Not even Jonathan Dimbleby could deny the BBC’s bias in this pro-EU puff piece.
This morning in the Today show [08:50] we had a skit ostensibly about Chinese advances in DNA science. It turned out that this was merely an excuse to guess what, promote the EU and damn Brexit.
“Chemical surgery” has been performed on human embryos to remove disease for the first time, Chinese researchers have told the BBC. Sir Paul Nurse is director of the Francis Crick Institute and Professor Jeremy Farrar is the director of Wellcome Trust, a biomedical research charity.
Both guests were, and admitted it, pro-Remain….at the end.
The discussion started off about the Chinese breakthrough but quickly slipped into how the Chinese were able to make such advances in science….as you might expect we heard this was due to long term investment and commitment from the Chinese government, so lobbying for money, but then we were told there are only three major powers in science…China, the US….and the EU. You were given the impression that without the EU Britain just wouldn’t have a science culture, no research and development and no industry drawing upon that science….despite them telling us Britain was actually the leading scientific partner in the EU….so we’ll be cut off completely will we on Brexit?
It was mentioned a couple of times, you knew what the message was you were supposed to be receiving but they didn’t spell it out absolutely blatantly…no mention of Brexit…until that is Nick Robinson intervened and asked if they were worried Brexit might damage science. From his tone you can tell he knows this is a deliberate attempt to steer the conversation onto Brexit and portray it as a negative. The two scientists of course said it could be very damaging but, bravely, they would soldier on.
No effort made to look at what the government is actually doing to encourage and fund science development and technical industry….
In November’s Autumn Statement, Mr Hammond provided more detail: a new National Productivity Investment Fund will inject £4.7bn extra into R&D between 2017 and 2021. It is the largest increase in R&D investment since the Labour government of the late 1970s. The UK government is no longer the outlier among European nations in keeping its market interventions minimal and its regulations as light touch as possible. The government has also included this investment in its broader industrial strategy, which is being designed to help businesses cope after Britain’s departure from the EU.
And just for interest here’s something from the same article I didn’t know…the US government’s role in developing the Apple iPhone….
The importance of governments in driving a nation’s scientific and technological achievements were outlined most clearly in the 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato of Sussex university. In it, Prof Mazzucato traced the role the US government had played in creating Apple’s iPhone.
Without undermining the creative genius of Steve Jobs or the supply chain mastery of his successor Tim Cook, Prof Mazzucato found that almost every piece of technology in the ubiquitous smartphone had its origin in a government programme, dispelling the myth that the success of Silicon Valley was largely the work of eccentric entrepreneurs tinkering in their garages and savvy investments made by venture capitalists.
Apart from being of general interest it also raises some questions…Apple refused to decrypt messages on a terrorist’s phone and it keeps its hundreds of billions of dollars in profit off shore so that it can avoid paying US domestic taxes. Apart from the fact such a company should pay its taxes per se, it clearly owes a debt to the US government/people and has a moral obligation to pay its share of taxes back in the homeland…where of course it is based.
Apple…..beloved of the media types…..so where do you see anyone attacking Apple for not paying taxes? Apple Boss Tim Cook has said he might repatriate those profits this year [no sign of that so far] but had refused to do so before as tax rates were too high [40%] for him…
Cook had consistently said Apple would not repatriate profits to the US until Washington slashed the US tax rate.
Bit disappointed by the title of this piece. The dimbley twins are my heroes of beeboid royalty. I sometimes force myself to watch or listen to them – definitely if someone like JRM or mr redwood are guest token brexiters.
Their ability to cut off a valid response to a Brexit question by either of these MPs is an art form – they make Humpreys look like a £650k amateur in comparison. Dimbleys do not turn up on the al Beeb wages list .because they are directors of their private company which al Beeb employs for their services. Dividends are less taxable than PAYE.
I welcome people becoming wealthy – but not from the taxpayer – or shout about the need to spend more tax money on this that or whatever.
Dimbleby nearly had a period on last week’s ‘Any Questions’ when Charles Moore stated that the BBC’s constant anti British stance was harming Brexit negotiations.
Bill Gates: Why Britain can still lead world in science and tech after Brexit
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/13/bill-gates-says-britain-has-potential-retain-global-science/
As of 01 January 2017, the following countries are associated to Horizon 2020:
Iceland
Norway
Albania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Montenegro
Serbia
Turkey
Israel
Moldova
Switzerland
Faroe Islands
Ukraine
Tunisia
Georgia
Armenia
Click to access h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf
“the role the US government had played in creating Apple’s iPhone.”
It’s a myth that Apple invented the Smartphone ..my Windows smartphone dates from 2000
The Iphone was derivative of existing smartphones and the only innovation Apple implemented was the finger capacitive touchscreen.
– Apple are not scamming the tax system
The US tax system is weird in the way that you pay Tax on profits in country B, but if you try to repatriate the profits to USA you pay tax again.
– So the incentive is not to repatriate the profits but rather use them to build another foreign factory.
So it actually might be a reason for driving the US to be kings of industry.
Stew
When I studied tax law one of the first things rammed into the student is ” there is no morality in a tax ” so companies are duty bound to their shareholders to minimise tax spend. If governments haven’t got the nouse to put in laws to tax people or companies that is the governments fault .
Jonathan Dimbleby (born July 1944): Serial adulterer (allegedly) who wanted to be a Farmer, who nevertheless followed his father and older brother into journalism, radio and television.
Son of Richard Dimbleby, WWII war correspondent & later presenter of BBC TV current affairs programme Panorama.
Has an elder brother – David Dimbleby, current affairs commentator & presenter of BBC programmes.
Education: Charterhouse School, Surrey. Then studied Farm Management at Royal Agricultural College. Then studied philosophy at University College London.
Highly successful career in TV & radio.
Personal life: Wanted to be a farmer when he left school. Worked on the Royal Farm, Windsor & trained as a professional showjumper. From 1993 until 2004 he ran an organic farm with his first wife.
Marriages:
1968: Married Bel Mooney, two years his junior. They first met while both working on a Student newspaper at University. Four months later they were married. She became a journalist. They have two children, one daughter (journalist) & a son (a television producer – director).
2003: Was having a passionate adulterous affair with a much younger woman, 19 years his junior, opera singer Susan Chilcott, when Susan fell ill with terminal breast cancer. He decided to move out of his family home to live with Susan Chilcott. Susan died three months later in September 2003.
2004: Separated for good from his wife, Bel Mooney.
2006: Divorced his wife, Bel Mooney.
2007: Married a much younger woman Jessica Ray, 31 years his junior. They have two daughters.
Information taken from Wikipedia and an online newspaper report.
Thanks Broad .
Always nice to have a bit of ‘ heritage’ on those over blown journos who control output to accord with their belief and not a fair and objective one .
I’d love to know how much taxpayer cash his family collects from al beeb…
It’s called standing on the shoulders of giants, which is a good lesson for everyone.
You use what people have developed and take it further or reuse it in a different way. Google wasn’t just a couple of guys messing with text searching it was built on knowledge of patents for mathematical searching.
It’s also about not going down the wrong path … 6 Small Math Errors That Caused Huge Disasters …
An Airliner Crashes Due to Square Windows
Fighter Jets Crashed Because of the Angle of the Runway
A Huge Walkway Collapses Due to a (Seemingly) Inconsequential Design Change
Hundreds Die Due to Nightclub Door Hinges
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapses Because It’s Too Solid
The Titanic Sank Because the Center Propeller Wouldn’t Reverse
Paul Nurse has considerable previous.
In a speech in 2014, for example, he said that climate change skeptics should be “crushed and buried“, despite the fact that he is by trade a geneticist, and not a specialist in disciplines related to climate.
He is a fully paid-up member of the traitor class, so no surprise that he is against Brexit.
Paul Nurse lists as one of his Alma Maters as Uni of East Anglia – that hot bed of nerds issuing false data on climate change. Maybe a career change as an Alan Tichmarsh stand in might suit him better and still massage his ego by being on the telly maybe more often
I thought it was the USA, Germany, Japan, China, Australia and then Russia. With brilliant scientific contributions to Astronomy from Israel, Norway and Denmark. But now with Britain and Canada so crippled by Political Correct ideology, those Anti-British BBC Horizon science documentaries are now mostly made in the USA. But then with a sensible Government after Brexit, there would be more money to go directly from the taxpayer through the British Government to the scientific community.
But it would be best if the scientific community saved the taxpayer money, by making profits.
One of the reasons British science became crippled by political correctness was the tenure of the President of the Royal Society and Geneticist Paul Nurse who regarded Atmospheric Physicists and Solar Astronomers as “enemies of science” who should be “crushed and buried“ , presumably like German Jewish scientists in the 1930‘s.
I think that’s made the American-Jewish, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Richard Lindzen, reluctant to return to Britain, after hearing that Liberal Fascist Anti-Semitic statement from Nurse. In better times, I once saw them both talking to each other on the BBC. But obviously Nurse was thinking about Lindzen being a Jew, when he said “crushed and buried“.
Richard,
Having grown up with challenging and stimulating Horizon programmes in the 1970s it’s now a comic shade of itself like so much dumbed down science – they seem more determined to turn scientists into celebrities to do the round of quiz shows and “smug comedy “ .
It all seems a bit bells and whistles now with the likes of excellent communicators like James Burke a distant forgotten history.