Yearly Archives: 2014

That ‘Settled Science’…BBC’s Approach ‘Ignorant and Medieval’ To Debate

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The long pause in global warming is known to be caused by…..what?  No one knows.

The recent floods….caused by a global warming that hasn’t happened for over 16 years?  No  one knows.

Extreme weather is increasing…due to global warming?  Actually it’s not increasing.

CO2 is driving global warming?  There’s absolutely no proof of that…the ‘proof’ in fact says any warming causes the release of CO2 rather than the other way round.

Global warming is man-made?  There’s no proof of that….no direct link at all.

Global warming is catastrophic?  Not so far…quite the opposite.

Islands sinking under rising seas?  Kiribati?  Maldives?  No.

Arctic ice loss will be disastrous?  Greenland is called Greenland because it wasn’t always covered in ice…and that wasn’t  so long ago.

The Medieval Warm Period was just as warm as today’s temperatures……did the world end?  No.

The Roman warm period ditto.

In 100 years time we know exactly what the climate will be?  Do me a favour.

 

 

 

So the ‘science’ is settled.

No, it is.  How do I know?  The BBC says conclusively that the debate is over...via Bishop Hill:

The BBC’s Feedback programme decided that environmentalist dismay at Lord Lawson’s appearance on the Today programme needed a bit of an airing. Alex Cull has prepared a transcript here.

Jamie Angus: The BBC’s reviewed its coverage of climate change and climate science, and it’s set out some admirably clear guidelines for us to follow. We are able to put on air people who take a differing view from the majority view of climate science. However, that coverage should be proportional, and I think that any reasonable listener who listened to Today’s coverage of climate change, across the past three months, would probably find that Lord Lawson was the only climate sceptic, if you like, who’d appeared in that period. And I think, you know, when Justin and I and the programme team discussed that interview, we thought we’d allowed it to drift too much into a straight yes-no argument about the science. And of course the settled view of the expert scientists is just that – settled, and I believe that our coverage reflects that, over the long term.

 

 

So the BBC has only had one climate sceptic on in 3 months?  The BBC has clearly decided that journalism is no longer required of it and will solely be providing hype, propaganda and free publicity for the climate lobbyists regardless of the science, or lack of.

 

Rather at odds with this:

The BBC’s great confidence trick

The Australian Attorney General George Brandis, a confirmed upholder of the climate change consensus, has lashed out at the large numbers of his fellow-travellers who seek to silence dissenters.

He said one of the main motivators for his passionate defence of free speech has been the “deplorable” way climate change has been debated and he was “really shocked by the sheer authoritarianism of those who would have excluded from the debate the point of view of people who were climate-change deniers”.

“One side [has] the orthodoxy on its side and delegitimises the views of those who disagree, rather than engaging with them intellectually and showing them why they are wrong,” he said.

He referred to [Opposition leader Penny Wong] as standing up in the Senate and saying the science is settled as an example of climate change believers trying to shut down the debate.

“In other words, ‘I am not even going to engage in a debate with you.’ It was ignorant, it was medieval, the approach of these true believers in climate change,” he said.

Blessed Relief

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Happily we were spared the righteous sermons from the ‘Whispering Worthy’, Reverend Richard Coles,  this Saturday on ‘Saturday Live’.…in the hot seat instead were Anita Anand and Andrea Catherwood…..however not so different really in approach and values….plug and play, pop up priggishness and prurient prejudice.

That is a bit of a problem for the BBC, and an audience force fed a diet of sanitised, sermonising,  earnest and pious do-gooders educated at Oxbridge who get their news and views from the Guardian and Independent.

 

Time for some new blood?

 

Campaigner: Lenny Henry wants to see more diversity on television

 

Lenny Henry & Co are getting hot under the collar because there just aren’t enough Black faces on TV.

 

Lenny Henry calls for law to boost low numbers of black people in TV industry

 

Henry wants a boycott:

Lenny Henry has demanded the BBC improve its recruitment of people from culturally diverse background amid wider calls for a general boycott of the BBC licence fee.

 

What’s interesting is that Henry has instant access to the BBC’s DG, Tony Hall:

He is putting a proposal to BBC director general Tony Hall on Tuesday and to the regulator Ofcom intended to encourage more productions to use BAME actors and production staff.

 

‘When I met Tony Hall at the BBC he said “Let’s talk at the end of April”,’ he said. ‘Tony Hall wants to be seen as leading from the front and the BBC needs to lead from the front because they’re the main game in town. If the BBC decides they are going to do something everybody’s going to follow.’

 

 

I wonder if the same rapid show of concern would be coming from Hall if it wasn’t a Black man complaining about lack of representation for the ethnic ‘communtiy’ but someone who believes the BBC doesn’t represent the vast majority of people politically, socially and culturally in their coverage of Europe, immigration, climate, the economy, religion and Israel?

We already know the answer to that……far from responding positively to such critcism and trying to improve their political balance the BBC’s response is firstly to ridicule such a notion, then to indignantly deny it absolutely, then, years later, to admit well maybe we were a bit lacking in impartiality…but only to claim that that was all in the past…things are better now.

 

The BBC’s stonewalling of such complaints can be evidenced by this internal spat where the controller of Radio 1 refuses to acknowledge any criticism even from that great BBC Immortal, Jeremy Paxman:

Take the stairs, Paxo! Radio 1 chief hits back at Newsnight host who says lift music is ‘hell’

‘Dear Jeremy, I read with interest your views on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra. I am Controller of both.

‘Clearly you are entitled to your view, but please consider who and what you effect [sic] when you express those views.’

 

 

Yes…‘I read with interest..’

Just before filing it in the trashbin.

And note that…‘you are entitled to your views but….’

 

That encapsulates the whole problem with the BBC…..don’t say anything that will offend certain sections of the community….which leads to the unofficial censoring and manipulation of the news by the BBC….the manufacturng of consent, the undermining of dissent.

…all the more important when you consider how powerful the BBC is….as Lenny Henry admits:

‘If the BBC decides they are going to do something everybody’s going to follow.’

 

 

Radio 1 Controller Ben Cooper did say something else of real note though:

‘If the licence fee is collected from everyone, then the BBC should represent the whole of society, not just certain parts of it.’

 

Shame the BBC fails completely in that task….much as I’m delighted to be treated to the ‘Whispering Worthys’ ‘, and his fellow travellers’,  asthetic and moral values perhaps we could have something more ‘diverse’…and I don’t just mean the same old BBC message but with a ‘Black face’  just as the BBC does when it employs ‘authentic’ working class voices…who are all carefully selected, screened and vetted to check they show the appropriate BBC values despite their ‘disadvantaged’…morally, socially and politically, exposed as they must have been to innate prejudices and ignorance of the white working class….lives.  Stacey Dooley is a prime example of this at work….Giles Fraser another prime case where showing the right ‘right-on’ credentials gets you a BBC meal ticket.

‘…..the more of her ‘investigative journalism’ (enjoyed that part in your review too, lmao) you watch, the more you realize that BBC must be paying her for each teardrop she produces. Her crying probably got good ratings in the first episode, so they told her to keep it up. That’s my theory at least.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Blood Art’

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The BBC loves the art world, the intelligentsia, the chatterati.  It loves especially garnering their views on the world, politics and everything and laps it all up with relish only to regurgitate their ruminations in the form of a ‘settled science’ for us lesser mortals to learn from,  just as they do with climate science…these guys are so intellgent, thoughtful, incisive, humane and caring that they just couldn’t be wrong…and anyway it all sounds as if it should be true.

 

Radio 4’s Zeitgeisters takes a look at:

Theaster Gates

BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz meets the cultural entrepreneurs whose aesthetic sense infects and influences our daily lives… who know what we want, even when we do not… the men and women whose impact goes beyond mere commerce, it shapes contemporary culture.

Will Gompertz travels to Chicago to meet the the artist who is using collectors’ desire for his artworks (they sell for anything upwards of several hundred thousand dollars each) to transform the rundown Southside where he now lives.

 

Now Theaster Gates is in fact no ‘pretender’, he literally puts the riches he earns where his mouth is…..unlike so many in the art/media world who take the millions and run.

Gates  sells his art for large sums of money and use that to renovate run down property in poor communities.

 

But what is interesting is what Gompertz says during the programme about artists and their ilk….made all the more apposite because of what another BBC employee, Michael Rosen, ranted about recently, castigating the new culture secretary for daring to have made a living from banking:

You’re an ex-banker who made millions during the fatal bubble of the early 21st century; you were at a bank that has been fined for rate-fixing. You know all about this kind of money. The fact that people like you got up to all sorts of greedy lending and fiddling is why we’re in the crisis.

…..you are someone who benefited from the false boom, the very same boom that caused the crash, and to continue the chain, which is what has given your party the excuse to slash public services and cut waged and unwaged people’s standard of living, and further enrich the mega-rich.

 

 

Gompertz, nail on the head, said that ‘Art is a hustle’.

Artists can flog their creations for millions…quite happy to take the dirty money off those self same gullible bankers that Rosen railed against.

We have ‘Blood Diamonds’ perhaps Rosen would like to pen a poem about ‘Blood Art’….art funded by money made by the ‘ greedy lending and fiddling‘ that ruined so many lives according to …Rosen.

Gompertz also said that ‘Artists are enormously privileged and are able to say things that others can’t.’

How true.

Part of that is of course because they have the other side of the Arts’ world, the Media, giving them easy access to a vast platform to spout their stuff which the man in the street doesn’t have….the artists bringing us their unique ‘aesthetic sense which infects and influences our daily lives.’ that us plebs just can’t possibly create for ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Axelrod…In pay of Energy Firms

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When the Coalition held back on regulating cigarette packaging the BBC launched a broadside against the Tories with relentless suggestions that the Tory advisor, Lynton Crosby, was behind the reluctance to bring in plain packaging because he had links to tobacco firms.

How different, and lacking, is the BBC’s rigour and investigative ardour when Miliband’s new advisor is known to have had links to energy companies creating adverts that made spurious justifications for price rises…something the BBC has been rather energetic in investigating here in the UK…but not now.

The BBC has maintained radio silence about Axelrod’s ‘previous’…..all the more intriguing because it is in direct oppostion to his new master’s policy of price freezes.

 

From the Telegraph:

New Ed Miliband adviser David Axelrod helped campaign for energy price hikes

Mr Axelrod, known as one of the world’s best political strategists, ran ASK Public Strategies, which organised the advertising company for ComEd, the largest electricity company in Illinois.

The campaign in 2005 warned of an impending “energy crisis” in the state if electricity prices were not put up.

The disclosure could prove embarrassing for Mr Miliband, who has taken on the “Big Six” energy firms by pledging to freeze prices if he wins next year’s election.

 

So Miliband’s new guru was in the pay of ‘Big Energy’….hustling for higher prices….at odds with Miliband’s policy…and the BBC ignores the story.

And ignores that other embarrassment for Miliband that Axelrod is also at odds with his ‘heroic and brave’ stand on Syria….

After Iraq, folks are justifiably weary and leery. But this isn’t Iraq. In plain sight, Assad’s committed mass murder with hideous weapons. No response would be a green light to Assad, Iran, Hezbollah and others that the U.S. and world will look the other way. Grave mistake. A targeted strike on their delivery systems is right, just and proportionate. Failure to act would be another tragic legacy of Iraq war.

 

 

Is there an election coming?

Champagne on ice, party hats at the ready at the BBC?

 

 

 

 

GROUPTHINK…

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Christopher Booker has a pretty sharp analysis here of the BBC cadre..

“When Jeremy Paxman joins the growing chorus of those who criticise the way the BBC has become a “smug”, dysfunctional, over-blown bureaucracy, run by overpaid unaccountable apparatchiks, one might think that they are describing the European Union, which is doubtless why the BBC loves it. We are familiar with the main reasons why the BBC, for all that it continues here and there to make much-appreciated contributions to our lives, has come to inspire such hostility (“loathsome” was Paxman’s word for it)”

EASTER SUNDAY

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I was up early this morning and tuned into the SUNDAY programme on Radio 4 presented by my old pal William Crawley. There was a story about how ISLAM was the fastest growing religion in the UK,  a story about the terrible “poverty” facing the UK that requires Food Banks and the like and a story about the need for an amnesty for terrorists in Northern Ireland. That was in about 30 minutes. The bias is so easy, so institutionalised, that it just flows out naturally.

SANITISING SOME TERRORISTS

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A man was shot dead in republican west Belfast yesterday. He was an alleged “dissident terrorist” who had fallen out with other “dissident” terrorists. Dogs and fleas. This morning, on BBC Radio 4 today, I heard the most cringing interview possible with a Sinn Fein/IRA spokesperson on this topic. She was allied to claim that these dissident republican terrorists  are criminals with little support. The IRA were also criminals but she was out to rewrite THAT bit of history. She went on to whinge about lack of “equality” and political progress, inferring Godfather style that unless some “progress” is made (meaning accommodating Sinn Fein agenda) why “dissidents” are almost forced to kill the odd person. At NO point was there any challenge made to the Sinn Fein/IRA history agenda and we are presented with the IRA’s proxies being given a platform on this major news station so they can present themselves as the voice of moderation and reason. Repulsive.

THERE IS NO JIHAD!

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Did you catch this interview with the father of Abdullah Deghayes – the jihadist who met his death in Syria. It is amazing how gentle the softball questions are as Mr Deghayes dissembles for all he is worth on the subject of the jihad. Two of his other boys are out in Syria, also presumably fighting the Jihad. Great to see British exports going so well.