Interesting to see the sort of priorities that the BBC likes to push…
Why is Tim Cook of Apple the only major gay US CEO? asks BBC reporter Ben Morris.
The answer is that most CEO’s in the US, just like in the UK, manage to do their job without feeling a NEED to discuss their sexual preferences. The fact that Tim Cook decides he has to publicise it is surely more a question for him?
You have to admire the fact that the BBC can keep a straight face when pushing the wild exaggerations from the UN on climate change (formerly known as “global warming before the globe started cooling).
The unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, a UN-backed expert panel says. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in a stark report that most of the world’s electricity can – and must – be produced from low-carbon sources by 2050. If not, the world faces “severe, pervasive and irreversible” damage. The UN said inaction would cost “much more” than taking the necessary action.
As ever, the BBC is keen to push the alarmism and avoid the facts. The IPCC has been so wrong, so often, that it is remarkable how the BBC still pushes this garbage.
Hi folks. I was away last week and my apologies for lack of posts so to get the new week and new month of to a good start, let’s fill up an Open Thread.
You have to laugh…the BBC sponsoring a ‘festival of ideas’ based on free thought.
Today (09:00) on R4 we have ‘Start the Week’...which I’m pretty sure I heard Anne McElvoy just introduce as looking at the evils of consumerism and asking is it a result of the worst economic system known to man?…that’ll be capitalism of course.
Not sure she did say that but it would certainly fit with the BBC anti-consumerism, anti-capitalism narrative….I will check later….update….just checked and she did say that (08:34) but added ‘apart from all the rest’. Still the BBC flinging mud though in the direction of….keep asking those questions and raising doubts….subtle agitprop? Thoughful in the comments says the programme was quite good and couldn’t detect any bias so I will have to bow to someone who has listened to it.
Back to free thinking and the BBC are all over Merkel’s stomping on David Cameron’s supposed intention to cap immigration saying that this would lead to the British exit from the EU…getting the 08:10 spot on Today this morning.
Strange the BBC totally ignored Andrew Neather’s explosive revelations about Labour’s dangerous immigration policies.
Free thinking not usually allowed if it’s about something the BBC disapproves of.
Perhaps UKIP should hold an alternate Festival of Ideas….call it perhaps a ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’.
A tabloidesque heading for this post for sure, and yet based upon the facts, as reported by the Home Office, that drug use is most prevalent amongst mixed-race people and gays.
Not something the BBC will ever be splashing across its front page or headlining in the news bulletins.
However the BBC is happy to put this dodgy headline up in lights, and to use it repeatedly in those news bulletins….
No link between tough penalties and drug use – report
There is “no obvious” link between tough laws and levels of illegal drug use, a government report has found.
Liberal Democrat Home Office minister Norman Baker said the report, comparing the UK with other countries, should end “mindless rhetoric” on drugs policy.
He accused the Conservatives of “suppressing” the findings for months.
Prime Minister David Cameron said the research did not offer “specific conclusions” and said he did not “believe in” decriminalising drugs.
LibDem Norman Baker has been given a great deal of space to slam the Tories and to push his own pet project…the decriminalisation of drug possession.
The problem is that he bases his claims on the findings, as he tells us, of a report commissioned by the LibDems:
Drugs: International Comparators October 2014
And that report really based its findings on the actions of only one country…Portugal:
Much of the most relevant data in this area comes from Portugal
Not sure why the LibDems commissioned such a report when in 2012 another report looked into the same subject over six years and concluded:
Possessing small amount of drugs ‘should not be crime’
The penalties for drug misuse should be relaxed so that possession of small amounts would no longer be a criminal offence, the government has been urged.
The recommendation comes in a report from the UK Drug Policy Commission, which undertook six years of research.
However, it does not call for the decriminalisation or legalisation of most drugs.
“We do not believe that there is sufficient evidence at the moment to support the case for removing criminal penalties for the major production or supply offences of most drugs,” it said.
So after six years of research it didn’t recommend decriminalisation of all drugs….perhaps that’s why the LibDems commissioned yet another report in the hope that it would fit in with their own policies.
Luckily it did. Or did it?
The BBC headlines certainly say it did…and the report did indeed say ‘We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country.’
However they did find countries like Sweden and Japan had strict drug laws and low incidence of drug use…but dismissed this as most likely a cultural antipathy towards drug taking rather than effective judicial policies.
That quote is used to suggest that tough penalties for those in possession of drugs do not lead to reduced drug use and ipso facto we do not therefore need tough penalties, and, they may in fact be counter productive….but that headline could equally be ‘No link between weak drug laws and drug use’
However the whole report cannot provide any conclusive proof that decriminalistion itself lowers drug use.
It in fact admits….
It is not clear that decriminalisation has an impact on levels of drug use.
The only demonstrable benefit comes from the lowered costs in the justice system with fewer people going through the courts and having to go to prison. The police still deal with the drug users, having to direct them to treatment centres and courses instead of charging them, and so police time and costs are not reduced.
In fact far from showing a reduction in drug use decriminalisation showed an increased in drug use….The Czech Republic saw a rise….as did Portugal, though Portugal’s drug use has now leveled off……
The Czech Republic and Portugal have similar approaches to possession, where possession of small amounts of any drug does not lead to criminal proceedings, but while levels of drug use in Portugal appear to be relatively low, reported levels of cannabis use in the Czech Republic are among the highest in Europe. Indicators of levels of drug use in Sweden, which has one of the toughest approaches we saw, point to relatively low levels of use
Portugal decriminalised drug possession in 2001 and saw an increase in drug use for the next six years until 2007 after which usage dropped away and leveled off.
Curiously whilst the chart show a decrease in use another one shows an increase in arrests to a level above that pre-2001:
It is not clear at all that Portugal’s decriminalisation has caused a reduction in drug use….any other benefits such as health come as result of treatment and harm reduction programmes.
There are many variables. You have to ask how many drug users there are in a country, then how many are actually arrested, how many are charged, how many are merely cautioned or sent to treatment. Different countries will use different measures to deal with drug users even when they haven’t decriminalised drug possession and therefore comparison and drawing meaningful conclusions must be almost impossible…..
It would be inappropriate to compare the success of drug policies in different countries based solely on trends which are subject to differences in data collection, and are affected by various cultural, social and political factors besides legislation, policing and sentencing.
It is not clear that decriminalisation has an impact on levels of drug use. Following decriminalisation in Portugal there has not been a lasting increase in adult drug use. Looking across different countries, there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug use.
The report says:
As in Portugal, prevention and treatment are a key element of responses to drugs in the UK.
Which is probably why drug use is dropping in the UK and why Norman Baker is wrong. There is no evidence that decriminalisation reduces drug use, the opposite seems to be true in fact, it is treatment and harm reduction programmes that are the real policies that benefit drug users the most, keeping them healthy and helping them come off drugs.
Sweden and Japan have tough drug laws and have low drug use, possibly as much to do with cultural disapproval than anything else, the Czech Republic introduced similar laws to Portugal and yet saw a steep rise in drug use…as indeed did Portugal.
Portugal only saw a fall in drug use six years after the introduction of decriminalisation after which drug use actually rose for that six years but there is no proven link between decriminalisation and that belated subsequent fall in drug use.
All in all the report comes to no conclusions at all concerning the decriminalisation of drugs and the use of drugs. It did make that statement that ‘Looking across different countries, there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug use’, however to me that seems as if it was as much wishful thinking as based upon the substance of the report….inserted because that is what someone wanted the report to conclude.
Norman Baker, when making his attacks on the Tories, seems to forget that he signed the forward to the report which states that:
The Coalition Government is delivering on the commitments in our 2010 Drugs Strategy, and there are positive signs that our approach is working.
Where there are differences in practice between one country and another, these are often informed by different social and legal contexts. What works in one country may not be appropriate in another. We explore these differences in this report. In many cases, they illustrate the complexity of the challenge, and demonstrate why we cannot simply adopt another country’s approach wholesale. The UK continues to pursue a balanced, evidence-based approach to the misuse of drugs. We promote this approach internationally, and we seek to engage and learn from other countries as the challenges evolve.
Our legislative approach to drugs misuse, based in the Misuse of Drugs Act, provides us with the flexibility to control emerging harmful drugs and target illicit supply. Police and the courts have discretion to take an informed and proportionate approach to an individual caught in possession of controlled drugs.
Based on what we have learned, the UK will continue to advocate a balanced, evidence-based approach to the misuse of drugs internationally.
The BBC seems to have forgotten that aspect of this business and have given Baker free rein to trash the Tories when the BBC should asking him tough questions about his blatant hypocrisy and two-faced treachery saying one thing in private and something different in public…there must be an election coming.
It’s not as if the BBC don’t know the significance of that signature….
Lib Dem Home Office minister Norman Baker, who signed the foreword of the report along with Home Secretary Theresa May…
However they delve no further and don’t raise any awkward questions for Baker.
Regardless of whether possession should be decriminalised the BBC has taken the most eye catching sentence out of the report, one that in fact bares little relation to the rest of the report, and presented it as if it was the unassailable truth….a supposed conclusion that is at odds with the Tories’ drug policy…and indeed Norman Baker’s if we can believe what he signed up to in the foreword.
Certainly that was the impression I got as I listened on the radio…tough laws don’t reduce drug use but decriminalisation does.
The BBC tells us that :
Mr Baker’s claims have been fuelled by his department’s own report, which finds no link between how tough a country is on drugs and how many people use them.
But the report does not say that at all. It certainly tries hard to make that conclusion but admits it cannot in all honesty do so….as the BBC paradoxially also reports:
The report said it would be “inappropriate” to compare the success of drug policies in different countries because data collection and many other factors differ between each one.
But it said “some observations can be made” and it was “not clear” decriminalisation has an impact on levels of drug use.
So to be clear….there is no link between tough laws and a reduction in drug use…and it was also not clear that decriminalisation reduced drug use….but the BBC chose the most dramatic headline, and at least in its bulletins, were happy to imply decriminalisation would reduce drug use.
Once again the BBC reduces a complex subject down to soundbites in its news bulletins which just happen to favour a line that many at the BBC themselves might look kindly upon….an added bonus is that it is a policy disliked by the Tories.
“We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue”
Labour MP Simon Danczuk tells us that Cheap immigrant labour has cost blue-collar Britain dear
He blames the politicians who don’t care about the working class…..and we know from Andrew Neather that the Labour Party recognised the threat to the working class but deliberately concealed the problem so that they could continue with their ideologically driven immigration policy regardless of the cost in jobs and community……the Neather revelations told us that….
Labour’s relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to “open up the UK to mass migration” but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its “core working class vote”.
As a result, the public argument for immigration concentrated instead on the economic benefits and need for more migrants.
Critics said the revelations showed a “conspiracy” within Government to impose mass immigration for “cynical” political reasons.
“Nervous” ministers made no mention of the policy at the time for fear of alienating Labour voters.
“Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.
“But ministers wouldn’t talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn’t necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men’s clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.”
Simon Danczuk says:
There’s been a cosy agreement among the main political parties around immigration and Britain’s labour market for too long. The thinking is that we cannot survive without a record injection of cheap migrant labour.
We all know the benefits of immigration. Our country has been enriched greatly by migrants. But there’s been far too little said about the consequences that uncontrolled immigration has on poorer, working class communities. And when a note of caution is heard, a near evangelical chorus that believes nothing bad ever comes from record immigration always drowns it out.
On both sides of the political spectrum there’s a dogmatic belief that the free movement of cheap migrant labour can only bring bountiful returns. The right is in thrall to big business and slavishly continues to feed its addiction to cheap migrant labour. While the left constantly argue that without record immigration the National Health Service would collapse.
Both arguments are bogus.
The argument of the right is wrong because a cheap, disposable and compliant labour force only brings insecurity, resentment and a breadline existence. It’s the opposite of the confident, proud and secure communities we should be building. While the argument of the left allows a bizarre ‘diversity dogma’ to trump all other reasoning. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be training up more doctors and nurses here for starters. And why are we constantly recruiting nurses from developing countries where they are struggling to provide basic care?
To many in the Metropolitan bubbles this is all quaint talk, as the working classes to them are an invisible people, an all but extinct tribe. But there’s a lot more of them than they realise and they won’t be beaten down and ignored forever. If politicians continue to demonstrate a lack of understanding about their lives and ignore their demands for a fairer deal they will soon make their existence painfully known to all main political parties – at the ballot box.
That ‘cosy agreement’ between the political parties is held together by the silence of the BBC, silent on the downsides of immigration but extremely vocal about the supposed benefits.
The BBC, instead of being a critical outsider questioning policies, has been an insider cheerleading from the front for mass immigration allowing politicians to do as they like without having to answer for their actions.
Metropolitan elitists, well paid and privileged such as Evan Davis with his French boyfriend, whilst applauding the immigrants flooding here to work the bars, restaurants and fancy shops they frequent, are in reality exploiting them ruthlessly for their cheap labour, either keeping the prices down in those establishments or providing cheap builders and other workers to improve their already comfortable existences….and what of the countries that have educated and trained this workforce at their own expense only to find they have taken that expensive training to make the wallets of the rich and famous go even further in La Grande Bretagne.
Orwell told us that:
“We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue”
That robbery does indeed continue….but now we import the wage slaves to maintain our standards of living and think nothing of the British working men and women we put on the scrap heap by doing so.
And the BBC is part of the conspiracy.
Roger Harrabin, a strange conflicted, tormented soul unable to square the ethics of being a professional journalist with his desire to campaign for the climate change lobby.
He’s settled for the green blob.
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.
Harrabin knows many of the Public are sceptical about climate change, especially when they see their bills falsely inflated by green taxes. He goes so far as to suggest Sceptics should be brought in from the cold and given a hearing…here and here he toys with the idea…and yet still manages to slip in a few sneers for the Sceptics and some cheerleading for the likes of the CRU’s Phil Jones.
Even today Harrabin whilst luring in an unsuspecting ‘sceptic’ to the BBC can’t help trying to discredit that ‘sceptic’ whilst supposedly taking him seriously.
The Today programme announced to us that the IPCC was about to reveal its latest thinking on climate and would tell us that we will suffer irreversible climate change if we continue pumping out CO2…..the Today programme tells us that such reports are ‘resisted by a very vocal minority’.
So you get the idea….sceptics are noisy, a minority, a bit of a nuisance and…no mention of just how credible they are….but we are told Sceptics are coming into line with mainstream thinking.
Hmmmm…..isn’t it more true to say that the ‘settled mainstream science’ is being forced by facts on the ground to admit that they have got things serously wrong and it is they who are now coming into line with the sceptics rather than sceptics now ‘agreeing’ with the mainstream?
On the Today show Harrabin spoke to Nic Lewis (15 mins) whom he pointedly called ‘Mr Lewis’ in an attempt to persuade us that he is not a scientist and has little real authority to speak on the subject of climate change.
Harrabin ‘interviews’ Lewis but we don’t actually hear the interview just Harrabin’s interpretation of it…here he tells us the three points that apparently sceptics and the ‘Mainstream’ agree on….
I rather think all those points could easily be contested.
That last point for instance….Harrabin goes on to say that the range of likely temperatures given by Lewis matches the IPCC’s.
No, it doesn’t. Harrabin is spinning, this Today report is all about trying to make out that sceptics have suddenly seen the light and have slowly come to the same conclusions as the IPCC. They haven’t.
Here is Nic Lewis’s own report from March this year in which he says….
‘…a lower observationally-based temperature range of 1.25–3.0°C, with a best estimate of 1.75, for a doubling of CO2. By contrast, the climate models used for projections in AR5 indicate a range of 2-4.5°C, with an average of 3.2°C.’
In other words his range of temperatures is far below that of the IPCC…and the figure for temperature when CO2 levels double is almost half that of the IPCC…1.75 and 3.2 °C respectively….not as Harrabin claimed both agreeing on 1.75.
Again here Lewis says the same:
The CMIP5 [IPCC] models ultimately warm on average about 3.2° C when the concentration of CO2 is doubled. This is approaching twice the level suggested by the best observational studies
Lewis tells us that:
Virtually all the models that the IPCC uses in its report have been running too hot over periods as long as 35 years, long enough to judge them on a climatic timescale
Harrabin himself last year reported the IPCC’s doomladen predictions:
Harrabin admits that that was only a theory…it may be that climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as ‘mainstream scientists’ told us…..it maybe we get no temperature rise above 2.5° C but he says ‘that is very optimistic…and we will probably see much worse.’
Mainstream scientists, he tells us, suggest that 2 – 4.5° C is more likely and ‘there is little reassuring about that’
2-4.5° C? So an average of 3.2 not 1.7 as Harrabin today claimed the IPCC suggests.
Harrabin slips in a cheap couple of sneers telling us that ‘Mr Lewis’ is a Cambridge educated mathematician with a career in financial consulting…though unlike most sceptics he’s published his findings in scientific journals.
Harrabin doesn’t mention that he also studied physics at Cambridge and is a highly skilled statistician as well as having spent many years studying climate change.
Harrabin curiously omits to mention that Lewis is also an expert reviewer for the IPCC….so credible enough for them to utilise his expertise.
We might ask just how many times Harrabin has published his scientific research in science journals…the answer would of course be never….Harrabin being an English graduate.
By his own standards Harrabin should not be reporting on climate change due to his lack of paper credentials….and yet he consistently attacks sceptics for their apparent lack of professional qualifications.
Harrabin demonstrates his own lack of understanding by confusing CO2 emissions with CO2 concentrations….from Nic Lewis himself via Bishop Hill:
As you know, Roger Harrabin’s piece on global warming that included excerpts of his interview with me aired at 7.15 this morning on Radio 4.
Unfortunately, his piece confusingly muddled up both CO2 emissions with CO2 concentrations and equilibrium climate sensitivity with the transient climate response level.
For an English graduate words and meaning must surely be something you could grapple succesfully with…so even in his own field of expertise Harrabin can’t cut it. Not too good with either numbers or words it seems.
Harrabin’s Today report was pure spin that tried to undermine the Sceptic case by saying that they were now agreeing with the IPCC.
However Nic Lewis has never been a ‘sceptic’ in the sense that Harrabin uses. Lewis believes that man-made CO2 is warming the planet but that the planet is not as sensitive as the IPCC makes out…but in fact he goes further than the IPCC….
In AR5 the IPCC felt even more certain (95% certain, compared to 90% inAR4) that humans have caused most (more than 50%) of the warming since1950. The media treated this as the major conclusion of AR5, but it is in fact a relatively trivial finding. The high-quality observationally-based estimates for climate sensitivity discussed in this report assume that virtually all the measured warming (not just since 1950, but over the last 100–150 years) is due to humans.
The far more important question now is how much warming is likely in the future under various scenarios.
Curiously when you read the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s blurb they say almost the exact same thing….they accept global warming is happening but that they disagree with the level of warming and the policies adopted to combat it…..
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is unique. We are an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity which, while open-minded on the contested science of global warming, is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated.
We are in no sense ‘anti-environmental’. There is a wide range of important environmental issues, which call for an equally wide range of policy responses. Our concern is solely with the possible effects of any future global warming and the policy responses that may evoke.
And yet Lord Lawson is banned by the BBC from appearing.
So we have a climate sceptic who isn’t really a sceptic but whose positon is presented by Harrabin as the new dawning of reality in the sceptic’s camp as they merge with mainstream thinking. Harrabin spins the figures to make it appear the IPCC is correct on likely future temperature scenarios. Harrabin sneers at sceptics.
In summary we have Harrabin spinning like mad, misleading listeners and trying to discredit sceptics….what’s new in his approach to reasoned debate on climate change? Nothing.
