Monthly Archives: December 2011

SAILING

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Gay advocacy is another perpetual BBC theme and it is picked up in this story being given great prominence on the main news portal this morning;

“Two female US sailors have become the first same-sex couple to share the traditional dockside “first kiss” since the US ended a ban on gays in the army.  

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, who had been at sea for 80 days, won the right to be the first person to kiss her partner on shore in a raffle. The couple said the moment had been “a long time coming”. The US Army’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was lifted in September, after years of debate.”

Now, I have nothing against Petty Officer Gaeta or her partner, but the entire tone of this BBC story is all about presenting the axing of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” as the very epitome of enlightenment. And that is only one side of the story. It seems to me that the BBC sees gay advocacy as central to its mission to inform and that is something that should be relentlessly challenged. 

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ED MILIBAND – RUBIK CUBE MASTER

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So Miliband’s PR puts out some nonsense about the fact that Red Ed can complete a Rubik Cube puzzle in one and a half minutes. The BBC instantly laps this up, runs an item on it here, with the presenter (Evan Davies) quietly expressing his admiration for the puzzle solving skills of the Labour leader even when the guest expressed a view that 10-20 seconds is more like the speed of a fast Rubik cube solver. It seems that in the absence of Miliband making any impact on the British public, the BBC chooses to try and create the impression he is some sort of genius. That’s the real puzzle!

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THE STAR CHAMBER

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It’s a theme that the BBC has been hammering all year in as many programmes as possible; our financial woes have been created by the bad and evil and greedy Bankers. There was a remarkably one-sided discussion on the BBC this morning here, nice prime time slot and full of the usual tripe and hype about the alleged evils of the financial class. Funny how BBC experts all manage to agree on the substantive issue being promoted by the BBC, isn’t it? But the BBC is smart and in order to cover any allegations of bias they ran an item here suggesting that “bankers bonuses” were NOT the cause of the global recession. At 6.50am. You have to get up early to hear disssenting voices on the BBC!

From my own perspective, the bit of the BBC coverage that most alarms is the elephant in the financial room – namely the role of POLITICIANS in creating the circumstances that encouraged poor decisions by bankers. Gordon Brown’s role has been entirely sanitised by the BBC and it one could be forgiven for thinking that there was absolutely no political involvement when nothing could be further from the truth. The Dear Leader has been removed from the picture and all opprobrium is now heaped on the Banks.

The BBC also likes to retrospectively claim that it was essential to save the Banks but in fact some people (Including me!) argued then, and now, that no institution is so big that it cannot be allowed to fail. Banks that made poor decisions do not deserve to survive – but it was Labour that moved to prop up these failed entities with our cash and now the BBC whinges about how awful it is whilst insisting it was vital. Talk about conflicted!

I was invited to take part in a BBC discussion a few weeks ago on the issue of bankers. I explained my view – namely that Banks are only part of the problem, politicians have been just as bad if not worse, and that a bad bank should be allowed to fail. The producer decided not to proceed with me, you can figure why.

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MERCOSUR

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Wonder what you make of this story on the BBC news portal concerning the decision by a South American trading bloc to close its ports to ships flying the Falkland Islands flag.

Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, came to the decision at a summit in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo.

Now then, South American hostility towards the British Falklands  is hardly a recent phenomenon but I was sickened by the fact that the BBC chooses to run the Argentinian claim to sovereignty as the lead image to accompany the story. We’ve come a long way from 1982. Thoughts?

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PUTTING IT TO THEM!

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You have to admire Trevor Kavanagh, associate editor of The Sun, for really putting it to the BBC. Listen to this – it’s not so much about bias in the item itself but rather about how the BBC itself has lied and misled and Kavanagh makes some excellent points about the dagers of media regulation. Anne Diamond has a less than polished outing (She misunderstands the Thomas Jefferson quote that starts the item) and Humphyrs listens in studied silence as Kavanagh spells out some of the things we also expose on this site.

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RUFF JUSTICE?

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A Biased BBC reader flags up a looming issue;

“First to emphasise that this is a prediction not a report. 

Following the impact of the BBC’s Pedigree Dogs Examined, where the BBCwithdrew coverage of Crufts and other organizations, including the RSPCA,withdrew from their annual coverage of Crufts, several reports were compiled bythe welfarati concerning pedigree dogs. Basically they all shared the view thatthe Kennel Club were encouraging the production of canine mutants for showingpurposes. The original programme, made by Gemima Harrison, received severalcomplaints and in some respects followed the BBC tradition of dishonourablereporting: eg. Nazi eugenics imagery flashed next to photographs of the KCbuilding and in a discussion on line breeding the BBC interview asked the KCChairman if he would have sex with his daughter. Several complaints wereupheld.

As mentioned, several welfare organizations set up opposition to aestheticevaluation of dogs, insisting that criteria for health should replaceaesthetics – as if the two stood in polar opposition. The RSPCA,in a fit of PC,banned charity shows in their domain which held classes for the ‘prettiestbitch’. Meanwhile the All Party Animal Welfare Group had their say and appearto be active in the new programme which could well be scheduled just ahead ofCrufts in order to generate hostile anti-KC publicity. You will note that aleading member of the APAWG is Caroline Lucas (MP for Brighton and Gaza). Acouple of weeks ago the APAWG met with interested ‘stakeholders’ in the Commonsbut the KC who were invited declined to attend. The reason was that the eventwas being filmed by Harrison and Passionate Productions for the BBC, and thatthe latter’s impartiality was seriously impaired.

I predict a major row between the KC and Crufts on one side and the BBC withsupport from the leftish welfarati on the other. The science of genetics willbe trotted out by the BBC’s impartial science reporters and demonstrations byPETA (semi naked celebrities?) will be widely reported by the BBC…”

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QUOTIENT OF HORROR…

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I would not normally post on the same topic two days running, so forgive me. But right on cue after my post yesterday about Richard Black exaggerating the impact of nitrogen dioxide, his colleague Mike Amos has obligingly followed up with a supine piece about the dangerous effects of ‘n species’ (greenie for nitrogen compounds). It seems to me that these pesky n****s could be the BBC greenies’ latest line of assault. Mr Amos’s homily is based on an alarmist paper that claims to have found a build-up of nasty nitrates in the aquifers feeding the Thames. He tells us in the usual shock horror tones:

…it also illustrates just how intractable the issue of nitrate pollution has become. Over the 140 years of the new time series, this nitrogen component of river chemistry is seen to climb relentlessly. The pollution will almost certainly have altered the ecology of the river, shifting the balance of plantlife in the Thames.

Funny, I thought the quality of the Thames water was getting better. Even the alarmist Environment Agency says so. But never let the facts get in the way of a good scare…Mr Amos clearly wants us all to start fretting about those reckless farmers who douse our fields in nitrates to boost crop yields, and those selfish motorists who use their cars, thereby unleashing the ‘n’ species into the Thames water cycle.

Are nitrates as dangerous as is implied here? Greenies obfuscate and cry wolf so much that it’s impossible to tell. This paper from the University of Colorado gives matter-of-fact advice for dealing with them (no alarmism in sight) ….and here, Anthony Watts and WUWT readers provide a wealth of knowledge and perspectives that show that the issues involved are far from as clear-cut as the language of the Mike Amos story claims. The most telling contribution to me focuses on that greenies are measuring this ‘danger’ BECAUSE THEY CAN. It’s yet another quotient of horror, along with rising CO2 levels.

What it shows yet again is that the alarmists at the BBC are determined to scare us with every hook that becomes available. Here, the Thames has been transformed at a stroke from an environmental success story to a major tale of impending doom. It’s all part of the systematic, relentless political campaign to make the environment the fulcrum of the anti-capitalist revolution that they so fervently desire.

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