"The winters of our youth are unlikely to return"

It was amusing to see that the most viewed item on the Independent’s website yesterday was the article “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” from 2000.

Similar claims have been made by the BBC, of course. In February 2007 the BBC World Service’s One Planet devoted an episode to warmer winters. Here’s the presenter, BBC science correspondent Richard Hollingham, giving us his conclusion :

Listen!

Richard Hollingham: Those of us who grew up with very cold winters, who tell our children that winter’s not what it used to be, we’re right aren’t we?

Brenda Ekwurzel (Climate Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists): Yes. Absolutely. It has changed.

Hollingham: Sitting here at the BBC, leafing through my old photos, I can’t help feeling nostalgic for proper winters. This year we had just one day of snow in southern Britain. Mind you it still brought the roads, railways and airports to a standstill and shut the schools, but as most people in London, Moscow, Washington, Beijing or Oslo will testify, a cold crisp winter’s day with snow on the ground is infinitely preferable to the mild damp miserable winters many of us are having to get used to. It seems the winters of our youth are unlikely to return.

And here’s the BBC’s ‘Ethical Man’ Justin Rowlatt writing on the Newsnight blog in January 2007:

Do you remember snow? It’s that cold wet stuff you used to trudge through in the olden days.
I was reminded of the stuff – not by the weather of course – but as I looked through some super-8 footage of my family that my dad shot. It’s been collecting dust at my parent’s house for years. I dug it out because we were looking for images to use in the Ethical Man series.
I built the snowman with my sisters in January 1968. The shots of us sledging are from January 1971. It is beginning to look like my kids will be lucky to ever build a snowman in our garden.

Or how about this on the BBC Weather website from 2004:

There haven’t been to [sic] many cold winters recently in the UK and the number of days with snow cover are becoming fewer too. It’s getting harder and harder to make a snowman in Southern England! Many young children living here are still waiting to see their first white Christmas. If global warming predictions from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre are correct they may never live to see it.

Oh, won’t somebody please think of the children?

Snow – a thing of the past. Just imagine, if the powers that be had believed all this there might be chaos right now.

[Previously – BBC reports the demise of the ski industry.]

Making History

It seems like only yesterday that we were lamenting the BBC’s distorted history lessons designed to beguile children with short attention spans.

Horrible Histories I believe their child-friendly series is called. I think they intended the title as an anarchic, anti-authoritarian way of ingratiating themselves with the kiddies in a ‘Roald Dahl / we hate adults’ kinda way.
But the title makes more sense as a straightforward description of their version of history, which is horrible in a ‘blame-our-ancestors for everything bad-that-ever-happened’ kinda way.

Now, on a website from down-under called J-Wire, the BBC and the History Channel have been taken apart by David Singer for gross misrepresentation of the history of you-know-where. Major omissions abound. You can read about it here, here and learn something relevant here.

Is it really surprising that we are where we are?

GREENIE POISON

After my posting about Mark Thompson’s cod confession about past bias, it seems that the BBC College of Journalism (CoJo to its illustrious students)is continuing the tradition of inviting nice, unbiased speakers to address the future and current stars of the airwaves. Following the appearance back in September of biodiversity zealot Jonathan Baillie (whom Richard Black introduced by saying that a third of the species on earth had died over the last 30 years), we now have someone else who can provide a balanced perspective on matters to do with the environment. Step forward…er, John Sauven, the UK director of Greenpeace. Of course, Greenpeace is deeply revered by all at the BBC, and is seldom off the airwaves. No matter, CoJo students need to be told why these appearances muct continue. Mr Sauven therefore explains in his specially-edited feature lecture with cold, humourless precision how he completely ignores democracy and the needs of local farmers (whom he chillingly describes as collectively “out to lunch” because they want to earn a living) in deprived areas of the world in order to pressure multinationals into doing his unstoppable will as part of his saintly mission to Save the World. Essentially, all thirty minutes come across to me as an activist’s guide to forcing the green creed on the world. It’s nothing to do with journalism, other than a chilling insight to a form of political bludgeoning. I am sure that back in the 1640s, Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins talked in much the same coldly logical way about the need to rid East Anglia of witches.

I’ve checked the past list of CoJo speakers, and I don’t see a single person who is anything to do with climate scepticism or who holds different views of economic development. It seems to me that the aim of this so-called college is therefore simple: to invite speakers who are experts in aiding the BBC mission to spread greenie poison.

Hallelujah, For The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth

It’s that time of year when Handel’s Messiah is performed all over the place, so I thought it would be an appropriate time to look at how the BBC has been reporting on their beloved Obamessiah. After the kicking He and the Democrats got in the mid-term election, there was much worrying in certain quarters about whether or not He would be able to rise again after the stinging defeat of the Democrats in the recent mid-term election. Matt Frei was concerned about whether He would be able to rekindle the connection with the masses, and continue to promote His agenda against a Republican-led House of Representatives and a tiny Democrat majority in the Senate.

There’s been quite a bit of activity in Congress during this lame-duck session, so naturally the British Public must be informed of every detail of the domestic agenda of a foreign country. So, how is He doing?

Unhappy about extending Bush’s tax cuts for the evil rich? Not to worry, this is His Plan For Us now. The President worked out a compromise with the Republican leadership and extended the tax cuts, as well as giving businesses a break in payroll taxes, while getting in return some extension of unemployment benefits and more subsidies of green energy boondoggles. Most people view this as an overall victory for the voters who let their elected representatives know that they needed to drop the ideology and get fiscally responsible. Even departing Treasury guru (and Keynesian former boss of BBC economics editor, Stephanie Flanders) Larry Summers told the President this needed to happen. The President who spent months attacking the evil rich and declaring how He would never accept what He called tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires” caved, yet somehow the BBC sees this as a triumph for Him. The report is full of the Democrat talking points, but nothing from a voice discussing how this would actually help the economy recover. In fact, the one time the BBC does mention that businesses think this will help, it comes from a Democrat who shrugs his shoulders and acts as if this is a gamble.

According to the BBC, it’s all about tax cuts for the wealthiest. Class warfare is the Narrative, as usual. At no time in their coverage of this issue has the BBC given time to the point of view that the Democrats wanted to hold the middle classes and small businesses hostage over the ideological point of attacking the wealthy. If the Dems had gotten their way, taxes would have gone up for everybody, not only the evil rich, simply to score an ideological point which has nothing to do with economic necessity – unless one is a pure tax-and-spend ideologue. Which is the viewpoint through which BBC reporting on this issue is filtered.

Mark Mardell, of course, sees this as a success for Him, a shrewd political move of which he approves. He also shows his personal, blind bias about his Obamessiah when he says this:

True, Obama has greatly angered the left of his own party. In the House, 112 Democrats voted against the package. Some say he’s a bad negotiator and has betrayed his principles. Well, annoying the left may be a cheap trick for leaders of left-of-centre parties (cf Tony Blair) but it often goes down well with voters in the middle ground. Or even on the right. Time and time again, even at Tea Party meetings, I’ve heard that President Obama has not governed as he was elected, that he’s been captured by the “Pelosi-Reid agenda”. This is his answer.


According to Mardell, it’s not the Tea Party movement successfully influencing the President: He’s making a shrewd move to fool them for a little while. Seriously, how can anyone think that the candidate who notoriously told Joe the Plumber that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody “ is a centrist who was “captured” by the far-Left Democrat leadership? You know he’s not really saying that The Obamessiah is a shyster like Blair. No, Mardell sees this as a shrewd political move so He can attack tax cuts for the wealthy in 2012. Which will be difficult seeing as He’ll just come across as a weak leader who was forced to make a bad deal. I suppose the fact that He had to bring in Bill Clinton to convince enough Dems to vote for it is also a display of His ability to lead? But Mardell sees only strength and cleverness.

So does Paul Adams, in the inset “Analysis” of the report I’ve linked to above.

But the fact remains that six weeks after disastrous mid-term elections, Barack Obama seems to be reasserting his authority.

Reasserting Clinton’s authority, maybe. Oh, that’s right the BBC censored the part where the President took a powder during that press conference and let Clinton take over, so maybe Adams – the BBC’s man in the White House press corps – has wiped that from his own memory as well.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. (Isaiah 40:5)

His real triumph, though is something Congress did, not Him: repealing Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law. The President, who campaigned against this in 2008, could have used an executive order to get rid of this any time He wanted. But He passed the buck to Congress on this one, and they used the giddiness of the lame-duck session to take care of it. To hear it from a certain Beeboid in the US, though, it’s still His achievement.

The BBC’s Iain Mackenzie in Washington says the vote is a major victory for Mr Obama, who had made overturning “don’t ask, don’t tell” a key policy objective.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. (Isaiah 9:2)

There’s one other big issue which came up for a vote: the DREAM Act, which is about creating a path to citizenship for the children of illegal aliens. This is seen by some as a first step towards amnesty for all illegals, as this would inevitably be used to permit illegals to remain in the country if they have what naughty people refer to as “anchor babies”. Does this sound familiar? It’s a very relevant issue to what’s going on in Britain right now.

Yet the BBC has censored news of this. Why? Because it was defeated.

The Leftoids are just as outraged over this as they are about the tax cuts for the evil rich. Subcommander Markos is not pleased:

Anybody who votes to punish innocent kids is an asshole. Plain and simple. And while I expect it from Democrats like Ben Nelson and C-Street denizen Mark Pryor, I honestly thought Jon Tester was different. I was wrong. I am now embarrassed that I worked so hard to help get him elected in 2006. I feel personally betrayed.

I’ll refrain from making a sarcastic retort about how I guess now we should be releasing all criminals from prison if they have kids, as imprisonment of these criminals is clearly also punishing innocent kids.

Other people on the Left are angry as well. Worse, the President apparently lobbied pretty strongly for this, yet it still failed. Where’s that authority and leadership now, BBC? Why so shy about reporting this?

The BBC spent a huge amount of effort bashing Arizona over its immigration law, and told you that opposing illegal immigration is tantamount to racism. Just like they do about the problem in Britain, they used the smokescreen tactic of saying “immigration is good, it’s silly to be against immigration”, always leaving out the “illegal” part and misrepresenting the opposing viewpoint. In the US, they hired a German immigrant, Franz Strasser, to travel around the country making a dishonest series of reports about immigrants in the US. I complained about it here at the time (actually several times). Strasser also censored the word “illegal” from his series of reports. His trip even took him to two Sanctuary Cities, which had official policies of deliberately flouting immigration laws, yet he refused to mention the fact that they were designated as such. The whole series was a smokescreen.

So now the DREAM Act failed, and the BBC is silent.

The Democrats’ massive, pork-laden spending bill also failed. As I said on Thursday’s Open Thread, the BBC reported it from the Democrats’ point of view, that it was a vital spending plan needed to keep the country running. They did not allow through a viewpoint that possibly the Tea Party movement had any influence on politicians’ behavior. In fact, pretty much every BBC report about what’s going on in Congress right now is free of any mention of the movement. They did, though, worry about how “time was running out”, but from the Democrat perspective, as if it was the only one.

Where’s His authority and leadership on this one, BBC? *Looks at floor and shuffles feet*

Come see the bias inherent in the system. The BBC spins the news to promote the accomplishments of a leader of a foreign country, and censors news which detracts from that Narrative.

The Lord gave the word: Great was the company of preachers. (Psalm 68:11)

PS: All Biblical quotes appear in the Messiah. Post written while listening to the recording by the late, great Richard Hickox, featuring Joan Rodgers, Philip Langridge, Bryn Terfel, and others.

MARR ON A SUNDAY

It’s just one big leftie love-in with no pretence to balance views! I refer to Andrew Marr’s programme this morning. We have – in the studio – Charles Kennedy (lefty),  Rory Bremner (luvvie lefty), Suzanna Reid (Gorgeous and pouting lefty), plus Neil Kinnock (Has-been lefty) and Vince Cable.(Once much loved lefty but now hated since he joined the evil coalition) My, all that’s missing is Julian Assange and Moazzem Beggs and it’s the perfect balanced programme!.

Daily Dose

It occurred to me that we could have a permanent thread called `Israel-Bashing for the day.’ But it would soon fill up and cause congestion.

You know the one about paranoia? “Just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me” That one. Well it must go down well in Israel, because everyone will be aware that Israelis have good reason to always be on their mettle. They’re in a state of war with some very hostile neighbours don’t you know.

Some people don’t seem able to understand that. They think any signs of suspicion or discrimination against the Arab population in Israel is racist, while similar behaviour the other way round is understandable and legitimate.

On the Sunday Programme this morning an English lady reform rabbi was given a slot to complain about a controversial demand that some of her Israeli counterparts have made recently. Their idea is that Israelis must not rent properties to Arabs. Many Israelis including PM Netanyahu have denounced this idea, but our rabbi still needed to air the view, apparently shared by many diaspora Jews, that such racism reflects badly on themselves. She managed to include comparisons with apartheid, and 1930s Germany, and neither she nor her interviewer mentioned the openly and proudly proclaimed announcement by Arab leaders to the effect that no Jew will ever be allowed to set foot in the new Palestinian state.

There are quite a few ‘AsaJews’ around these days who have the knack of publicising their criticisms and denouncements of Israel, seemingly having swallowed the BBC’s version of the situation hook line and sinker.
One of the things this English lady rabbi was bothered about was that because of Israel her Muslim neighbours might hate her for being a Jew. Lady, many of them would hate you for that no matter what Israel decided to do, and if this is indeed anything like the 1930s, let’s hope you never have good reason to call on Israel, if it still exists, as a safe haven.

I digress. There’s nothing wrong with these views being aired on the radio. I welcome them in fact. But please, let’s have some counterbalance. If the presenters of these programmes don’t know how to do it, and they obviously don’t, they must know a man (or a lady) who can.

That was Israel-Bashing for The Day.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST….

Same terrible story but two different angles…

First the BBC. “A four-year-old girl has been found dead at an address on an east London housing estate”. The child’s body was discovered at a property on Elderfield Road, Clapton, at about 1530 GMT on Thursday after reports of a knife incident. A woman, 36, believed to be the girl’s mother, has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act after being arrested on suspicion of the girl’s murder. No formal cause of death was given after the post-mortem examination. The girl was pronounced dead at the scene, an address on the Chatsworth Estate. Police said next of kin had been informed but formal identification had yet to take place.

Then, The Mail…”‘Mother cuts out the heart of her daughter, four, as she listens to recording of Koran in ritual killing’

TOMMYROT


It seems from the Daily Mail today that Mark Thompson – perhaps stung by Jeremy Hunt’s comments earlier in the week – is accepting that the BBC may have been a tad biased in its past coverage of the EU and immigration. Of course, everything is perfect now, and he even has the temerity to claim that the corporation has played a role in making immigration policy tougher.

Over the six years that Mr Thompson has been director general of the BBC, I have been indirectly involved in a succession of very detailed reports that have chronicled in depth a sustained BBC bias in the coverage of (among other things)immigration and EU affairs. So I know a little bit about the background of his latest utterances. Each of these reports examined on a systematic, academic basis the ouput of hundreds of BBC news programmes (focusing esepcially on Today and other main news titles)and they have shown that:

***With the EU, there has been deliberate under-representation of those who oppose the EU project (so-called sceptics and withdrawalists)and an equally systematic ridiculing of those “sceptics” as being the equivalent of flat-earthers or BNP supporters. At the same time, there has been a massive under-reporting of the negative side of the EU, for example its budgetary waste and corruption, it’s manic drive to create new laws in every spehere of our lives, and its ecoloonery.

***With immigration, those who opposed unlimited immigration in line with new Labour zeal were regularly portrayed as BNP, foaming-in-the-mouth, right-wing nutcases. Their reasoned arguments for control of numbers were seriously under-reported, distorted or ignored. Dozens of detailed examples of this were provided.

Over the years, the BBC’s reponse to almost every one of these reports has been to stick its collective fingers in its ears, blow a massive raspberry and ignore the findings. Those who compiled the reports were called (usually behind their backs, but sometimes to their faces) right-wing zealots, incompetent bigots, anal retentive idiots, and on one occasion, one was the subject of an outright slanderous lie told in the Houses of Parliament by a senior BBC editorial figure. In short, the BBC mostly ignored the findings.

On one occasion, this did not happen. Michael Grade, when he was chairman of the BBC, got riled about the sustained criticism about EU coverage and he ordered a full inquiry. This was carried out by Lord Wilson of Dinton, the former cabinet secretary, and it was damning. It found systematic bias by ommission and warned that the corporation must ensure that all sides in the EU debate must be properly aired and treated with due respect. The response was predictable window-dressing; Mark Mardell was appointed EU editor (and promptly went native), but nothing changed. Exactly the same EU bias has remained to the present day.

Mr Thompson’s remarks yesterday therefore, have to be taken with a massive pinch of salt. Pressure is clearly being exerted from some quarter or another (Hunt’s lot?), and the director general is leading with his chin (to a very small extent) with the aim of batting the real issues involved well and truly into the long grass. Any idea that the BBC has any conception of the rotten, stinking morrass of bias in which it is mired, is easily dispelled by deputy DG Mark Byford’s latest interview with Ray Snoddy this morning on the ludicrously-mistitled Newswatch. Mr Byford tells us (with a very straight face)that every one of his BBC news staff works to his or her utmost in pursuit of “impartiality”. What utter tommyrot.

Happy Birthday!

Over at CiFWatch they’ve been comparing two reports about Hamas’s 23rd Birthday celebrations and wondering why there was nothing in the Guardian to mark the happy event.

Al-Jazeera, not particularly known for its pro-Israel bias, generously shares the information that “the tight Israeli siege has made Hamas increasingly unpopular.” Yes, unpopular.

The BBC, on the other hand, hasn’t noticed this at all.

CiFWatch has:

“But the BBC? Hamas is unpopular? Perish the thought. Dear old Auntie instead stresses the “tens of thousands”, the “throngs” of supporters who – of their own free will of course – “filled the streets of Gaza” to watch the festive green balloons and listen to the tinny martial music and hear how, “Hamas leader Ismail Haniya says the Islamist movement is committed to Palestinian national reconciliation in order to fight the Israeli occupation”. How noble! But, any thoughts instead of making peace with Israel for the good of all? Thought not.”

Back at the BBC website, Jon Donnison describes the scene.

“But on the whole, the atmosphere was festive – a day out or a big picnic, participants said. Many were bussed in by Hamas organisers from across the Gaza Strip. Occasionally, I saw an Israeli flag being burned.

He probably supplied the matches.