I see that the BBC is hoping to use the ‘soft power’ of the Teletubbies, Top Gear and Doctor Who to …cough…break down North Korea’s hardline regime.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has revealed the Foreign and Commonweath Office is working with BBC Worldwide to provide programmes ‘that could be shown on Korean TV’. Negotiations are also on-going with Pyongyang to strike a deal to broadcast a range of shows on the state-run Central Television Station.
“The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.”
James Delingpole under threat:
@JamesDelingpole Hey scumbag, just remember they hanged Lord Haw Haw. #Haiyan
This post is just something to suck on and give you pause for thought before I look at the BBC’s recent bit of climate propaganda…Is there a Green Hush?
The BBC has maintained a constant narrative that climate scientists are ‘under attack’ from sceptics and therefore such pressure explains the scientist’s refusal to explain their actions or indeed their ‘science’.
The trouble is it is in fact the sceptics who are under the worse attacks, led it might be said by the mainstream media…such as the BBC and the Guardian.
Harrabin admitted he was a climate change campaigner:
I have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change.
Roger Harrabin complaining about the sceptics:
In the absence of any formal inquiry, trial by internet will continue. For better or for worse.
The BBC has been at the forefront of attacks on climate sceptics….and is still at it. Roger Harrabin is the BBC’s environmental correspondent who has helped orchestrate those attacks.
In any future reporting of Gore we should be careful not to suggest that the High Court says Gore was wrong on climate…….
We might say something like: “Al Gore whose film was judged by the High Court to have used some debatable science” or “Al Gore whose film was judged in the High Court to be controversial in parts”.
The key is to avoid suggesting that the judge disagreed with the main climate change thesis.
Please pass to presenters because this issue about Gore will arise again.
…and it must be squashed!
Delingpole again is under threat…from the BBC’s very best:
“I’m not sure whether I should shake your hand. I want to punch you.” He sounded jolly cross indeed – and ranted that I was utterly irresponsible and had disseminated lots of lies – though he later apologized to me saying he was jet-lagged and had confused me with Christopher Booker.
Phew..that’s OK then!
Here Harrabin lays the groundwork for what follows:
Over two decades I’ve spoken to mainstream scientists who are sick of hearing their work attacked and their motives questioned. In this world, climate science extends beyond arguments about trend-smoothing to become a matter of life and death for millions of people, according to the mainstream projections on temperatures.
Can there be much doubt that such sentiments lead to this type of thinking from the Green Lobby?:
With high probability GW will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.
Below is a selection of voices articulating what measures should be taken to silence or punish climate sceptics….if you think calls for death might be a little extreme you might ask why the BBC’s favourite ‘caring’ activist, Richard Curtis, also ‘jokingly’ implies that might not be a bad idea in his climate video for the 10:10 campaign.
NASA’s James Hansen has called for trials of climate skeptics in 2008 for “high crimes against humanity.” Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at skeptics in 2007, declaring “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors” In 2009, RFK, Jr. also called coal companies “criminal enterprises” and declared CEO’s ‘should be in jail… for all of eternity.”
In June 2009, former Clinton Administration official Joe Romm defended a comment on his Climate Progress website warning skeptics would be strangled in their beds. “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds,” stated the remarks, which Romm defended by calling them “not a threat, but a prediction.”
This video highlights the Green’s campaign of vilification against climate sceptics…by terrorizing children…as someone put it, an ‘eco-snuff movie’.
And…all lovingly written by the man who is is allowed by the BBC to use its massive broadcasting platform to pump out ‘poverty porn’ and when he’s not doing that filling the airwaves with Green hype and misinformation..Richard Curtis:
Here’s a highly explosive short film, written by Richard Curtis, from our friends at the 10:10 climate change campaign
“Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?” jokes 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid film maker Franny Armstrong.
Why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask her: “Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that’s not worth jumping up and down about, I don’t know what is.”
“We ‘killed’ five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change,” she adds.
Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.”
Here the ‘Tallbloke’ reveals the thoughts of another eco-fascist who wants to punish sceptics by killing them, though he thinks freedom of thought is a ‘very valuable thing’!:
The opinions of everyday GW deniers are evidently being driven by influential GW deniers who have a lot to lose if GW is taken seriously, such as executives in transnational oil corporations.
I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and I have always supported the clear and consistent stand of Amnesty International on this issue. The death penalty is barbaric, racist, expensive, and is often applied by mistake.
Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion.….[but]…….GW deniers fall into a completely different category. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.
With high probability GW will cause hundreds of millions of deaths.
For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers. More generally, I propose that we limit the death penalty to people whose actions will with a high probability cause millions of future deaths
Does that make me crazy? I don’t think so. I am certainly far less crazy than those people today who are in favor of the death penalty for everyday cases of murder, in my opinion. And like them I have freedom of speech, which is a very valuable thing.
Climate sceptics need ‘treatment:
You must understand climate scepticism isn’t a result of intelligent thought or informed debate, it’s because climate sceptic’s brains are wired wrong:
The authors drew on dozens of studies into people’s reactions to news about climate change, some of which suggest that certain types of people are more likely to find the evidence for human-induced climate change less convincing than others.
More in a similar vein:
David Roberts is a blogger over at the green website Gristmill. On September 19, 2006, evidently fed up with climate change deniers, Roberts made an interesting suggestion for how to resolve scientific issues. To wit: “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards—some sort of climate Nuremberg.” Roberts is far from alone. As Brendan O’Neill over at spiked points out, “climate change deniers” are now being likened by some activists to Holocaust deniers or even Nazis themselves. Apparently, it is no longer acceptable to question in polite company the hypothesis that humanity is causing catastrophic climate change.
Global warming: the chilling effect on free speech
The demonisation of ‘climate change denial’ is an affront to open and rational debate.
‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.’
The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.
Of course the BBC is at the forefront of the attacks on climate sceptics, orchestrated by Roger Harrabin who runs the Green’s ‘Black Ops’ misinformation campaign…CMEP.
When the CRU emails were released into the world, after a months silence from the BBC, we finally got a response from Harrabin and Co…a response that was obviously an organised one being exactly the same from several BBC journalists and some of their allies:
Harrabin…The UEA’s CRU is one of the most respected centres in the world and its data set is like others around the world. Hackers stole private emails that climate sceptics say manipulated the data…if it were true it would be extremely serious but scientists behind it absolutely reject the allegation…I have spoken to a lot of scientists and they are very confident that the science behind the CRU data will be upheld.
Obviously this was a bid to sabotage Copenhagen…millions of dollars are spent by American business trying to discredit AGW and this is the background as to why researchers have behaved in a defensive way.
Some of the e-mails reveal the frustration and annoyance among mainstream climate researchers about the probings they face from critics who relentlessly question their methodology.
But speaking to my source at the CRU, it is also clear that the unit has been dragged down by what it considers to be nit-picking and unreasonable demands for data – and that there is personal animus against their intellectual rivals.
Now this sort of hostility is nothing new in academia – but the revelations come at a sensitive time as the world’s nations gather for the climate meeting in Copenhagen.
In the absence of any formal inquiry, trial by internet will continue. For better or for worse.
Tom Feilden….this shows how difficult it can be to remain objective when scientists are subjected to concerted attacks by those who will do or say anything to win a wider political argument.
The CRU emails are taken out of context….are they the result of exasperation by someone who has been subjected to constant harassment by an orchestrated group of campaigners?
Seems that BBC correspondents and climate alarmists are ‘orchestrating’ a campaign…..the themes are all consistently the same….out of context, stolen, scientists under attack and being forced to be defensive, climate sceptics orchestrate.
Curiously climate misinformation campaigner, Bob Wade from the Grantham Institute at the LSE, uses the same excuses…political motivated theft and harassed scientists.
In 2008 Harrabin was involved in a controversy after he altered a BBC Online report on climate forecasting report following complaints by an environmentalist and the World Meteorological Organisation. Conservative critics accused Harrabin of caving into pressure.
Harrabin denies it:
However:
Abbess: “Several networks exist that question whether global warming has peaked, but they contain very few actual scientists, and the scientists that they do contain are not climate scientists so have no expertise in this area.”
Harrabin: “No correction is needed. If the secy-gen of the WMO tells me that global temperatures will decrease, that’s what we will report”
Abbess: “Personally, I think it is highly irresponsible to play into the hands of the sceptics/skeptics who continually promote the idea that ‘global warming finished in 1998′, when that is so patently not true.
“Please do not do a disservice to your readership by leaving the door open to doubt about that.”
Harrabin: “We can’t ignore the fact that sceptics have jumped on the lack of increase since 1998. It is appearing reguarly now in general media. Best to tackle this – and explain it, which is what we have done.”
(still no mention of the WMO…)
Abbess: “When you are on the Tube in London, I expect that occasionally you glance a headline as sometime turns the page, and you thinkg [sic] ‘Really?’ or ‘Wow !’ You don’t read the whole article, you just get the headline.
“It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. [Even the BBC? – astonished ed] They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth. I would ask : please reserve the main BBC Online channel for emerging truth.”
“A lot of people will read the first few paragraphs of what you say, and not read the rest, and (a) Dismiss your writing as it seems you have been manipulated by the sceptics or (b) Jump on it with glee and email their mates and say “See! Global Warming has stopped !”
“I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.”
Harrabin: “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. We have changed headline and more.”
Harrabin has a little job on the side, using his BBC job as a platform to launch his lucrative public speaking career:
The Gordon Poole Agency: He gets 5k to 10k for talks on environment etc
Many of today’s environment/equity themes became issues of public
concern following Roger’s reports on Radio 4’s “Today” programme.
They include climate change, biodiversity, carbon footprints,
population, over-fishing, green taxation, road pricing, global
inter-connectedness, 3rd World debt, and many more. He was years
ahead of the pack in showing how the environment links to energy,
transport, farming, government aid, foreign policy, planning
The first installment with my own mission statement is here. Zurcher’s next topic was inevitable, so here goes. Again, I’m doing this without having read any of it other than the title and the first sentence.
Chris Christie’s Bridge-sized Headache
Somebody has leaked or stolen some emails by the popular and prominent New Jersey Governor detailing and gloating about deliberately blocking traffic on a vital commuter conduit in order to retaliate against a local politician who didn’t endorse Christie in the last election. The deputy chief of staff – whom Christie has now fired – seems to have made no bones about what they were doing, and even expressed pleasure in doing so in emails between her and the the Port Authority official in charge of running the George Washington Bridge, who’s a high school friend of the Governor and was appointed by him. It does have all the appearances of being very cozy.
It’s ugly business, not because it’s a national incident but because it’s a clear case of using government power to harm a political opponent, which is a major issue on its own thanks to the IRS scandal, never mind the negative affect it had on ordinary citizens, apparently simply because most of them voted the wrong way. As this editorial from Investor’s Business Daily says, “What’s infuriating is how this kind of politics is becoming the norm.”
This is a major national story also because Christie has a national profile not only because of his public image as a straight talker and a caring, competent administrator after the devastation of parts of his State from Hurricane Sandy, but because he’s been considered by many in the media and political wonk class to be the front runner for the Republican candidacy for President in 2016. Anything that calls his integrity into question is going to be big. It’s especially going to gain legs regardless of the facts because at the moment he’s the number one obstacle to President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton. So Christie now has the biggest target on his back of anyone in the country.
He’s going to get the vetting that the media never did for the Junior Senator from Illinois in 2008, or even during Obama’s first term as President. It’s no secret that the mainstream media knows they didn’t do their job properly, and that they really did use the power of the press to support him and attack enemies. There’s been a little pushback in the last couple of months, and it was probably always going to be inevitable that they were going to overreact in order to reestablish public trust and prove that they really do want to hold politicians accountable and speak truth to power.
As Paul Bedard points out in the Washington Times:
The Big Three networks, in a frenzy over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s traffic headache dubbed “Bridgegate,” have devoted a whopping 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage to the affair in just the last 24 hours.
By comparison, that’s 17 times the two minutes, eight seconds devoted to President Obama’s IRS scandal in the last six months, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center.
“While routinely burying new stories on the IRS scandal, the media practically fell over themselves to start taking shots at the potential 2016 Republican presidential nominee,” said the conservative media watchdog.
It’s important to keep this background in mind when considering the media coverage now, regardless of the facts as they come out. Opinion on the validity of the IRS scandal can be viewed as a metric. So, naturally there’s noise in both the Left and Right echo chambers. Christie says he didn’t know the truth and was misled by his staff about the whole thing. Naturally, some won’t trust him and are asking “What did he know and when did he know it?”, while others are taking him at his word. While it’s impossible to prove a negative, many are pointing to his known brusk, tough-talking, and at times aggressive behavior as evidence that this attitude was endemic in his administration, and thus he shares blame.
A good example of this comes from the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart. Just his blog title says it all:
Chris Christie: ‘I am not a bully’ – LOL
During his 107-minute me-me-mea culpa over the traffic fiasco that plunged his national political fortunes into chaos, Gov. Chris Christie said something that was LOL funny. It came in response to a question from NBC News’s Kelly O’Donnell: “Your critics say this reveals that you are a political bully, that your style is payback,” she asked the New Jersey Republican known for his love of rhetorical fisticuffs and penchant for retribution. “Are you? And does this compromise your ability to serve?
Capehart then cites a couple of instances of Christie making snarky retorts at people asking him challenging questions. Those responses are part of what made independents and people on the Right like him, while it tended to anger those on the Left. To Capehart and those in his echo chamber, it’s proof that Christie is a bully, and proof that he either knew or his style encouraged the corrupt behavior.
At the top of that echo chamber is this editorial from the New York Times:
There are plenty of questions that Mr. Christie and his aides, current and former, need to answer.
First, is it plausible that officials as high up as Ms. Kelly and Mr. Christie’s top appointees at the Port Authority, which controls the bridge, would decide to seek revenge and create this traffic chaos on their own?
Did Mr. Christie know in December, when Mr. Baroni and Mr. Wildstein resigned, that these two members of his inner circle had taken part in the scheme? Did he ever ask them what happened?
Piers Morgan says it’s as big a scandal as Watergate.
The echo chamber from the other side is obviously more willing to give Christie the benefit of the doubt. But they’re certainly not just accepting his side of the story and drawing a line under the incident. Charles Krauthammer is taking a wait-and-see attitude. He even suggests that if Christie’s toughness image comes across after this as “a petty toughness”, he’s “toast”. That and the IBD sentiment I mentioned above are echoed by Red State’s Eric Erickson (writing for Fox News here):
I’m ambivalent on his run for the presidency . But I don’t see him getting that far for the very reasons underlying this issue — he and his staff operate as divas.I have had congressmen, governors, and the staffers of congressmen and governors tell me horror stories about dealing with Christie’s people.
All of them seem to dread it.
It seems that even if Christie comes out of this with clean(ish) hands, the bully label is going to stick. Of course, nobody in either echo chamber is comparing that to Hillary Clinton’s own horror stories about how she treats people, but it’s only a matter of time if Christie does eventually declare.
So is it going to doom Christie’s presidential hopes? It’s too soon to tell, of course, but there are plenty of guesses out there. Lisa Schiffren in the National Review Online’s “The Corner”, thinks this too shall pass and Christie the (eventual) candidate might even come out of this the better for it. The other echo chamber, here in the form of Jason Linkins of the HuffingtonPost, thinks there’s always the possibility of a “Comeback Kid” story, as the media likes to create these Narratives.
There’s one other facet to this story – particularly the coverage and the opinion-mongering – which goes back to what I said about how opinion of the IRS scandal can be a kind of metric. The same people on the Left who defended the President on that saying he couldn’t possibly have known, and his behavior had no influence on the IRS going after his political enemies, are now certain that Christie’s behavior influenced and led to everything, and of course he probably knew.
Before closing, we must also consider the other, other echo chamber: Twitter.
Christie has taken responsibility within a day of learning of the scandal. That’s more times than Obama has in 5 years of scandals.
— Matt (@Matthops82) January 9, 2014
“I am responsible for what happened.”
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 9, 2014
Wow, an actual leader.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 9, 2014
It’s too early to know how this will turn out, but the various opinions have been far more revealing of the attitudes and politics of the people making them than about anything in the story itself.
Here you go folks, a new Open thread for you to complete!
The IPCC’s study into deaths in police custody in England and Wales between 1998 and 2010 shows:
Those who died in custody were mostly white (75%), male (90%) and aged between 25 and 44.
An invitation to Mark Duggan’s aunt from the BBC’s Nicky Campbell:
‘I’m going to give you two minutes to be open and honest about the cancer in our society…say honestly from the heart what you want to say….say anything you want.’
There are some dangerous myths being propagated in some communities….one is that radicalisation is caused by ‘western’ foreign policy……today we hear the excuses for Black radicalisation….Black youths are more likely to die in police custody than any other segment of the population, and that police community relations are failing because of police actions such as stop and search.
I have heard these mentioned again and again today but not a word of dissent from the BBC, as with Muslim callers or commentators who suggest foreign policy causes radicalisation the BBC seems unable to challenge anyone who wraps themselves in their flag of convenience….that being their race or religion.
There is no mention of the real figures of deaths in custody nor the reasons for stop and search..no look at the numbers of black youths killed by other black youths, no looking at Trident in relation to all this.
The narrative does seem to go just one way…the police are to blame for all the problems….they don’t understand the community, they don’t communicate with them and they persecute them.
No thought that maybe the Black community brings it upon themselves….or rather a segment of the black community brings it upon the whole….all to be taken advantage of by the race hustlers.
Having caught quite a bit of the BBC’s coverage of the response to the Duggan verdict I can only conclude that the BBC would be quietly sympathetic to anyone who decided the best reaction would be to riot, burn down homes and businesses, and if innocent people are killed, then so be it….that’s the price of injustice when Democracy fails you and injustice stalks the streets.
David Cameron said that ‘the judicial process has to be respected.’
The BBC’s response was to say bollocks to that, asking instead….’Should the police guidance on the use of lethal force be changed?’
That question from the BBC tells you a lot about their thinking. It immediately suggests that though a jury has found the shooting legal the BBC believes that the police guidelines on the use of lethal force are wrong…and therefore the verdict, based upon those guidelines, is wrong….and therefore…
The killing was unjustified…in other words the BBC are suggesting Duggan was murdered by the police.
Just a coincidence that the BBC’s broadcast this by their tame Black activist, Alvin Hall, on the day after the verdict is given:
Alvin Hall on Motown’s Black Forum spoken word records with the people behind them
The Sound of The Struggle
If you think it’s about music you’d be mistaken…once again Hall is glorifying Black political activism and promoting the victim status of Black people.
‘Amazing how timely some of the lyrics are’ Alvin tells us….as black youths are being killed in the streets….no Honkys though?….and in the UK most black youths are killed by other black youths…go figure.
When he tells us that the death of an unarmed black boy, Trayvon Martin, at the hands of a neighbourhood watchman, gives the recordings ‘a painful contemporary resonance’ you get the message he is peddling…no matter that George Zimmerman, who shot Martin, was Hispanic and not White.
That message? Black youths are still being murdered by whitey.
Excellent choice of programme and sentiment on the day following the verdict on the killing of a black man by police officers.
Coincidence? Sure.
This is the BBC which frequently postpones broadcasting programmes at ‘sensitive times’ if they are deemed to have an unfortunate relevance to current events….but no one at the BBC thought that a programme which glorifies the Black power movement and brings us quotes like the one below might be ill judged and ill timed:
‘If you do not think he is capable of wiping us out check out the white race, wherever they have gone they have ruled, conquered, murdered and plagued, whether they are the majority or the minority they have always ruled, they have always ruled!’
Back to the culturally cringing BBC white boys:
Nicky Campbell continues the week as he began…badly (starts at 7 mins properly)
His show of course is a phone in about the Duggan verdict.
The BBC has in the past frequently given Duggan’s mother airtime which she used to say that Duggan had been executed or assassinated by the police.
Somewhat inflamatory but the BBC never challenged that…and indeed today Campbell gave Duggan’s aunt carte blanche to say what she liked as the ‘heat and anger is understandable’
However Campbell was told that it was people like him and the BBC who misrepresented what Black people were like.
Campbell grovelled and responded…..‘This is why it’s so important to hear from people like you.’
‘I’m going to give you two minutes to be open and honest about the cancer in our society…say honestly from the heart what you want to say….say anything you want.’
So she let rip……Mark Duggan was executed.
We were also told that black youths in custody are being killed at a murderous rate by police…a highly emotive claim but one that is far, far from the truth…. but not challenged by Campbell:
In 2011 there were 515 recorded deaths in state custody:
Deaths in or following police custody show that 84% of those who died were White, 11 % (n=2) were Black and 5% (n=1) were of mixed ethnicity.
o N=322 (63%) were natural causes;
o N=104 (20%) were self-inflicted deaths;
o N=58 (11%) were cause of death ‘unknown’. 55 of these deaths were of patients detained under the Mental Health Act, which accounts for 19% of the 273 recorded deaths in this setting;
o N=12 (2%) in which prisons were awaiting further information before classification;
o N=11 (2%) were other non-natural deaths;
o N=4 (0.8%) were Other;
o N=2 (0.4%) were homicides (both in prison) and;
o N=2 (0.4%) were Other – Accidental
Whilst giving Duggan’s aunt the freedom of the airwaves to say what she liked Campbell later (09:59) felt the need to say this after a caller suggested that the Black community needed to apologise for the riots…..
‘And of course we need to counter the caller who said the black community should apologise, that was an appalling generalisation…strong feelings and strong words this morning [from Duggan’s family & Co], understandably…thank you for listening.’
He felt no need to counter the explosive accusation of ‘execution’ though…or indeed that the Black community are persecuted by the police.
Curious how the feelings of outrage and anger and the EDL’s march (No violence, no rioting, no looting, no deaths) on the murder and near beheading of Lee Rigby were not so ‘understandable’….no invitations to talk ‘from the heart, openly and honestly about the cancer in our society’ then.
Of course the bien pensant’s opposition to certain cultural impositions can be quite violent themselves:
“My loathing of McDonald’s is intense. There are advantages in development provided it is the right sort, but there are already too many take-away restaurants in Hampstead.”
But if you have a problem with a culture that advocates killing non-believers, promotes homophobia, declares that women are second class, that endorses multiple marriages…and of course anti-Semitism…it is you who are the problem.
Let’s remember Duggan’s aunt’s reaction to the verdict, repeated today……
So much for the family not wanting any rioting.
Outside court the Duggan family solicitor expressed the family’s dismay at the verdict telling reporters: “On the 4 August an unarmed man was shot down in Tottenham. Today we have had what we can only call a perverse judgement.
“The jury found he had no gun and yet he was gunned down – for us that’s an unlawful killing. The family are in a state if shock and we ask that you would respect that shock.
“They can’t believe that this was the outcome. No gun in his hand yet he was shot. Murdered. No justice. No peace.”
However just a few hours later she’s changed her mind…..
This is the BBC’s Frontpage headline right now:
and yet…….Execution, assassination, murder…….“No justice, no peace.”
Sugar is apparently:
Toxic and detrimental to society…in fact it is worse than tobacco as tobacco isn’t introduced into food.
The BBC tells us that:
Nearly two thirds of people in the UK are overweight or obese – leading to other health problems such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Really? You have to ask firstly is that true? Not sure I believe the figure….looking around most people look pretty average to me. Secondly who sets the parameters to make that judgement…how do you define ‘obese’?
Of course there are official guidelines, but you kind of suspect that many people so categorised would not accept the label…and would say if this is ‘fat’ then I’m quite happy being ‘fat’…so get lost!
The BBC have been banging on all day about this ‘major’ news story….a bunch of arrogant, not to say verging on fascist, doctors have yet again decided to dictate what we can and can’t eat ‘for our own good’.
There doesn’t seem much of a challenge to their claims from the BBC….this report is wholly from the doctor’s point of view save for the inset interview clip.
There is no balancing view in the report to put any other side to the argument….unlike the Telegraph which puts both sides:
Dr Victoria Burley, a senior lecturer in Nutrional Epidemiology at Leeds University, said the group’s claims were alarmist and misleading.
She said: “It is nuts to claim that sugar is as dangerous as alcohol. It’s total hyperbole, quite crazy.”
Here is some more of that hyperbole from the campaigners:
Action on Sugar says children are a particularly vulnerable group who are targeted by marketers of calorie-dense snacks and sugar-sweetened soft drinks.
Professor Simon Capewell said: ”Sugar is the new tobacco. Everywhere, sugary drinks and junk foods are now pressed on unsuspecting parents and children by a cynical industry focussed on profit not health.
That’s just rubbish….fizzy drinks, sweets, biscuits, crisps and whatever were all around in my youth and I wolfed them down as much as anyone when I could…..thing is I was limited in the amount I could eat……and was far from being anywhere near obese….conclusion…it’s not the amount of sugar in the products it’s how much of those products you eat…eat too much lettuce and you will also suffer problems.
As to ‘pressed on unsuspecting parents and children’….well as above..the same foods were available when I was young and yet my parents managed to avoid having cynical industrial types peddle their wares to them ‘unsuspected’ fleecing them for sugarcoated profits.
The doctors seem to think everyone else are stupid and ignorant, and incapable of making their own informed decisions about the food they eat…..and the BBC doesn’t seem to be disabusing the doctors of that opinion.
Listen to the tone when they do bring on an industry spokesman…it’s entirely negative and suspicious of the capitalist exploiters of children.
Shame that once again a fanatical pressure group gets given so much credibility and airtime by the BBC without a proper challenge to their claims.
Mark Mardell is enjoying saying this:
This scandal is hugely damaging – if not yet fatal – for Christie’s ambitions to be the Republican contender for president in 2016”
about this:
On 9 September, two of three traffic lanes to the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey to Manhattan, were shut for several days.
Emails and texts made public on Wednesday appear to link Ms Kelly to the move.
The move caused traffic chaos in the New Jersey borough of Fort Lee, whose Democratic mayor had declined to back Mr Christie in last autumn’s gubernatorial election.
Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said the alleged skulduggery was “appalling”….”It’s the example of the pettiest and most venomous side of politics,” he told the Bergen Record newspaper.
No such concerns about ‘petty, venomous politics’ when Labour opened the borders and imported millions of immigrants purely to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.
Nor indeed any such concerns bout Ken Livingstone’s ‘traffic management schemes’ which deliberately jammed the traffic to give him an excuse to introduce congestion charges:
Hundreds of sets of traffic lights at some of London’s busiest junctions are being secretly altered to increase the time motorists have to wait, according to The Independent on Sunday (p5).
The changes affect as many as 300 traffic lights. After months of suspicion, the body in charge of traffic lights, Transport for London, has now admitted that many have had their red phases increased and the green phase reduced.
Motoring groups say London mayor Ken Livingstone has intentionally created traffic chaos now in order to make his congestion charging scheme more popular when it is introduced in nine months time.
Just how many ambulances and police response vehicles were delayed by Ken’s little games?
Well then, who would have thought that the BBC would have found a new icon to worship after the death of Mandela, and who would have thought it was a London “gangsta”? BBC coverage has been extensive and very pro Duggan, and the comrades also seem disappointed there has not been a riot! Thoughts?
I wrote this up while watching Nick Robinson’s “The Truth About Immigration”. After it was over, I rearranged a few things, but except for the last couple of paragraphs it was nearly all written as I watched. However, after having digested it for a minute, I think I can sum the whole thing up much more briefly.
Nick Robinson: How is it that a subject that was once taboo is now on every poltician’s lips? Why is it that the doors to Britain were flung open and what are the benefits and what are the perils of now seeking to close them?
Why is it now a major issue and what is the truth about immigration?
Shorter fisking: What Robinson covers is all old hat. See the BBC’s “White” Series for evidence that most of what he rehashes has been done before. In addition, everyone by now knows what Labour did and why. This is a dishonest discussion if one side of the issue is a strawman. Most people do not want to close the door, full stop. I suppose that makes for good TV, but it’s not honest.
What is the truth? Why is this issue now such a big deal that the BBC feels obligated to go over all this again? Aside from the obvious current event of Bulgarian and Roma(nian) immigration, Spot the missing murder of Lee Rigby with the murderer explaining himself on camera. Spot the missing no-go areas. Spot the missing imams preaching jihad. Spot the missing grooming gangs of Rochdale and Manchester. Spot the missing mass murders of 7/7. Spot the missing discussion about how the BBC got it wrong as well, which was part of Robinson’s statement to the Mail.
I think that about sums up the BBC’s approach to the truth.
Longer version, if anyone’s interested:
So we’re expected to believe that the BBC’s original Young Conservative is straying off the reservation, are we? Sorry, no.
It’s all a big deal now, we’re told. Illegal immigrants are being told to go home. Robinson emphasized “illegal”. And what, exactly, were illegal immigrants being told until this national conversation hit an all time high? Oh, sorry, wrong national debate. I was momentarily stunned by hearing a BBC journalist use the words “illegal” and “immigrants” in the same sentence. I’m just so used to hearing them censor that word in their dishonest reporting about the issue in the US.
Notice the footage Robinson chooses to accompany that line. The police are clearly approaching someone who has just snuck across the border. This is an entirely different topic than the real concerns about immigration in Britain. By conflating the two from the outset, Robinson has already muddied the waters. Whoops, that’s a racist comment these days, isn’t it?
Nick’s Big Question: Why is it now a major issue?
Answer: Anything except third-world extremely fundamentalist Muslims coming in en masse and setting up segregated enclaves and not only maintaining those extremely fundamentalist behaviors and refusing to integrate, but causing certain local problems and then being enabled by politicians, police, and a BBC willing to kowtow to any demand in the name of political correctness and to give two fingers to their political opponents, as well as because they’re afraid.
I hadn’t even watched seven minutes of this before I could see it’s mostly a load of tired old talking points, and would ultimately be a dishonest approach to the issue. If the issues Robinson presents as the main concerns weren’t already talked about enough to be well covered, why did the BBC do that whole “White” Series a few years ago? What was “The Poles Are Coming” about, then? It was a deliberate attempt to control the national debate on this issue, and to demonize those who thought it might be a problem. If it wasn’t already a well-known concern, why was Mrs. Duffy such a story? The BBC was just as quick to paint her as a racist as any politician was.
And what about “White Girl”? That particular facet of the immigration issue was entirely absent from Robinson’s supposed truth about it. And let’s not pretend it’s not the main reason immigration is a hotter topic than ever.
Nick Robinson and the BBC think you’re all stupid. We could tell from their reactions to public complaints about Mandelapalooza, and Evan Davis more recently gave DB a hint of it: they hold you in contempt, now more than ever.
Another question – in two parts – left unanswered: If so many immigrants were needed, as Robinson states, to fill all those jobs, how many British people were unemployed at the time and why are there so many more now? Secondly, why was unlimited immigration the answer instead of training the citizens? Surely there must be a difference in cost – on several levels – between the two options. As was evident from the “The Poles Are Coming” episode, the “lazy British” Narrative has become an immutable object at the BBC. Now they don’t even think it’s worth addressing. It’s a given. Not a single moment was spent asking about what to do with the unemployed youth in Britain.
(Side note to Nick Robinson and his producer: You really should have resisted the temptation to use the cute “boom and bust” reference there. It only highlighted how dishonest the BBC has been about that issue as well.
Other side note: I admit it’s nice to see Nick Robinson presenting politicians as being scheming and damaging rather than protecting and defending them, like he did for the Blair/Brown relationship or as the expenses scandal was at its height.)
I’ll grant that it’s good that Robinson got Labour politicians to admit how slimy they were on their policy, but if it’s just David Blunkett saying they were “on the side of the angels”, and Jack Straw saying Labour got it wrong, then the debate gets shifted to whether they were right or not, rather than how dishonest they were the entire time. Yvette Cooper was shown as trying to have it both ways, so nothing enlightening there, either.
Robinson, being of course ruled by the BBC’s requirement to remain impartial, leaves it there. For balance against three Labour politicians, two of whom essentially defended the policy without much reservation, we got Michael Howard. Oh, right, Robinson himself is supposed to count as being on the Right in this case, yeah.
The one saving grace of this entire hour was the part where Robinson showed non-white immigrants complaining about the same things that concerned the first round of complainers, meaning it can’t be called racist anymore. I know a couple people here have brought that up recently, and I imagine it would come as quite a shock to those who trust the BBC for their news on important issues. Unfortunately, it’s easy to predict that the BBC will forget all about that immediately and will be quickly back to calling it racist.
So David Cameron is putting a limit on “net immigraton” is he? How will that work out, Nick? No prizes for guessing. To make matters more pathetic, after going over the whole “We needed mass immigration to fill the jobs” theme, Robinson takes that to the next level to show that you need mass immigration to fill all those student slots at universities. Apparently, the university system will be economically threatened if you worry about the questionable student applicants and don’t let in enough proper ones.
Then we get to work permits. Um, what’s this about skills and the ability to speak English? Didn’t we meet some Eastern European kids who were picking strawberries and were told this is an example of the kind of jobs Britain vitally needs filling? Aren’t those the low-wage jobs lazy British young people won’t do, so limiting immigration to skilled workers will harm the economy? Of course that’s so, and Robinson is keen to tell you later on. He doesn’t have to come out and say it at this point, as that wouldn’t be, you know, impartial.
Then Robinson says that Cameron’s statement about allowing in skilled workers needed now (chefs in the shown example) – but he wants to train the next generation of home-grown workers – is a “blunt” message to stop hiring foreigners. Blah, blah, blah. This makes it all the more lame that Robinson didn’t flat out ask the practical question about training and unemployment I mentioned above.
Ultimately, Robinson tells us, immigration is a great net benefit to Britain. The only question now, apparently, is what’s the best plan to make it work more smoothly in future.
No. That’s not the question at all. Robinson asked at the start, why is this such a big deal now? He doesn’t dare touch the real answer.
I know why the BBC can’t touch the real answer. It’s because those of you who do want to shut the door (or at least put much more stringent limits than Cameron wants) want it shut mainly – and are talking about it more loudly than ever before, which is allegedly also what Robinson is meant to be investigating – because of the factors the BBC refused to address. So they just have to present that side of the argument as some phantasm. Everyone on camera is talking about limits, amd figuring out some common sense, not shutting it down, full stop. Yet Robinson frames that side of the argument in its extreme version. He and his producer know full well what they’re doing. This only makes it more galling that he avoided discussion of the BBC’s influence in the whole thing, after recently saying they made a “horrible mistake”.
This is a major public debate like never before because of things like the murder of Lee Rigby and the seemingly endless stream of stories about Muslim grooming gangs, not because a few Slovenians are picking strawberries for less than Wayne and Kaylee get on the dole. The primary reason it’s such a big deal now that even the BBC has to admit it is the reality of things like Tower Hamlets and Anjem Choudary, not Polish glass workers who moonlight as DJs and Bangladeshi students wearing the hijab at some hip university. That shot of the latter from the part where Robinson is discussing the need for students is almost like they’re taunting you. The only reason I’m noticing something subliminal is because I’ve been prepared to notice it. Perhaps they’re so far out of reality and intellectual honesty that they don’t realize what they’ve done.
Sure, Robinson at least briefly lays out the more general concerns along the way about too much pressure on communities and services, jobs, benefit migration, and people feel like they’re losing their own neighborhoods. But the only time Islam comes up is when he casually mentions that the Muslim population has rapidly doubled, as if it’s just another color in the rainbow.
If one thinks that the real reason unlimited immigration is such a hot-button topic right now is limited to jobs, then one will feel that Robinson has successfully opened the way for a more honest debate about the pros and cons of immigration. But it surely can’t be an honest debate if he reduces one side of the argument to some people wanting to “shut the door once again”. He doesn’t present anyone as saying they want the polar opposite of unlimited immigration, so why the reductio ad absurdum for only one side?
“Perhaps it’s time to have that open and frank discussion we’ve really never had.”
If only. And this documentary avoided that frank discussion at every turn. The BBC can now claim to have successfully addressed the issue, but they will only be lying to themselves, and to you. So where was the part where Robinson talked about how the BBC got it wrong? Where was the part where Robinson discussing how and why the BBC made a “horrible mistake” in suppressing concerns about unlimited immigration? The BBC has more influence on the national debate of every issue than any politician or political party could ever hope to achieve in their wildest dreams. Blaming politicians and I guess the media in general ignores the very real influence and deliberate policy the BBC had on the issue over the last decade, and still has now. This documentary is evidence of their desire to influence it.