There’s an important investigation here by the Mail on Sunday of a grant to BBC environment “analyst” and greenie poster boy Roger Harrabin of £15,000 from the University of East Anglia’s climate centre, the outfit at the centre of Climategate. The cash, it is stated, was used to fund a range of climate change seminars. Mr Harrabin denies, of course, that the money has influenced his reporting…and the BBC itself can see no issues of impartiality. Well that’s OK then.
But I wonder how many who disagree with Mr Harrabin’s brand of eco fervour attended his seminars? And, as I’ve extensively reported before, Mr Harrabin seems happy to tout his services to any greenie cause that will hire him.
The Mail investigation also mentions the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE), which as I reported earlier this week, has been censured by the BBC trustees over conflict of interest and a failure to tell viewers where the programme budget had originated. Reporter David Rose notes that Dr Joe Smith, Mr Harrabin’s partner – and joint recipient of the UEA cash – was chief scientific adviser to TVE programmes, including a couple the BBC trustees have censured. Mr Rose quotes Jenny Richards, the deputy chief executive of TVE, as saying that the company had “made hundreds of programmes” for the BBC and regarded the trustees report as a “slap on the wrist”.
That, to me, is the most telling remark in the whole story. It suggests that she knows that the trustees don’t really give a fig about this whole sorry mess – they are involved in a bit of cosmetic window dressing, and nothing will actually change.
Bishop Hill, who (wrongly) thinks that Robert Lamb is still the chief executive of TVE, says I have been “overheated” in my reporting of this affair. He is entitled to his views, and I respect them – that’s the strength of blogging. But in my book, those at the BBC who are involved in this rather fetid mess of obfuscation and conflict of interest are without doubt eco fascists, and thoroughly deserve that description. Mr Lamb and his ilk have traduced the BBC and reduced it to an organ of WWF propaganda. They want rule by international diktat, to cover the countryside with windfarms, to massively reduce the population, to make heating our homes so expensive that thousands will live in daily fear of how much energy they are consuming, to stop us from flying, to force us out of our cars, and much more. That all adds up to a brand of fascism.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100118572/the-dull-bigotry-of-bbc-europhiles/
Here is some more BBC bias.
You’d think at least one Tory MP might now demand a proper investigation into the BBC.
Mr Horbury
I was surprised that your use of the term eco-fascism was criticised by Andrew Mountford at Bishop Hill. His remark detracted from the thrust of his story – ie your story.
Robin must admit bishop hill seems to be treading softly as he is free to do, but I and quite a few out there and some of his commenter s are getting very angry about these constant abuses of our trust our money and our children’s future when I see that nothing no matter how bad they act is ever done keeping it as civil as some blogs want me to be is getting very hard as they bate us call for us to be forced ,pushed even expelled from their world permanently and to be cut off from any levers of power /media!
And yet I am expected to be fair /even tempered calm and not get heated over them sorry not sure I can do that for much longer when jerks like zed get involved!
I think eco fascist is a fair title for the likes of Harrabin and Black.
Keep up the good work, Robin.
Takes me time to catch up sometimes!
Saw this in the Daily Mail….how the hell can the BBC claim they`re impartial if their own correspondents are getting taxpayer funded grants from the ludicrous UEA after what they did a few years back?
That his pal gets the money stinks…and yet there appears to be very little anger or contempt about any of this.
It`s as if we`ve all been sitting in the BBCs sewers so long that we no longer notice the constant stench…they have got to go…and quick!
PATTEN makes empty speeches about ‘BBC and political independence’; what sick joke: Beeboids are, in effect, lobbyists for ‘greenies’, EU, mass immigration, Islam, Labour Party, etc.
Remember a peculiar tussle between the BBC and the Space Special Interest group of Mensa after a member complained to the BBC Trust about a television documentary. Although the evidence that the BBC was overtly biased was provided to members by the BBC in its communications with them, almost all of the stuff the members gave for the complaint was left out of the BBCs finding, which boor no relation to the peculiar debate they had with the BBC. It was as if the BBC Trust where saying to Mensa members that the Trust knows that the BBC is biased. I think the BBC Trust was afraid of legal action by Mensa members.
The BBC Trust published the finding in last Decembers bulletin, but it boor no relation to the details of the complaint that members where debating. It opened the eyes of many Mensa members to the Orwellian one sided bias on the issue of Climate Change at the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/appeals/esc_bulletins/2010/nov.pdf http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/appeals/esc_bulletins/2010/nov.txt
The question of BBC Trust handling of complaints was posed on another thread.
This would appear to eloquently answer that entity’s role and commitment in this regard.
Robin, I’m in no doubt that Lamb, Harrabin and Black are eco-facists – their actions and biased reporting ably testify to that fact. However, I think Andrew Montford’s point maybe that to label them as such may not be the most politically astute move. An uninformed reader, brought up on a diet of BBC bias and unfamiliar with the BBCs long history of eco-facism, may find the term jarring. As a result they may be less inclined to study the evidence you present – and more inclined to dismiss your post as a rant. Andrew’s method is to calmly present the evidence and let the reader draw their own conclusions. I admit that after years of the same BBC BS it does become difficult to stay calm and composed. Please keep up the good work exposing the BBC bias.
If you think they are eco-fascists – why should we not call them eco-fascists ? They are extremists, and should be described as such.
The whole damn lot of them should be sacked for piss-poor journalism, writing propaganda dressed up as “reports”.
‘An uninformed reader, brought up on a diet of BBC bias… may find the term jarring.’
Though often deserved, and even accurate, the resort to Godwin territory can be counter-productive.
There is a poster on Newsnight blogs who is a rich seam of factual URLs that are totally relevant counters to the blatant bias the show promotes, but he almost constantly uses that term in the intro or postscript.
Even I start thinking ‘here we go again’.
It also gives the cherry vultures ammo when (with no justification) lumping all those with questions or critiques under a single ‘them vs. us’ banner, for some reason with the added… if oddly tolerated… inaccurate perjorative of denier.
It’s for folk to decide what works best for them, or persuading others, or effecting change.
I simply find cold hard facts, or serving back the self-damning words of those who deem themselves better informed or simply better, to be more effective.