Bishop Hill points out why Katz ticks many of the BBC’s boxes when it comes to recruiting talent as demonstrated by this article by Katz demanding action on climate change:

The beauty of 10:10 is that it’s both achievable and meaningful

The world’s response to global warming is a classic case of all mouth and no trousers. This new initiative aims to show that we can all act now – and achieve something significant.

Future generations writing the history of climate change may be struck by an apparent paradox: while millions of educated people – perhaps most of them – alive in the first decade of the 21st century acknowledged the threat posed by the buildup of greenhouse gasses and their part in creating it, only a tiny number did anything about it…..the rise of liberal individualism has made it harder, if anything, to forge collective responses to problems that do not threaten our short-term self-interest…..[and] reflects a profound failure of leadership by the political classes of all the world’s major nations.

However the BBC might not be so pleased, Harrabin in particular, with his love of the dreaded ‘Blogger’ and Social Media which he says has transformed how they gather and report News at the Guardian:

Open Journalism

Ian katz..a rough translation of…..

Journalists traditionally thought of their stories as like a tablet of stone that they released…to educate and inform the Public.…but we realise that is just the start point, merely telling people what we know at a particular time…whilst our readers then help us get to the bottom of the story….a collaborative relationship with readers without which we wouldn’t have broken many of the biggest stories in the Guardian….

So you know what to do…help Newsnight out…they need all they can get with their journalism:

newsnight@bbc.co.uk

or 

By post

Our postal address is: : BBC Newsnight, Zone D, 3rd Floor, BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, UK, W1A 1AA.

A bit liked the Augean Stables the BBC bias is non stop and is a task beyond normal mortals to clean up…having no handy rivers to divert through Broadcasting House to flush it out…all we have is the torrent of good advice and comment from you….go for it!

The old question that was used to demonstrate the futility of a particular line of thought was ‘How many angels could you fit on the head of a pin?’…the new question is ‘How many ‘Mainstream Scientists’ can you get into a Roger Harrabin report on global warming’?

On the Today programme this morning Harrabin was going through the usual smoke and mirrors routine that he has perfected to ensure that whatever the evidence he can claim the world is always warming, the ice melting, seas rising and doom is fast approaching….and he has a whole stable of ‘mainstream scientists’ to prove it.

He actually had Andrew Montford (Bishop Hill) on but only to ‘rub his nose in the consensus’ as Harrabin sailed merrily on ‘proving’ his own narrative.

Harrabin tells us that the scientific establishment agrees that global warming appears to have stalled….

However…Professor Sir John Houghton from the IPCC….says oh no it hasn’t…the climate is still warming…er…depending when you start to measure the change.

Ah yes….if you were gaining weight for 20 years and then start to drop for one year…the average trend says you are still gaining weight.

Harrabin says ‘that CO2 warms the climate is not in doubt.’…despite records showing that temperature rises came before CO2 rise…as the CRU’s Phil Jones admitted.

He then asks….‘If CO2 warms the planet..and we have a record 400 ppm now…why has the planet not warmed for over a decade?’

Harrabin has the answer or rather Sir Brian Hoskins has it…the answer lies in the sea…this is where the imbalance in heat energy has gone…most of it into the ocean….you can have a period of a decade or so where the atmosphere doesn’t warm up but ocean stores the heat.

Harrabin postulates that it is hard to see where else the projected warmth has gone…well yes..it must be hard to see…or else all those high powered computer models would have predicted it…surely?  Just where did it all go wrong Roger?

Have the oceans warmed in the last decade…or rather 16 years?……WUWT disputes that….

As usual, global warming enthusiasts in the press overlook some basic issues—like the sea surface temperatures for the Indian and Pacific Oceans from pole to pole haven’t warmed in 19+ years, and the Atlantic data show little warming for more than a decade. Further, the tropical Indian and Pacific sea surface temperatures haven’t warmed since 1986. It’s therefore difficult to make claims like “more evidence of a rapidly warming planet”….In other words, the sea surface temperature data for about 70% of the surface of the global oceans provide no indication of warming for almost 2 decades.

You would also have to ask why the oceans have only suddenly been so receptive to heat…why did the oceans not absorb heat at a similar rate as proposed by Harrabin in the 1990’s?

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’…and temperature is the 27^th year above average and sea ice is melting rapidly, as well as weather disruption around the globe…Harrabin spices it all up with ridiculous soundbites…someone had to wear bobbly hat recently….oh no!

He tells us that it is not single events that matter but all the extremes of weather stacked together…that the new ‘low level warming’ can be more dangerous than high level…it’s the cumulative effect you see.

The cumulative effect of decades worth of climate science going up in smoke he should say.

This is the best guess that we’ve got….he tells us…in other words it’s all guess work…they don’t have a clue…they are running around like headless chickens making it up as they go.

But no matter…….We are conducting a very dangerous experiment with the planet if we do not take measures to rein in CO2 levels…our children and grandchildren are at risk.

Isn’t that a bit like ‘Godwin’s Law’? A child’s tears are worth a thousand words in News terms…..To save the life of a child is worth paying any cost….act now!!!

As usual Harrabin is spinning like mad to dismiss any of the Sceptics claims and build up a case for the climate change fanatics.

Perhaps he is being fed all this ocean warming guff by his ex-colleague, now ocean researcher, Richard Black.

This graph from the US Environmental Protection Agency show that temperatures have risen for over 100 years…and that since 1998 they have stalled….and that previous ‘data’ (the greyed area of the graph) is not really reliable….

This has raised many a comment on the open thread already so I’ll lob my two penn’th  in.

You have to laugh sometimes.

The BBC fulminated against the appointment of a Fascist as manager of Sunderland football club but have no problems recruiting a left winger who actively campaigned against Bush in the US elections to head up Newsnight.

Fascism has little to do with running a football club…but surely someone with such obviously strong political convictions as Katz shouldn’t be head honcho at Newsnight directing its editorial direction….in league with fellow Guardianista Allegra Stratton and old Trot  Paul Mason….a bit of an Eastern Front?

On top of that Katz has never worked in television…but…he says:  “I’m incredibly excited to be joining a programme I’ve watched and loved all my adult life.”

Not sure I trust this lady’s judgement on Katz going by her description of the beleagured Newsnight:

Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s acting director of news, said: “I’m delighted to be welcoming Ian to the BBC. His journalistic pedigree speaks for itself. 

“He will bring to one of Britain’s most influential news and current affairs programmes all the judgment, news sense and innovation we need.”

Paxman must be reassured.

Meanwhile Newsnight deputy ed. Jamie Angus heads off to take over the reins at the Today programme as editor….at least he has actually worked on Today before…for 8 years…and has plenty of editorial experience…..though he too might have misjudged the pedigree of the programme he is going to lead:

“At the heart of Radio 4 and of BBC News, Today is central to what the BBC offers its audiences.”

Kind of worrying when you think how influential these two programmes are supposed to be:

‘Newsnight is where the Establishment is supposed to reflect after a hard day, but it’s the Today programme (I know, plus the newspapers) that tells them what to think about at the start of the news cycle.’

If Margaret Hodge’s grasp of Stemcor’s company accounts is any indication of her grasp of Amazon’s or Starbuck’s then I don’t think they have anything to worry about.

In this Sky News video  (via Guido) she is left floundering when asked for details of Stemcor’s profits and taxes paid upon those profits..in the UK.

Note the completely different treatment by the BBC as it runs for cover as Hodges gripes the accusations ‘were “completely wrong”, adding that they were “scurrilous and defamatory’:

Margaret Hodge taking legal action on Stemcor tax claims

As the BBC’s Jo Coburn says…’Alright I hear that loud and clear!’…and Goodnight!

Stemcor denies that its use of Transfer Pricing is a device to avoid tax…though it says that ….‘Other international companies may possibly use transfer pricing to avoid or evade tax in high tax jurisdictions. Any suggestion that Stemcor has followed such practice is libellous.’

So Stemcor pays all the tax it legally has to.  That’s for sure. No doubt.

Stemcor is a company that seems to be getting more efficient, making more profit per ton traded than before the recession began….and yet in 2012 it says it lost money.

 Here are some figures from 2005  comparing performance with 2011:

In 2005 it had a turnover of £180m per 1m tons traded, and made £1m pre-tax profit for every £145m of turnover.

In 2011 it had a turnover of  £353m per 1m tons traded, and made £1m pre-tax profits for every £100m of turnover.

In other words by 2011 it had almost doubled its 2005  turnover  on a similar amount of trade and multiplied its pre-tax profit by almost 1.5 times….and paid only £163,000 in tax to the UK in 2011 on £2.1 bn of revenue generated in the UK…with £4bn generated in the rest of the world.

…and yet it lost money in the UK…despite the UK generating 1/3rd of its revenue……

The Telegraph ,  (in a report it had to withdraw)  said that Stemcor’s accounts showed that:

Stemcor’s tax bill to the exchequer equates to just 0.01pc of the revenues it booked through its UK-based business. In accounts filed with Companies House, Stemcor revealed that despite generating about one third of its revenues in Britain, its UK tax contribution made up only 2.7pc of the tax the company paid globally.  (On my calculations…Stemcor made £65m in profits in 2011…so if 2.7% is £163,000[UK tax contribution] then 100% is £6m paid in total……which is a rate of 10.8% tax on income of £65m?  Stemcor says it paid tax rates of around 40%….I guess I must be missing something somewhere)

Those are facts that aren’t disputed…what the Telegraph did question was whether Stemcor used any measures to lower its tax bill….Stemcor saying, despite the UK generating 1/3rd of its revenues:

‘The tough economic environment in the UK squeezed margins during 2011, resulting in a loss of £2.9m on UK operations, which reduced Stemcor’s UK tax payments compared to prior years.’

Stemcor is making vastly more money per trade…and yet is losing money.  Times are hard.

 All those resources, all those journalists, all those editorial guidelines…

The BBC’s Newsnight programme once again wraps itself in glory as the Sun tells us:

BBC’s Help for Heroes slur

Grovelling apology for flawed report on charity

THE BBC will today broadcast a humiliating network-wide apology for smearing Help for Heroes on Newsnight.

An “investigation” by the flagship show last August accused the troops charity of misspending its cash. It cost Help for Heroes more than £100,000 in withdrawn donations, The Sun can reveal.

After a major internal probe, chiefs accept the scandal-hit programme’s coverage was “misleading and unfair”. They agreed the 216-word “sorry” will go out on all media that aired the report — on Radio 1 at 5pm, on Radio 2 at 5.45pm, on Newsnight on BBC2 at 11.20pm — and online.

The truth about Bulgarian and Romanian immigration into this country must lie somewhere inbetween the reassuring utterances adopted by the BBC:

Polls: No indication of huge Romanian-Bulgarian influx

And those of the Sun:

Next stop UK: Romanians & Bulgarians are queueing up for handout Britain

 The BBC however is actively working to change your opinion about immigration and the numbers coming here…going so far as to make completely ill-matched comparisons to bolster their dodgy position:

British entrepreneurs invest in Bulgaria 

The suggestion that Bulgarians and Romanians will soon arrive in the UK in their thousands may have fuelled UKIP’s surge in the polls, provided column inches in the newspapers, and given news programmes something to chew on – but it has also concealed the fact that there is quite a bit of migration in the other direction.

….Amid the cacophony of voices one distinctly British accent sticks out.

It belongs to Matt Pigden, the founder of a snowboarding and ski company that has cornered the market here.

Thanks to him, and others like him, Borovets is awash with British skiers in the winter season.

Influx of entrepreneurs

“Borovets has seen massive investment. New lifts, new hotels,” he says.

Mr Pigden says he and his company, Snow and Wake Bulgaria, are now making a difference to the local economy.

“We’re employing people. We’re building a project at the moment. All the materials are sourced locally. Yes, the money is definitely going back in.”

So Brits are bringing in skills and massive investment…..whilst most Bulgarians coming to the UK are bringing what?

Where are the figures for all the unemployed Brits in Bulgaria claiming benefits, housing, free schools and health services?

Disingenuous to think this compares in the slightest to the type of immigration that goes the other way…here to the UK.

Going to be some head scratching at the BBC where they just know that Whites are the most racist, sorry, the only racist people in the world……

Maybe this remark from a Bulgarian can help them out:

“You British bring civilisation wherever you go. This is my impression at least,”

A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries

Here’s what the data show:

• Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its adjacency to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also scored high.

Clearly the data is wrong as Polly’s Dad, Arnold, had his own views:

According to Arnold J. Toynbee: “The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.”

How long before the BBC, and Colditz (under whatever name you care to choose…lots to choose from..at least 30 so far  that you have used!), are trying to explain those figures away…..is it a result of colonialism?…is it any wonder they all hate foreigners!  No colonialism in South America of course.

So far nothing yet…but there is this: 

World’s most distinct mammals and amphibians mapped

I await with interest.

The BBC is having a spate of programmes that deal with immigration and culture (Andrew Green from Migration Watch even getting decent treatment on the Today programme)…I wonder if that has anything to do with the ongoing review of its coverage of such issues…and will they suddenly be on the back burner again  once the review is published?

Anyway, the floor is yours…..a new open thread for any BBC subject you think fit to mention…..

 Another gang of abusers….all of a certain culture…but not a particular race….race only being an issue with regard to the way the Police may have reacted…not prosecuting because of the possible appearance of being racist.

Islam is the common factor between the offenders…that’s not to  say Islam makes them abusers…what it may suggest is that they came to believe that as Non-Muslims are dehumanised, deemed worthless, they can freely abuse them without any shame or guilt.

If you sit back and say ‘I am uncomfortable with being associated with any debate about Islam’ that is a betrayal of both the abused girls and Muslims themselves who become tarred with the label ‘abusers’ because the debate is left in the hands of the Far Right who will define what a Muslim is.

If someone had said the same about slavery…‘I’m uncomfortable being associated with any debate on the white community’s part in slavery’..because you don’t want to label every white person a ‘slaver’, then slavery would still exist…the same for segregation in America…or Apartheid.

That is the very attitude in the BBC that this site seeks to challenge…that of not tackling an issue because of its perceived sensitivity or because it favours a certain ideology, whether religious or political, and looks to downplay any criticism of it….whilst happily attacking opposing views or thinking…such as Christianity.

If these had been gangs of Christian men targeting only Muslim girls there would be a huge outcry and questions raised about Christian values and teachings….just as there was in fact about the BBC ‘culture’ that allowed Savile and Co to abuse young people for years.

You have to engage in the debate in order to prevent it spiralling into polemic and becoming highly polarised and sectarian…if you leave it to the extremists on either side you get extremism.:

As long ago as 2001, Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, was making claims about Asian grooming gangs…..He was making his allegations to stir up ethnic strife. Right-thinking people, aware of the BNP’s record as liars, presumed that these stories were just racist demagoguery. No doubt Griffin feels vindicated today: for telling the truth before anyone else. And yet it was thanks in part to his thuggish intervention that society felt able to ignore the scandal. And thus the abuse continued.

Even the BBC is starting to address certain highly sensitive subjects that previously it had ignored or denied were an issue.

Today Nicky Campbell presided over an extremely open and wide ranging debate on the recent spate of child abuse cases….specifically looking at race, religion and culture.

This is what Julie Siddiqui, from the Islamic Society of Britain, had to say:

‘If we are seeing patterns emerging we can’t stay quiet….people not speaking out is extremely dangerous.’

Other Muslims admitted that one problem was that in the Mosques and sermons whilst there were exhortations to treat Muslim women with respect there was no similar demand to do the same for Non-Muslims…which led to them being ‘de-humanised’ in the eyes of some Muslims.

As I said Islam doesn’t turn them into abusers, that must be in their nature already, but it may give them an excuse to treat Non-Muslims in a manner they wouldn’t treat Muslim girls….and that is an issue that should be looked at…as part of a wider examination of why and how these abuses happen.

Mark Easton, of all people, being very pro immigration and culturally sensitive, has also dipped his toe into the debate about race and Islam in regard to the ‘Asian’ gangs abusing non-Muslim, mostly white girls.

Uncomfortable truths of child exploitation in Britain

People will look for someone to blame….There are none so blind as those that will not see…..

Perhaps there is an unconscious and misguided calculation that to act risks damage to something of broader value than the well-being of a single child – public confidence, institutional reputation or community relations.

One wonders if that last concern has a bearing on why we have seen a series of high-profile court cases in which men from predominantly South Asian backgrounds have been convicted of sexually exploiting young girls.

Although he studiously avoids the word Islam himself, he reports that the Far Right are blaming Muslims….Easton himself oddly seems to point the finger at the race of the abusers….‘black and particularly Asian perpetrators remain over-represented.’…but at the end of the report there is a sudden cut to quotes from Muslim community leaders…which makes the association without Easton himself expressly making the link:’

In Oxford, an imam who knew some of the grooming gang as they were growing up, has talked of the responsibilities of the wider community. “I can say it’s a problem of the whole Muslim community and we have to rectify it,” said Sheikh Hojjat Ramzy.

“I say to them, my brothers, my sisters, wake up. You are in England. You are British. You must integrate. You must look after the children. There is an issue and we cannot put it under the carpet. Enough is enough.”‘

The BBC should be praised for raising these issues…as even the ‘Press’ seem reluctant to do any more than label the gangs ‘Asian’…which in itself is wrong….as Race has little to do with  the selection of victims….many actually being ‘Asian’…just not Muslim.

However will the BBC’s new found bravery translate into a wider examination of Islam as a whole…looking at the history and creation of the Koran, the genuine ‘life’ of Muhammed, the actual  teachings and meaning of Islam and the cultural impact that it is having on secular/Christian European countries, and will have in the future on Britain?

I doubt that….I think the BBC will slip back into its bunker and avoid the issue.

But it is definitely a debate that should be held…just as the one on mass immigration that the BBC sidelined but the effects of which were serious and damaging to Britain…forced on it by a small group of politicians and ‘liberals’ imposing their view of what life should be upon everyone regardless of consequences.

That is surely what the BBC is meant to defend us against…the abuse of power and misinformation by challenging those in power to justify their actions and by informing and educating the Public…..but it betrayed those values and it betrayed by doing so, the people of this country…previous immigrants included, who came here because of the values and life that ‘Britain’ offered…only to find that Britain was turning into the very thing they had tried to escape from.