Leftist agitprop fake charity Oxfam has been given the run of the BBC this morning to warn us of apocalyptic increases in food prices of up to 50% (odd nicely even statistic, btw) caused by “climate change” (They’ve obviously abandoned the global warming line formulation and are now using the more sophisticated but equally unfounded “climate change”) Who would have guessed that one of the cures for this was “to invest in small farmers, especially women.”? This dreary nonsense which Oxfam recycles with regularity is never robustly challenged on the BBC, instead like so much of its output it is spewed out as an article of toxic tree-hugging eco-lunatic faith.
OXFAM’S GREAT FOOD SCARE
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And of course, that nice Lord Stern was allowed uninterrupted flow of his particular garbage about CO2 and the need to reduce global temperatures by at least 2 degrees. Doesn’t he read the papers? Does he not bother to check the scientific fact that net global temperatures have been falling for at least ten years? Does he not know that CO2 levels follow temperature, not the other way around? Didn’t he realise that although CO2 levels are marginally increasing, the temperature is falling, contrary to what the warmists would have us believe?
If WE are all cognisant of these truths, why isn’t HE?
Funny, none of these criteria were mentioned by him, nor the daft female Beeboid (who is so irrelevant, her name escapes me) who interviewed him.
The world is cooling. It has nothing to do with carbon or CO2, It is cyclical, and largely dependent upon the sun. Three basic truths that most of us reasonably educated folk have grasped, but not Lord Stern. Fuckin’ dimwit.
Natsman,
Stern is an economist, not a scientist so he doesn’t have a clue what is going on !
Economists never have a clue what is going on. Ask five of them a question and you’ll get six answers.
Stern is also a bought and paid for establishment stooge, he would claim the moon was made of cheese if bosses demanded it. What makes these people tick? What goes through their minds I wonder as they prostitute themselves to a fraud.
The establishment has a stable full of these lickspittles always ready and willing to preside over rigged inquires, always ready to put their names to fake reports.
People like Stern are the scum of the earth, they are the very essence of the corrupt establishment, he IS the corrupt establishment. A Lod is he? Not in my book, as far as I am concerned he should be banged up in the Scrubs.
Cassie,
Q. ” What makes these people tick ? ”
A. Money.
Nigel Lawson’s book tears Lord Stern apart. Brutally.
The finger of blame will never be pointed in the right direction by the bbc – population control isn’t on the leftie agenda !
Oh I dont know, population control? I could easily imagine Polly and the Yazzmonster conducting a cull of people who ‘stand in the way of progress’.
Backwoodsman,
It is for white non-muslims, except for themselves , of course.
I heard the interviews this morning on Today about the e-coli outbreak in Germany. Now I understood that it was organic cucumbers that may be to blame – but that wouldn’t fit the BBC agenda which is that organic are better for you than the rest.
I have always said I would much prefer nice little white balls of fertiliser that FYM (technical term for farm yard manure). But this doesn’t fit in the with the BBC agenda so is just ignored.
Oxfam can always rely on the BBC to give its pronouncements publicity, with minimal serious questioning.
I thought Nicola Horlick the investment-fund manager made the Oxfam harpie sound really stupid on the Today programme. “Best way to increase food is to push aside all these inefficient small farmers, what we need is a bit of capitalism to increase food production” Ouch.
Later on, when the Oxfam alarmist story was given the main headline, only 2 factors were mentioned – global warming (yes, they used the discredited old phrase) and the need to help small farmers. (Maybe a few hundred more “outreach Oxfam workers” in their SUVS?). No mention of the main cause – rampant population growth.
John,
I posted below before I read your post !
Bet Nichola Horlicks goodie bag and party ballon from Amnestys stall in reception was pointedly given for Oxfam to raffle instead!
Truly the Toady show needs no-one to make a Horlicks of current affairs-or indeed anything else that they turn their Space Spex towards in a concerned yet challenging way!
Great that I don`t need to risk MRSA and can now get Hospital Radio on demand…maybe they`ve missed Naughtie more that we thought!
Count the car crashes of interviews-and still the buggers get insurance and reassurance that they still matter…
No humble pie for these dibblers(too northern…and pastry!)…but a nice cucumber salad is on offer today in the canteen please God!
Don’t get me started on Oxfam David. It’s done so much damage to honest charities. Blood pressure rising so must stop.
Oxfam is a contemptible organisation. TODAY/OXFAM, they’re all in the loop of left wing propagandisastion.
I remember about 20 years ago when I was really poor, I went to an Oxfam shop to buy some clothes, but they were so expensive it wasn’t worth it.
They’d put the prices up because they said it was mainly middle class people who bought them. Not long before they’d been making out the effects of government policies were producing ‘third world’ levels of poverty. Now they’d either put their prices up because they thought it would be good for Britain’s third world level poor to go naked, or they were lying through their back teeth in a black propagana exercise.
Contemptible scum. Why do people donate to such blatant charlatans?
They have also caused the closing of many bookshops despite the fact that their own bookshops are very overpriced and very poorly stocked. Not that that would worry Oxfam.
Just caught a snippet of an interview on R4 with superwoman Fund Manager, Nicola Horlick. She didn’t follow the BBC script. She thinks the best hope is for private enterprise to invest in farming, especially in Africa where there is much fertile land not being utilised. She specifically mentioned, wait for it, Zimbabwe !
Oh dear, no more BBC invites for Nicola, methinks !
PS to my post above. Forgot to say, Nicola called it “the old Rhodesia ” , before correcting herself and saying ” Zimbabwe “.
That is definitely the end of her BBC career !
Agree with points already rasied re population, also the mention of what Nicola Horlick said. Intensive farming is far far more efficient AND is better for the environment – all those inefficent cows in the third world cause global warming ( 😉 ) how dare they suggest investing to increase the effect!
and oxfam hates israel
which earns them a nice big boycott from me
This is not efficient farming its a disgrace Halal killing of cattle its very hard to watch even to a hardened bloke like me.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/jakarta-calls-for-calm-in-cattle-row-20110531-1fe3z.html
This is the most cruel treatment of cattle I have ever seen. I’m speechless.
Any discussion of world food prices that omits mention of biofuels is propaganda, a task for which the BBC’s tax-funded churnalists are eminently qualified, both morally and intellectually.
From the link (Feb 2011):
In America, 40% of the corn crop is currently diverted to make fuel for cars. “Ethanol uses 4.9 billion bushels of corn in the U.S.,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think tank. “That’s enough grain to feed 350 million people.”
JX has it right. Which means that “Climate Change” as a concept is responsible for this problem, and not AGW (which is what they really mean). And then there’s the wheat rust epidemic going on right now, plus the fact that a certain African country which used to be the breadbasket of the continent is now a starving basket case. Oh, and let’s not even get into how anti-science watermelons have convinced so many leaders in Africa and eslewhere not to use resistant GM strains.
Just like in Russia and China in decades past, food shortages like this are nearly always due to poor political behavior and not by the kind of thing we’re being told now. It’s ideology creating this situation more than anything else. But the BBC will never allow that opinion on air because they believe in the ideology.
Another BBC-censored factoid is that plant fertilisation by elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 has substantially increased crop yields and biomass generally – one of the benefits of ‘carbon pollution’ that the watermelons would prefer went unmentioned.
The mechanism by which a warmer, wetter, CO2-enriched environment will make the world less fertile is never stated.
Also oddly absent from the report’s recommendations is an appeal for more subsidised windmills and carbon trading schemes. Perhaps Huhne should get on the phone and tell them the good news.
Indeed. “Climage Change” = Drought. All that water evaporates and goes, where, exactly? Not the ice caps, surely….
Why do the Left never acknowledge that the policies of Stalin and Mao led to mass famine in their respective countries. As for Mugabe ruining that once fertile land of Zimbabwe – he’s black and so above any criticism by the BBC. The standard broadcast line is that the problems afflicting Africa are the fault of the wicked white man and his imperialism. Actually Oxfam and its daft ideas and poisonous agenda have been far more detriment to that continent than any of the old guard Colonel Blimps who ruled the natives in the late nineteenth century. Small-scale subsistence farming has never worked, and if African countries wish to become self-sufficient they have to reject completely.
BBC Delenda Est.
Surely the increases stated are entirely within the range you would expect with a moderate level of inflation over 20 years so any contribution from Climate change must be negligible.
I can usually cope with the BBC propoganda with a wry smile, but this one made me quite angry.
Food inflation over the last year, and over the foreseeable future will have been caused almost exclusively by governments causing inflation by printing money to hide their insolvency. This fact would be self evident if the ecoloons were to ask themselves why the price of all other commodities, ignoring food, have also soared. Is the drilling of oil, and the mining of gold/silver, other metals, and fertilisers like potash been adversely affected by climate change?
The idiot lefties, always voting for bigger government guarantee a vicious spiral of ever growing taxes, more printing, and more borrowing. They are the very people causing inflation.
Good thing Oxfam wasn’t on hand to interpret Pharoah’s dream instead of Joseph. Did Climate Change cause that drought as well? Oxfam would have probably told Pharoah not to store food to prepare but instead to spend more money on growing it during the drought years.
‘Good thing Oxfam wasn’t on hand to interpret Pharoah’s dream ‘
With a £4Bpa science-lite, agenda-riven propaganda machine on hand to ‘interpret’ the ‘interpretation’ of such an event.
Uniquely.
The Oxfam woman’s solution was to give poor people more money (via Oxfam of course). Even an o level economics student knows that with limited supply, the only outcome would be to push prices up further, no one would get any more food.
No – her solution really was to ive OXFAM more money, some of which might finally filter through to the poor farmers. Like 10% ?
OT but very relevant:
Belgian protesters destroy GM field trial
In Wetteren, a municipality in the Belgian province of East Flanders, activists succeeded in damaging the GM potatoes being trialled for blight resistance, despite a large contingent of police officers who had been ordered to guard the GM trial. The officers were unable to stop the 300-400 or more peaceful protesters of all ages, who included local people.
During the protest organised by the Belgian Field Liberation Movement (FLM) – an informal collective consisting of farmers, scientists, consumers, and environmental activists, protesters climbed over a high fence and pulled up GM potato plants. The trial was also allegedly sprayed with herbicide. Some 40 people were arrested.
They’ll be hailed as heros by the BBC any minute now, and not the accomplices to mass starvation they actually are.
“Peaceful protestors”? If a group of 300-400 came over my fence and started yanking up plants, “peaceful” ain’t the word that would come to mind.
The reporting I heard this morning was economically illiterate. It was suggested (unchallenged by the BBC) that because of population growth and “climate change”, food prices would increase well beyond the reach of the poorer parts of the world. The answer was to “regulate” – ie control food prices.
If there is one way of turning potentially a major problem into a catastrophe it is to regulate food prices. If food prices go up, this will stimulate production, and help to alleviate the problem. If they are controlled, many will starve.
There really is no excuse for people holding these ridiculous views (or in the case of the BBC, failing to challenge them). Time and time again, we have had evidence that markets work, regulation fails and exacerbates the problem. The message should be not to regulate, but rather to let markets work to produce more food, and the rich countries to put their hands into their pockets to help those who cannot afford the prices.
Simple? Yes, but the blinkered Marxist prejudices of the Beeboid hacks would not allow them to challenge this illiterate lunacy.
I’ve lost patience with the left-wing propagada of the big charities. Having a little experience of how they work I know that Government/EU/UN ie enforced tax-payer funding is to varying degrees ring-fenced to specific projects. Therefore any private donations are like gold dust to the charities because they can be diverted 100% to pay admin and salary costs. I would only give to those who have resisted selling their souls to the state.