, the BBC will put the counter argument.

Watch this space.......