Monthly Archives: July 2013

The Energy and Climate Change Committee published its thoughts on energy companies and pricing today which the BBC has concentrated on….but the ECCC also released its latest publications on smart metering.…they will cost us £12 billion…but save us £18 billion….because that’s the way government, publicly funded ,computer projects always work…they always come in under budget and save us money…don’t they?

The BBC has been running quite a few studies looking at the introduction of smart meters.

But one thing it hasn’t told us is this:

Smart meters will be rolled out as standard across the country by 2020.

But there will not be a legal obligation on individuals to have one.

Energy companies will be required to install smart meters and take all reasonable steps to reach everyone. However, we do not expect energy companies to take legal action to fit a smart meter if they cannot get the householder’s co-operation.

That came from the government’s own information and advice site on smart meters.

Nothing to do with BBC bias but it would have been nice to be told such a relevant thing when these meters are so controversial….just a failure to report the basic, essential facts.

The meters are a security threat, not just to your own data but to the national grid….apart from that they are unlikely to reduce your energy use….you may switch using energy at peak times for cheaper periods…but that doesn’t reduce overall energy consumption.

This is how to successfully reduce energy use:

If you really want to reduce energy consumption, extreme social pressure is the way to do it, says Prof Anderson.

A “pervasive surveillance structure” for society with a public hall of shame, singling out worst offending households to ridicule, would work, says Prof Anderson. “But the implications for social liberties are appalling.”

All made possible by the smart meter recording your every move.

Just been treated to Nicky Campbell talking to Ed Davey about energy companies in relation to the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s highly political statement that the companies are not doing enough  to make company profits transparent.

Campbell fully accepted that statement and didn’t challenge it in the slightest and only wheeled in Ed Davey to confirm the statement and back it up with yet more government waffle.

Not a hint that prices have risen enormously because of the government’s green taxes….probably because the ball was set rolling by Ed Miliband and his legal requirement to reduce CO2 by 80% by 2050….and of course the BBC supports that line of thinking.

Not a hint that this might be a politicised response to the energy companies recent statements that it is government taxes that are raisng prices inordinately.

The real question about transparency is just how much extra tax burden is loaded onto consumers by those government green taxes?  Just how many people are forced into fuel poverty by that, just how many died because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes…having to choose…as the BBC so often likes to state in other contexts…between eating and heating?

So yet again the BBC covers up the adverse side effects of green policy….all those green BBC pension funds must be kept solvent ….and covers up for Labour’s Leader just as it did over his ‘Unite scandal’…..refusing to be ‘transparent’ about his knowledge and cooperation with Unite’s vote rigging.

Oh look…here is the ECCC’s summary….the first paragraph:

Rising energy prices are a worry for households across the UK. Since 2007 average prices of gas and electricity have risen by 41% and 20% in the UK in real terms, according to DECC. This has had an adverse impact on fuel poor households and thrown Government targets to eliminate the problem by 2016 off-course.

The main driver behind energy price rises has been wholesale gas and electricity costs, but network charges, energy and climate change policies, and company costs and profits also contribute. In future, DECC estimates that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020, in addition to any potential wholesale price rises.

The Government must not forget that rising prices are exacerbating fuel poverty.

Energy is becoming increasingly unaffordable for low-income families living in poorly insulated and inefficient homes. Yet just as the situation for the most vulnerable is worsening, it appears that fuel poverty policy has effectively been frozen. Spending on the problem has been cut in England and some of the Government’s fuel poverty programmes appear to be in hiatus.

Ministers have been unacceptably slow to respond to the Hills Review and take action to stem the problem. It is imperative that the Government’s new fuel poverty strategy, expected at the end of this year, is not delayed any further. It should be published and implemented as an urgent priority.

Note that ‘ In future, DECC estimates that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020.’

Note that ‘urgent priority’ for the  government to get on with dealing with fuel poverty…and yet the BBC concentrates on company profits.

Odd how the BBC highlight the bit about company profits, especially as prices are driven up mainly by wholesale prices and not increasing profit margins,  but sidelines the bit about fuel poverty caused by government green policies.

Here the BBC’s web report….note the small bit tagged on at the bottom:

Fuel poverty

The Energy and Climate Change Committee also reprimanded the government for not doing enough to help low-income families struggling with fuel poverty.

The committee argued that the use of levies on fuel bills to raise funds for social and environmental programmes could end up hitting those on low incomes

The BBC misses out the bit about government failures on tackling fuel poverty and the urgent priority to do so.

The BBC has been hailing the efforts of John Kerry in the past few days as he cobbles together another doomed set of “peace talks” in the middle east between Israel and Palestinians.  The BBC have been pontificating about the tough choices that BOTH sides have had to make to even get this far. On examination (mine!) this reduces down to Israel releasing 100 Palestinian criminals (bad call, btw) and Abbas agreeing to talk!! Hardly a concession from the Palestinians and yet portrayed as momentous. Throughout this new charade, the BBC will do everything possible to posture for the Palestinians “Judenfrei” solution and if Netanyahu thinks he will win media approval in the likes of the BBC by releasing Palestinian thugs he is in for a nasty surprise in my view.

When it comes to the ongoing friction between Spain and Gibraltar, and in particular the current bully boy tactics used by the Spanish Government to inconvenience Gibraltarians  crossing the border, it will be interesting to see the BBC approach. I thought this was a pretty fair commentary on it but am aware that Today are covering it later this morning and one can’t help but feel rather in the Argentina/Falklands situation, BBC sympathies must lie with the Spanish bullies.

Yes, here is an Open Thread ON TIME! Enjoy it and fill it.

BBC Sunday Morning Live was particularly appalling this morning. The lead debate asked whether whether Muslims were being demonised. We had Mehdi Hasan asking the question and talking over everybody else. We had Anne Atkinson who agreed Muslims were being demonised and Douglas Murray who opined that they weren’t. We had Fiyaz Mughal, from Tell Mama, lined up to back the meme but when the poll result came in, once again viewers rejected the notion  by some 4:1.  Naturally Mehdi was allowed the last word on this and claimed this proved just how demonised muslims were!!!

The BBC reports that Biased BBC has another ally in the war against misinformation and media manipulation:

So many faked images are circulating in Egypt that Facebook sites have been set up with the goal of separating fact from fiction, writes BBC Monitoring’s Dina Aboughazala.

The sheer volume of disinformation has led to the creation of verification pages on Facebook, such as Da Begad? – or Is This Real? – which tries to verify posts, images and videos, regardless of their origin. Despite the confusion, social media remains an important source of information in Egypt, with authorities and ordinary citizens alike using it as their main channel of communication. Facebook is said to have 13 million users in the country.

Shame the BBC doesn’t do the same for its reports from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

From the BBC:

World’s media lament decline in freedom

….but not a single mention of Leveson and the huge opposition to his conclusions and the attempts to railroad the Press into being ‘regulated’ by those honest custodians of our freedom…the politicians….and the BBC and its cohort of drug and booze addled, sexually liberated celebrities who wish to remain anonymous.

This is a look at what the papers say…from the BBC’s ‘Editor’s choice’:

The Independent also claims to have gained access to confidential information.

It says it has seen a secret list – passed to a parliamentary committee – on the activities of big corporations like banks and pharmaceutical firms.

The paper alleges that companies from two of the country’s biggest industries have hired private investigators to unlawfully obtain a range of personal data about individuals.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency knew about the illegal practice for years, it reports, but did nothing in what amounts to a potential scandal that could be “bigger than phone hacking”.

So that is what a BBC editor considers highly newsworthy…and yet, and yet….where is the story on the pages of the BBC website? There is only this one…from the same day of the ‘Editor’s choice’….and so is hardly a proactive bit of journalism actively seeking out the truth…they are merely reporting what the Independent says.

Where is the BBC investigation?

And why has the BBC ignored this story?

Why did the BBC editor pick the Independent for the source of the story when the Daily Mail has been bashing away at the story for some time now?  The Independent claims it is an ‘Exclusive’ scoop for them…..and yet not really.

The Sunday Times reports that the police are ‘probing’ 300 organisations and individuals who may have been involved in hacking…and as the Independent says this could ‘amount to a potential scandal that could be “bigger than phone hacking”.’

And yet….the BBC essentially ignore it.

Surprising really when they immediately reported and spent a whole day excitedly relating what Rupert Murdoch said about the phone hacking scandal and the police recently.

Funny to think about exactly what the BBC’s priorities are when deciding on what is news and what isn’t.

What is the world coming to?  My prejudices have been well and truly challenged and appropriately adjusted this weekend.

Forced to listen to the BBC’s ‘News Quiz’ in a diversity training package I came to ‘see’ the other side, to appreciate the world from a different perspective other than my right wing narrow minded and bigoted little Englander viewpoint.

Well, actually that’s a load of bull….but what did surprise me was the News Quiz was actually funny, verging on very funny at times….Fred MacAulay on Ikea cushions is a YouTube classic in the making.

The reason might be that it didn’t seek to preach a message this time, it stayed fairly well clear of ‘political’ politics, or any signs of partisanship and stuck to comedy….even suggesting Miliband will never be PM.

Could be a lesson in there somewhere for the BBC….stop the preaching and stick to ‘funny’….

…or to ‘News’ or ‘Drama’ or ‘History’ or ‘children’s’ programmes without inserting a partisan interpretation of everything into, well, everything.

In the Sunday Times Adrian Wooldridge (paywalled unfortunately) examines how the BBC is doing in the ‘excellence’ stakes…his conclusion is that it is failing in its remit…the licence fee method of funding should enable it to take risks to produce high quality programming but it seems to settle for the middle ground producing mush that is supposed to give value for money to the largest number of licence fee payers…not what the BBC was designed for.

Wooldridge says:

‘The BBC is failing to produce great television precisely because it is hampered by the public service model, and HBO and its various rivals are producing a new golden age of American televison precisely because they are catering for the market.’

Perhaps if the BBC stopped looking at audience ratings, stopped thinking viewers want only ‘accessible’ TV made to match their ‘short attention’ spans and went for a bit of ‘elitism’ things might improve…..invest in quality not quantity?