The BBC have a warning for you about the Far Right:

France election: National Front gains trigger alarm

It is always an oddity that the BBC is never ‘alarmed’ about the Far Left taking power…there is no ‘warning from history’ about them….as Stalin erased his enemies from the archives the BBC erases Stalin and his ilk and their massive crimes….apparently communist North Korea is a Nazi state…and Putin is of the ‘Far Right’.

However it is not only the Far Left who get left out of this scenario.

The French Far Right have teemed up with ‘conservative’ Muslims and indeed ‘conservative Catholics’…

Here is Harry’s Place:

Domestically [in the UK] the far-left continues to ignore the reactionary and regressive nature of many of their Muslim allies, bolstering them in the process at the expense of liberal Muslims.

In France things are quite different as the far-right has begun to reach out and develop an alliance with conservative Muslim factions. Far-right elements in France have never been pro-Muslim but, in the grand scheme of things, they have decided that gays and Jews pose a greater threat to the French way of life. It is not unusual to see conservative Catholics, Muslims and far-right elements joining arms to protest on the streets of France condemning same-sex marriage and Zionist domination in the same breath. This new movement is represented by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne and the inverted nazi salute he helped to popularise, known as the quenelle.

Why no mention of the connection of ‘conservative’ Muslims or Catholics in relation to the French Far Right?

After all a warning from history is self evident for that:

‘Islam And Judaism’……wonder what it says inside.

Middle of the week and time for a new Open Thread! Enjoy!

Via Guido:

Labour Send “Solidarity” to New Newsnight Editor

Just what the new Newsnight economics editor needs when he is being accused of being too close to the Labour Party, the Labour deputy leader sending him public solidarity on Twitter:

@DuncanWeldon sorry to c Mail attacks on you. Sending u solidarity Hang on in there. Horrid but they’ll give up after a bit. H—
Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) March 25, 2014

 

 

All smiles

The canny Andrew Neil makes a wee joke about Tuscany Toynbee…and the Poverty Queen isn’t amused (via Guido):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPTkbh6ojN0

Bit of a sense of humour bypass there.

Oh…where’s that smile gone?

Oh…and it was appalling bias by Neil against grandstanding social reformers campaigning for the poorest and most downtrodden in society using the conveniently highly paid media jobs as the vehicle to deliver the message and who also have a lovely little villa in Tuscany for those well needed revitalising rests after spending so much of their valuable time lifting the poorest out of the gutter, kicked there by a callous, cold hearted Tory no doubt.

Dreadful.

The BBC completely ignored Labour donor John Mills’ claim that Miliband will not actually honour his promise to freeze energy prices….a pretty damning claim as that policy was central to Miliband’s politics….his ‘flagship policy’.

However the BBC have immediately jumped on SSE’s announcement that they are going to freeze prices for a year slamming it on their frontpage as the second most important story and are claiming this as a victory for Miliband.

Evan Davis on Today linking the two and ‘The BBC’s industry correspondent, John Moylan, says the freeze has echoes of Labour’s flagship energy policy, which promises to keep prices at the same level for 20 months after the next election if Labour are elected.’

Not much outrage about the 500 jobs going at SSE as a result:

SSE said it expects lower profits as a result of the freeze, but it would be “streamlining and simplifying” its business to cover the shortfall.

The company announced it would cut 500 jobs and shelve three planned offshore wind farm developments.

Only it doesn’t have anything to do with Miliband…these companies have been offering fixed price tariffs for a long time, well before Miliband piped up.

Every company offers them…npower offers this:

    Fixed 2 year

  Fix & Control Aug 2015

Online Fixed Price Energy June 2015

ScottishPower   Fixed Price Energy April 2016

  Fixed Price September 2015

   iSave Fixed v18 May 2015

Prices fixed until 30th June 2015

etc etc etc

Always a puzzle as to what catches the BBC’s imagination when they sit around in their editorial meetings to decide what is ‘News’, and what isn’t.

Seen this from the BBC?

“British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office. Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds.”

So, plan for all sorts. Met Office covering all the odds whilst still flogging AGW. Just wait until the IPCC hits!!!

I have had a tsunami of outraged emails from Biased BBC readers concerning the bizarre and OTT sanitisation of former Co-Op boss Paul Flowers by the BBC today. It seems the Coalition is to blame for the implosion of the Bank and as for Mr Flowers…erm…”colourful”private life, well, I blame Thatcher. Thoughts? Just WHY is the BBC leading all UK news with the hideous self-pity bleating of Flowers??

Miliband’s proposed energy price freeze was apparently a game changing political moment, one that dramatically caught the headlines….so why does the BBC not report one of his backers claiming that Miliband will not honour his promise?

We’ve long been off the opinion that Miliband is as much a windbag as Kinnock ever was…his ‘policies’ being mere populist piffle designed to catch the headlines….and they were very successful at that….the BBC fell head over heels in love with him…Pienaar constantly reminding us that Miliband was ‘setting the agenda’.

We always thought that was so much hot air.

Now it seems that even his own party donors think that as well:

Labour party donor John Mills: Miliband won’t freeze energy bills or break up banks

Ed Miliband’s promises are merely anti-business rhetoric he is unlikely to carry through, says key supporter

Peter Allen ambushed me…he was lurking as presenter on Derbyshire’s show  (1 hr 50)….telling us that inflation is going down…but only ‘on the government’s measure of inflation’.

And we all know you can’t trust that don’t we children?

BUT….He went on to say that food prices are going to rise by 3.8%…and your wages just won’t keep up with that….it’s a very big story he tells us….never mind the latest Supermarket price war…. Allen’s new fact coming from one ‘specialist agency’ (Prestige Purchasing), not the ONS…..so getting his alarmist speculation in before it happens…never mind the actual news from today…and most say food inflation is falling….

“Consumer price inflation is expected to have been brought down by ongoing marked discounting by retailers, reduced food price inflation and lower petrol prices.”  and .…..’food prices rose at their slowest pace for seven years as supermarkets continued to lure in customers with rival deals.’

Prestige Purchasing is a commercial buying company..therefore its motives for highlighting rising prices might be suspect…..claims of too high food prices and you get government to act on behalf of the food industry?

And hang on that very big story…is old history….they said the same thing in December last year:

David Read, Prestige chief executive, told the Daily Telegraph that food prices could rise by as much as 6 per cent next year, but at the very least were likely to jump by another 3.8 per cent.

And yet food prices have dropped.  So why did Allen concentrate on this aspect when the ‘good news’ is real….just another notch on Prestige Purchasing’s PR belt?

Prestige Purchasing thought that getting their claims into the media was a great success in 2013….just what was the success though?…….

Our recent 2013 food and drinks inflation event was a great success! We have had coverage in the Telegraph (http://bit.ly/1bTnkrp), the Daily Mail (http://dailym.ai/18R7RHU), the Morning Advertiser (http://bit.ly/1d7R28B) and Big Hospitality (http://bit.ly/1b1J2mP) to name but a few. Many thanks to everyone who attended, we could not have done it without you.

And the BBC’s own web site report doesn’t think it’s such a big story and failed to mention it…though it does say:  Public sector workers saw a rise of just 0.9% in the same period, but private sector pay growth was 1.7%, meaning it has already caught up with the increase in prices.

So I guess some workers are keeping up with inflation.

or as the Telegraph puts it:

Wages may finally be outstripping inflation

10.05 Good news if you work in the private sector – the “cost of living crisis” is potentially over.

The ‘cost of living crisis over’?  What line will Labour have to dream up next?….still as long as they have people like Peter Allen and Micky Clark raining on the ‘Economic Recovery Parade’ there’s always an angle for Labour to exploit.

Peter Allen and Micky Clark…the bookends of doom and gloom, one at the start of the day and one at the end (usually).

The Office for National Statistics says:

No mention of food inflation as a major factor….in fact food fell 0.02%…so a very big story indeed:

As mentioned before climate change sceptics are pretty unwelcome at the BBC:

The Green Hush Strikes Again

Btu now is the time to be talking if ever there was one:

Climate change: the debate is about to change radically

The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due out next week. If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon “mitigation” to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.

So the mitigation deal has become this: Accept enormous inconvenience, placing authoritarian control into the hands of global agencies, at huge costs that in some cases exceed 17 times the benefits even on the Government’s own evaluation criteria, with a global cost of 2 per cent of GDP at the low end and the risk that the cost will be vastly greater, and do all of this for an entire century, and then maybe – just maybe – we might save between one and ten months of global GDP growth.

Can anyone seriously claim, with a straight face, that that should be regarded as an attractive deal or that the public is suffering from a psychological disorder if it resists mitigation policies?

The BBC has consistently painted the Sceptics as scientifically illiterate, ignorant bloggers, in the pay of Big Oil, or merely as loons….Roger Harrabin, Richard Black and now Matt McGrath have all contributed to that smear campaign.

In this recent article McGrath has a subtle attack on Sceptics whilst pretending to be seeking an accommodation with them….

Taking the war out of global warming

I once had a dream (or was it a dram?) in which the things we thought we knew for certain about the world were suddenly turned upside down.

In this strange universe, the cold war seemed to suddenly return, Ireland began to perform consistently at rugby, and arch-climate sceptics began to believe in dangerous levels of global warming.

So one thing we know for certain is that the world is threatened by dangerous levels of global warming in McGarth’s opinion.

He goes on, the main thrust of his piece, to misrepresent the views of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its motivations……

Imagine my surprise then, on reading this new report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

Here was one of the world’s foremost bastions of contrariness when it comes to man-made climate change, admitting that temperatures were actually rising in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Huh? What about all that stuff we’ve heard in the past from those who refused to accept the science? That the whole thing was a warmist conspiracy, driven by out-of-work ex-communists?

Strangely, the GWPF are not highlighting this acknowledgement that man-made emissions are driving rapid changes in our climate, compared to the historical experience.

Note that link he provides…to a fringe blog:

COMMUNIST CLIMATEGATE

McGarth’s intention is purely to try and associate the GWPF with what McGrath would like you to think of as ‘right wing nuts’ and therefore lose any credibility…..

The key to the success of the GWPF is the trust and credibility that we have earned in the eyes of a growing number of policy makers, journalists and the interested public. In our relationship with our members, with MPs, the media and our wider readership, it is the most important quality that we have.

Then there’s this little dig:

So how has mainstream science reacted to a research paper that has not been peer reviewed, written by people who are not employed at mainstream scientific institutions, casting doubt on a central tenet of their work?

They can’t possibly be right because they’re not ‘mainstream’ can they?

McGrath finishes off with…..

It may not be a “peace in our time” moment but perhaps it might signal that the time is right for a new, more inclusive debate about climate change.

Dr Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, took encouragement from the fact that both the GWPF and the IPCC accepted that significant amounts of further warming were likely this century.

“If we broadly agree on this, the debate can crucially move on to what action is needed to deal with a warming planet,” he said.

Some light perhaps, amid all the heat.

So he suggests….as long as you think like us we can have a debate….it’s not a debate then is it?

Apart from that McGarth is a bit of a misleading little fellow.

The GWPF isn’t really about the science…it is about the policies that should be used to deal with whatever the science says.

• The GWPF does not have an official or shared view about the science of global warming – although we are of course aware that this issue is not yet settled.
• On climate science, our members and supporters cover a broad range of different views, from the IPCC position through agnosticism to outright scepticism.
• Our main focus is to analyse global warming policies and their economic and other implications. Our aim is to provide the most robust and reliable economic analysis and advice.
• We regard observational evidence and understanding the present as more important and more reliable than computer modelling or predicting the distant future.

This of course is why the BBC don’t like the GWPF:

Above all we seek to inform the media, politicians and the public, in a newsworthy way, on the subject in general and on the misinformation to which they are all too frequently being subjected at the present time.

You may have noted there has been a pretty vocal campaign against Nigel Lawson being ‘allowed’ to speak on the BBC and elsewhere….no coincidence then that McGrath joins in?

Note his description of the GWPF as...the world’s foremost bastions of contrariness....if you disagree with the BBC you are not basing that on science, reason or analysis…it’s ‘contrariness’.

Secondly McGarth misleads as to the content of the report:

A SENSITIVE MATTER      HOW THE IPCC BURIED EVIDENCE SHOWING GOOD NEWS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

Curious McGrath failed to mention the title, and therefore the whole thrust of the report as ‘sceptical’.

McGarth tries to claim that they now support his own views on climate change when in fact the report merely ‘reports’ what the IPCC say and doesn’t claim it is true or false…..purely stating that using IPCC figures a different scenario could be calculated….if you were to believe the IPCC’s figures such and such could happen…that is not endorsement of the man-made global warming theory…which is all it is as yet.

The third misrepresentation is that global warming, if it is happening is ‘man-made’.   Global warming may be happening, though on pause now, but there is no proof that it is man made.

Therefore, back to the Telegraph’s reasoning, you need to talk more about adaption than mitigation as there may in fact be nothing to mitigate, or, your mitigation efforts are useless anyway even if man is the cause of global warming….so why waste massive amounts of money on them?

Still nice to see the BBC being as fair and reasonable, and scientific, as usual.

Almost as if Richard Black never left.