Monthly Archives: February 2010

BROKEN TRUST…

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The BBC World Service Trust is an arm of the BBC that receives £17.9m a year – mainly from the Department for International Development and the EU (52%)- to train broadcasters to spread messages about development. Some of what it does is vital and laudable; for example helping to spread knowledge about HIV/Aids through the development of soap operas that are actually listened to. However, and as in everything the BBC does, it is a big caveat, there is a sinister side to its mission. It campaigns loudly about ‘the environment’, and inevitably, where BBC folk are involved, that actually means about ‘climate change’. Take, for example, Africa Talks Climate (do you notice the missing word?)about which the organiser says:

The drive to help people understand issues such as climate change and to have the opportunity to speak and act is at the heart of our work…In a partnership project funded by the British Council, ten countries have been identified in which BBC WST researchers will be conducting research: DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The major objective of Africa Talks Climate is to identify the entry points to engage, inform and empower Africans in local, national and international conversations about climate change. To achieve this, the initiative will collate opinions and then amplify the voices of people at all levels of society.

Interestingly, this was all done with the British Council, which as EU Referendum has pointed out today, is another government-funded body which has been infested with ‘climate change fervour.

Back with WST, their efforts extend to the eastern Caribbean and South America, but also to India. Here, the trust’s aim was again to train journalists:

An extensive training programme for journalists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was carried out in nine Indian states to improve the quality and quantity of information published in the media and to create a better flow of information between environmental NGOs and the media.

Their partner in part of the enterprise was TERI (The Resources and Energy Institute) set up by none other than Ravendra Pachauri, the boss of the IPCC. TERI itself is not without controversy (to put in mildly), but, eh, this is ‘climate change’, so for WST, it’s simply “our non-profit partner”.

Now I’m all for Indians and Africans (and anyone else) becoming more aware of the need to treat the environment properly. But this, folks, as we well know, is not really about that. It’s about the BBC pushing their ‘climate change’ lies and propaganda, and nothing will get in their way. The truth is that the World Service Trust, funded by our taxes, is busily at work persuading journalists round the developing world to spread lies and to hate the West for the injustices they have heaped upon them through CO2 emissions. The BBC, whose motto is “Nation Shall Speak Peace unto Nation” is frantically stoking up hatred instead.

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DV AND NEWSNIGHT

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Well now, did YOU catch my fleeting appearance on Newsnight on Monday evening perchance? It’s about half ways through. I’ve been away for the past few days so first chance to catch up and update you on my close encounter with Michael Crick and the guys.

The background is that the political party to which I now belong – Traditional Unionist Voice – held a public meeting at the heart of the constituency of Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Peter Robinson. This was our way of making it clear we will challenge his seat at the looming Westminster election. I was one of three speakers on the evening and Newsnight carried a few words. Crick was there and in fairness he did an interview with our Party Leader and then stayed for the duration. He then went off, obviously did some other interviews, labelled me and my colleagues “backwoodsmen” and ensured that the Newsnight item was on message i.e doing deals with terrorists is the right thing to do. Michael said it had been some time since he was in Belfast, I hope he will not leave it so long until the next time he comes back, I want a word with him.

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FAT CAT CREAM

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The big oil companies, once the greenies’ villains of the peace, are now in bed with them. They are the cats that truly have the cream, because on top of their massive oil and gas reserves – which of course the world still needs – they are now also benefiting massively from the lunatic government subsidies for building wind farms and other so-called renewables. Their grasping greed is part of the sinister conspiracy that, as Ofgem pointed out yesterday, will lead to energy bills soaring to £5,000 a year by 2020 and regular power cuts well before then. So when Dr Anthony Hayward, the BP boss, comes down from his subsidy-fuelled castle to give – as fawning Evan Davis put it this morning on Today “a rare interview” – how is he treated? With sickening deference. Our chain-wearing Evan’s first question was, he obviously thought, quite a toughie (and designed to be a sop to all those anti-warming ‘deniers’ he clearly sneers at); whether the great doctor actually believed in ‘climate change’, despite all the recent controversy. The answer was “yes”, so naturally, this was treated as the gospel truth, and the rest of the exchange followed entirely predictable lines. It revealed nothing other than that BP is fat, complacent, and chillingly opportunistic.

What Davis should have asked the good doctor is how much he and his company stands to make from government subsidies in the massive ‘renewables’ scam. That is precisely the qestion that the BBC will never ask.

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"stretching the available facts"

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Matt Prescott, the well-connected eco-activist behind such ventures as the BBC’s failed Planet Relief project (see Bishop Hill here and here for details on Prescott’s connections with various BBC luminaries and for links to articles he has written for the BBC), has donned his recycled tinfoil hat to offer these observations on Climategate in the comments at the Guardian website:

Without doubt, whoever orchestrated this combined computer hacking and smear campaign was extremely sophisticated and would make a world-class PR spin doctor look amateur.
It is hard to believe that the average hacker has the PR skills required to pull of something so devastating, in terms of timing and content, single-handedly.
A large pool of people and organisations, much larger than just the UEA, will almost certainly have had to be hacked in order to provide the most juicy morsels and divert attention in particular directions.
Surely, it would have taken a long time and thus substantial resources to read thousands of emails and to pick out the key conversational threads, scientists and issues?
Again this feels like a very large project which would have need to be funded by individuals or organisations with extremely deep pockets and the ability to maintain absolute secrecy.
Given the size, wealth and skills found within the intelligence community the idea that the CIA, NSA or some other shadowy organisation has been up to something naughty, which would suit their national interest, is not a bad guess, but it should probably have been labelled as a guess, if this is all it was.

After all that, he concludes without any sense of irony:

If there is one lesson from “climate gate” it is that scientists need to be crystal clear about when they are discussing a view backed up by hard, empirical evidence and when they are speculating or stretching the available facts.

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Ash Sends Incendiary Message

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“Hello and welcome to Outlook from the BBC world service.
I’m Lucy Ash.”
A heart-sinking announcement for anyone familiar with Ms. Ash

“In Today’s Programme: The aid worker inside the Gaza strip helping traumatised children there to rebuild their shattered lives.”

Lucy Ash is about to deliver rather more than an interview with the aid worker.
In her introduction she milks the latest revelations by Israel about their own misconduct in Gaza down to the very last drop.

“Now Israel has revealed that it’s disciplined two senior officers for endangering civilians by firing white phosphorus shells during last years attack on the Gaza strip,” she announces with palpable relish. “The officers, a brigadier general and a colonel, were found to have exceeded their authority in ordering the use of the weapons, which were fired in the direction of the main United Nations warehouse in Gaza City,” she continues, emphasising their ranks lest we might think lesser beings were responsible. “Use of such munitions near populated areas violates international law. White phosphorus sticks to flesh and burns for many hours causing appalling injuries.”

But what has this got to do with the aid worker? Does white phosphorus relate to the forthcoming tale of psychological healing she promised us?

“ More than 1100 Palestinians were killed during operation cast lead,” (We’ve got the white phosphorus now, so we’ll stop bothering to exaggerate the body count) “and the devastation wrought by the 22 day conflict in Gaza is still everywhere to be seen. Large areas of the strip were reduced to rubble, leaving thousands homeless. Children are amongst the worst affected.”

“Osama Damo (?), an aid worker with Save The Children has been involved in setting up centres to look after them, and to help them come to terms with the loss and insecurity overshadowing their young lives. Many of them have been severely psychologically traumatised by what they saw in the war.”

In addition to the traumatising effect of being indoctrinated with hatred of Jews then used as human shields by Islamist terrorists, which Ms. Ash omitted to mention.

The interview with the aid worker proceeded to detail psychological damage typical of that suffered by most war victims anywhere, and the incident graphically related to illustrate a particular child’s trauma had nothing to do with white phosphorus so far as I could see.

Lucy Ash’s introduction conjured up the notorious image of the napalm-burnt, running, Vietnamese child. The average listener could only have assumed that white phosphorus was routinely authorised by senior Israeli soldiers and deliberately used as a weapon against civilians, while Operation Cast Lead appeared to have been perpetrated for no other reason than baseless hatred of Palestinians, by aggressive expansionist Israel. Must we now expect the white phosphorus revelations to be added gratuitously to the fluctuating body count that accompanies all references to the Middle East conflict?

Do not assume that I approve of white phosphorus, or that I know enough about it to defend or attack its use. Do not assume that I think Israel can do no wrong. But Israel did one right thing in investigating and admitting this error, and in so doing handed ammunition to its enemies in the propaganda war, so was damned either way.
People who support Israel would rather it didn’t do anything at all that placed it in a bad light in the eyes of the world, but in the scheme of things how plausible is that?

Lucy Ash knew what she was doing, and, I assume, so did the BBC.

Belated Update.
So not only was Lucy Ash’s introduction gratuitous and biased, it was also factually incorrect. The reprimand she was so eager to tell us about was not about the use of white phosphorus at all. The alacrity with which she, and the BBC blurted out erroneous unverified material concerning Israel is telling. It’s not as if this was the first time such a thing has happened. It should be a lesson to them, but it seems they’ll never learn.

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Will No One Rid Me Of This Meddlesome Priest ?

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The BBC take a break from the ongoing euthanasia campaign to point out in the Radio Four news headlines the dangers of ‘a meddlesome pontiff interfering in British law‘.

It’s not often that I hear a BBC newsreader emphasising the Britishness of anything. Could it be that at last we’re entering the new Elizabethan age ?

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Funny Haha

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It looks as though the BBC is going to give lavish publicity to Chris Morris’s film, the one that lampoons incompetent suicide bombers. Morris was treated to a flattering profile on Radio 4. He’s just the sort they like, edgy, dangerous, and as unpredictable as Russell Brand. His controversial paedo programme was overrated, but I appreciated the idea. His take on the public’s groupthink attitude to Paedophilia and the media’s prurient exploitation of it is almost interchangeable with the Israel question. No changes to the format necessary. The same groupthink, and the same media obsession apply to both subjects. Just remove Paedo and insert Israel and Jew wherever appropriate. Only Morris wouldn’t be amused as he is one of the baying mob of Israel denouncers.

On the theme of lampoons and edgy humour, what about Charlie Brooker. His Newswipe holds back just when it seems to be getting somewhere, and frustratingly skirts round things in a PC manner. In his film about Anjem Choudary and the Wootton Basset publicity stunt, he has chosen an easy target. Nobody likes Islam4UK; it’s banned now anyway. The thrust of the piece is that the media is giving, and getting, publicity from Choudary’s efforts. Brooker goes for ITV. The absence of blame allocated to the equally culpable BBC leaves a deafening silence. Of course his programme is on the Beeb, and Brooker is actually another P.C. lefty.

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Early Learning

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The BBC spokespersons that used to grace B-BBC with their presence always insisted that if one or two biased items slipped through, in the long term they would be counterbalanced, because balance was an overall concept, achieved over time. They must have had in mind a timescale of around two hundred years.

Yesterday on News 24, they featured a story that has been on the BBC website for a few days, about the discovery during a raid on a house in Manchester of a video that shows children being ‘radicalised.’
Kim Howells was shown expressing his surprise. If you’re chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, and you haven’t even heard of the Hamas Bunny, surely something’s wrong. There are hundreds of such things on Youtube, many featuring a nightmarish Mickey Mouse whose voice and appearance alone would surely traumatise any child, never mind indoctrinating it with jihad.

At least the problem was being given an airing. But the Muslim lady featured in the story said ‘the most worrying thing’ was that people might think this sort of carry-on was representative of all Muslims. The actual radicalisation and indoctrination seemed to bother her less.

The website transcript of the words in the vid included “I want to kill the infidels” but missed out the bit where he clearly said “To kill Jews.” If I remember correctly they had it on the News 24 subtitles, so someone at BBC online must have thought it was unseemly, and edited it out.

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FINGERS IN PIES…

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Guess what? The man responsible for looking after the fat pensions of the boys and girls at the BBC is a climate change fanatic, and he is part of an international group of investment managers who bust a gut to invest in ‘climate change’ schemes. He’s called Peter Dunscombe, and he runs the £8.2bn corporation pension fund, advising trustees on a day-to-day basis about their investments. Mr Dunscombe, who addresses conferences about ‘ethical investments’, is also chairman of the Institutional Investment Group on Climate Change(IIGCC), which has 47 members and manages four trillion euros’ worth of investments; yes, four trillion. Their goal is to find as many ‘climate change’ investment opportunities as possible:

The IIGCC Investor Statement on Climate change was launched in October 2006. Asset owners and asset managers who signed the Statement committed to increasing their focus on climate change in their own processes and in their engagement with companies and governments.

So now we really know why BBC staffers are so fanatical about ‘climate change’. It’s naked self-interest. In 2008, there were 18,736 contributors to the BBC pension fund; every man jack of them benefits from climate alarmism.

(h/t anonymous eagle-eyed B-BBC contributor)

Update: I’ve been going through the latest BBC Pensions Trust report, and it reveals that Helen Boaden, who is the overall boss of the BBC’s news and current affairs operation, was appointed to the trust in 2008. So the woman who tells environment reporters such as Roger Harrabin and Richard Black that the science is settled also works to maximise the returns of the pension fund with Peter Dunscombe. I thought that needed spelling out fully, just in case any subtleties might be missed.

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