Author Archives: Alan

The BBC lives in its own  little self regarding bubble in which its every thought, opinion and world view is reinforced by others from the same mould….the only thing Thomson below misses is the daily infusion of Guardian drivel that each BBC employee ingests with his/her morning latte.

Speaking at the Church and Media Conference at the MediaCityUK complex in Salford, where parts of the BBC are now based, she offered him advice for the job, urging him to make sure the BBC was “confident but not arrogant.”

She said: “It’s quite easy for the BBC to get a bit above itself and forget about everyone else.”’

It’s good of her to finally come clean and admit what everyone already knows,   but as she is skipping off from the behemoth isn’t it just a bit late?

What exactly was she doing all these years to counter such attitudes that are the very lifeblood of the BBC and inform its every attitude towards the ‘populist Plebs’ who might be so impertinent as to have some ideas of their own?

Mark Thompson has left the building. Last week in fact.

Perhaps now we can have a genuine outbreak of free speech at the BBC and an open discussion about religion.

We all probably know Thompson’s views on the broadcasting of critical, or what some might deem offensive, programmes based on religion.

If it’s Christianity essentially anything goes…as long as it can be ‘justified artistically’.

Islam…..well that’s a different ball game…for two reasons…first and probably foremost, the threat of extreme violence being perpetuated upon you, second that to criticise Islam is just another form of racism.

The first is a very real threat…and a perfect reason for not actually bowing down and surrendering your values….give up freedom of speech and what do you have to give up next?

The second, criticism of Islam is akin to racism, is a narrative dreamt up by Muslims to silence their critics. They have seen how opponents of mass immigration were forced into silence by being shouted down as ‘racists’ and have adopted that tactic to further their own interests.

For the BBC to adopt this narrative is a policy of extreme danger that shuts down the normal avenues of debate when controversies arise and leaves only more extreme measures to resolve the issue…ironically resulting in the very violence the BBC thinks its policy of submissive silence prevents.

Below is Thompson being interviewed and it is the famous interview in which he agrees his fear of Islamic violence acts as a natural editor as to what he allows on the screen.

Below that is the transcript of a speech by Christopher Hitchens in which he lays out the reasons why everything Mark Thompson stood for in regard to freedom of speech and Islam is wrong….and ultimately dangerous.

Who should George Entwistle listen to? Thompson or Hitchens? Who speaks truth to power, who speaks the unadulterated truth, who speaks without fear of being silenced by some fanatic….no, who speaks his mind despite the fear of being finally and irrevocably silenced by a knife wielding Islamic fanatic?

Hitchens.

Thompson believed everything was relative and negotiable…..He had no real principles, just words….that ultimately signified nothing.  His legacy….a BBC that is cowed and still as biased, if not more, as when he took over.

Proof?

This is the reality of the BBC in action: 

BBC refuses to screen play about Islamic threat to freedom of speech

Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director-general, says it will not screen the controversial ‘Can We Talk About This?’.   Although the BBC was willing to disregard protests from Christians who considered its decision to broadcast Jerry Springer: The Opera as an affront, Mark Thompson, its outgoing director-general, is more wary of giving airtime to Can We Talk About This?, the National Theatre’s examination of how Islam is curtailing freedom of speech.

Perhaps someone at the BBC has read or will read Hitchens’ speech, his plea, for the defence of freedom of speech, not just in relation to those things that we either know aren’t ‘offensive’ or those that we know  though offensive will not bring retribution upon us but also those difficult subjects that demand courage to stand up and say when something is wrong no matter what.

Perhaps someone at the BBC will take that plea to heart and act upon it.  Somehow I doubt it.

It really is time for the BBC to make its mind up…is it going to defend freedom of speech come what may or is it going to allow itself to be silenced not just by threats of violence but by false considerations of whether or not someone may be offended in their own mind by this or that programme?

Thank God for the Internet! 

The Interview:

(in two parts)

In 2005, the BBC broadcast Jerry Springer: The Opera despite protests from Christian groups (read and comment on our case study). The BBC received more than 60,000 complaints about the show – a record at the time. In an interview with Free Speech Debate, Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, explains the broadcaster’s decision to air the show: “It was a serious piece of artistic work.”

In 2008 a decision was made to abolish blasphemy laws in England and Wales, which for centuries had made it illegal to insult Christianity. Thompson says: ”That’s now left our law. Well, I rejoice in that fact.” But would the BBC have broadcast the programme if it had been about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad? Thompson says it probably would not, and offers this explanation: “It’s not as if Islam is spread evenly across the UK population. It’s almost entirely a religion practiced by people who may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against and where they may well regard an attack on their religion, racism by other means.”

Mark Thompson on the BBC and religion

 Interview by Timothy Garton Ash, director of Free Speech Debate

MT: Jerry Springer I saw without feeling that it was offensive to me because the intention of the piece was so clearly a satire about an American talk show host and his world rather than the religious figures as such. Now I readily accept that that’s a matter of opinion but that was my view.

MT: Post-Satanic Verses, so if this debate in broadcasting or in British cultural life suddenly got energized by the Satanic Verses, that was an absolute watershed I think for us. It was after that but of course it was before 9/11 and the sense and fear, and so forth, in the sense that some of this could lead to direct violence against individuals.

TGA:  It is an ace, isn’t it? And a rather nasty ace if people say, “I feel so strongly about that; if you say it or broadcast it, I will kill you.”

MT: Well clearly it’s a very notable move in the game, I mean without question. “I complain in the strongest possible terms” is d ifferent from “I complain in thestrongest possible terms and I’m loading my AK47 as I write.” This definitely raises the stakes. But I think there’s two or three things going on, so manifestly a threat to murder, which by the way is quite rightly a crime, massively raises the stakes.

MT: It’s not unreasonable to ask what the consequences of broadcasting something, or writing something will be for a particular individual or for a community, especially communities who may reasonably – I think that’s perhaps an important word to use – reasonably take the thing to be an attack, or to be threatening.

MT: I do not think that it’s appropriate that there should be laws inhibiting freedom of speech in the interest of protecting religions.

As I said…all fine words but in reality? 

Hitchens:

The Video of the speech

The (partial) transcript of a speech by Christopher Hitchens from a debate at Hart House, University of Toronto, 15 November 2006. “Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate.” Hitchens argued the affirmative position

Now, I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of it.

I speak as someone who is a very regular target of this, and not just in rhetorical form. I have been the target of many death threats, I know within a short distance of where I am currently living in Washington, I can name two or three people whose names you probably know, people who can’t go anywhere now without a security detail because of the criticisms they’ve made on one monotheism in particular. And this is in the capital city of the United States.
So I know what I’m talking about, and I also have to notice, that the sort of people who ring me up and say they know where my children go to school, and they certainly know what my home number is and where I live, and what they are going to do to them and to my wife, and to me and who I have to take seriously because they already have done it to people I know, are just the people who are going to seek the protection of the hate speech law, if I say what I think about their religion, which I am now going to do.
I’m beginning to resent the confusion that’s being imposed on us now and there was some of it this evening between religious belief, blasphemy, ethnicity, profanity and what one might call multicultural etiquette.
It’s quite common these days for people now to use the expression for example anti-Islamic racism, as if an attack on a religion was an attack on an ethnic group. The word Islamophobia in fact is beginning to acquire the opprobrium that was once reserved for racial prejudice. This is a subtle and very nasty insinuation that needs to be met head on.

Somebody said that the anti-Semitism and Kristallnacht in Germany was the result of ten years of Jew-baiting. Ten years?! You must be joking! It’s the result of 2,000 years of Christianity, based on one verse of one chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which led to a pogrom after every Easter sermon every year for hundreds of years. What are you going to do about that? Where is your piddling sub-section now?! Does it say St. John’s Gospel must be censored?!

We believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can and all children do, as you can tell by their questions, actually see through them. And I think religion should be treated with ridicule, and hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Now let’s not dance around, not all monotheisms are exactly the same at the moment. They’re all based on the same illusion, they’re all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity.

I am talking about militant Islam.
Globally it’s a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states with an enormous fortune, it’s pumping the ideology of Wahhabism and Salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young and its madrassas, training people in violence, making a culture death and suicide and murder. That’s what it does globally, it’s quite strong.
In our society it poses as a cringing minority, who’s faith you might offend, which deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need.
Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn’t it? It says it’s the final revelation. It says that god spoke to one illiterate businessman in the Arabian Peninsula, and the resulting material which was largely plagiarized from the Old and the New Testament, almost all of it actually plagiarised, ineptly from the Old and the New Testament, is to be accepted as a divine revelation and as the final and unalterable one and those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle, infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims.
Well I tell you what, I don’t think Mohammad ever heard those voices. I don’t believe it.

But who is the one under threat? The person who propagates this and says I’d better listen because if I don’t I’m in danger, or me who says No, I think this is so silly you could even publish a cartoon about it?
And up go the placards and up go the yells and the howls and the screams, Behead those who cartoon Islam, this is in London, this is in Toronto and this is in New York, it is right in our midst now…. Behead those, Behead those who cartoon Islam.
Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I’ve just said about the prophet Mohammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You’re giving away what’s most precious in your own society, and you’re giving it away without a fight and you’re even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you while you do this. Make the best use of the time you’ve got left. This is really serious.

Look anywhere you like in the world for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for anti-Semitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that’s on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque.
And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force of the main source of hatred is also the main caller for censorship.

The top BBC story of the day?

Man loses temper and shouts some angry abuse at copper who refuses to open a gate for him.

Man apologises.  Copper accepts apology.  Done and dusted.

Yes?  No.

Can there ever have been a day in which the BBC proves itself more totally irrelevant and highly politicised?

A complete non-story is whipped up into a maelstrom of pseudo political significance by an ever more desperate Labour Party and a Police Federation with a grudge, and all egged on by a gleeful BBC who have spent, what, hundreds of thousands of license payer’s (the Plebs) hard earned pounds today reporting what must be the world’s least earth shattering story.

Nick Robinson must be hanging his head in shame somewhere in embarrassment. 

But seeing as we’re on the subject let’s look at what the BBC considers the crux of the matter…..the ‘fact’ that Mitchell dared to call a police officer a ‘pleb’.

Did he?  Might he not of called him ‘Plod’ or ‘F’ing plod’?  Rather more likely perhaps.

The BBC have the evidence…it tells us the Sun has the police report which states that the word ‘pleb’ did arise in the course of the little contretemps.

The BBC presenter said that this is ‘proof” then that Mitchell did say ‘pleb’.  It’s in the Sun, so that’s OK then.  Except when it’s about Liverpool football fans.

However is the police officer telling porkies…or did he just mishear Mitchell?

Why is the use of  ‘Pleb’ of such interest to the BBC?  Nicky Campbell claimed there was ‘an ugliness about the word’.  It smacks of arrogance, a born to rule attitude, a flashman type character that we all really suspect is, at heart, what every Tory is like,  grinding the face of the poor into their own poverty at every opportunity.

The BBC are not so ready to condemn similar class catcalls when indulged in by Labour…..only recently in PMQs Miliband was accusing Cameron and Co of being ‘rich poshboys’…and apparently it is acceptable to bash the ‘Tory Toffs’…or to claim Cameron is unfit to govern due to his Eton background.

Why is that a rather odd stance?  Which school did  Labour’s economic hero Keynes go to?  Eton.  Which school did the US’s aristocratic but democratic President Roosevelt go to?  The US equivalent of Eton…Groton….and yet he introduced the Left’s  iconic ‘New Deal.’

The BBC had little to say when the police federation accused Cameron of ‘hollow sympathies’ when the two police officers were shot recently.  Is that not far more insulting and out of order?

The BBC have no hesitation in denouncing the ‘plebs’ which they disagree with…they just call them by a different name….. ‘populists’, or Daily Mail readers, or  evangelical Christians or climate change ‘deniers’, or Tories or Republicans, or UKIP voters.

The big difference is that Mitchell spoke in anger, a flash of temper, rude and obnoxious perhaps but in the heat of the moment.  Perhaps forgiveable.

The BBC however speak in cool, considered tones which they have had time to think about and alter if they wish.

The trouble is they don’t wish and are quite prepared to ridicule and deride anyone they consider less educated or intelligent or cultured as what they are.

There is no difference between their own character and the image they portray of the Tory lording it over the common man.  They are every bit the arrogant Flashman they affect to despise.

Photos here.  Click on photo to enlarge it.

A dossier of internal police, social services and intelligence reports  shows agencies in South Yorkshire were aware vulnerable girls were being abused, but a catalogue of alleged crimes were not prosecuted.

The BBC went to town on the police after the inquiry into Hillsborough revealed they had been covering up evidence of their failures….The coverage and mournful examinations went on endlessly.

Today however a story of similar significance in which not only police but politicians worked to cover up a child sex abuse scandal involving ‘Asian’ men and white girls has been kept off the airwaves…..I have heard one small item early in the morning and nothing else all day…and I have been unable to find it on the website…if it’s there it’s well hidden.

Why?

What is the BBC trying to hide?

The Times has published an extensive report on the release of documents that show the extent of the cover up and mal-practise. (Unfortunately behind paywall)

On the BBC what did we get? We were treated to endless in depth debates about Tory whip Andrew Mitchell and his bad tempered rant at some police officers to whom he has apologised.

Not only that but who did they have on as an ‘expert’ witness…the Sunday Times political editor…..and yet the BBC couldn’t find the time to ask about the Rotherham story published in her own ‘stable’ of papers…..but they do ask about the Sun’s story on Mitchell.

Search the BBC now and Rotherham doesn’t seem to exist after 2011. It has vanished as a story.

So what is the BBC trying to hide?

Listening to 5Live after 05:00 this morning the subject of Rotherham and the release of new evidence did work its way onto the airwaves…what did the BBC say the Report said?

‘It was the actions of a very small group from within the Pakistani community’.

Let’s break that down……..So we know the BBC will not use the word Muslim in connection with this story or indicate it was a significant contributor to the choice of victim (Some were Asian…but Hindu or Sikh). Previously ‘Asian’ was the preferred racial moniker, clearly the BBC has decided that is too wide a description and has narrowed the ‘culprits’ own profiles to ‘Pakistani’, but that again would implicate all Pakistanis…so they have narrowed it even further to ‘a small group’.

The BBC has worked hard to isolate the abusers and their crimes from any association with their race, culture or religion.

As they did with the 7/7 bombers….can’t have anything to do with Islam because Islam is a religion of peace.

However…the white girls were a product of their society and in a way are themselves to blame, as are we (Non-Muslim) all for their plight.

But wait what did the report really say:

‘Possibly the most shocking threat is the existence of substantial and organised offender networks that groom and exploit victims on a worrying scale,’ the report states. ‘Practitioners throughout the force state there is a problem with networks of Asian offenders both locally and nationally.

In the meantime if they can’t take Maggie down (again)they’ll make do with Tory Whip Mitchell rather than have to rake up some old case about gangs of Asian men raping and abusing white girls and the police covering it up as they ‘respect’ cultural differences.

Give you a breather and let you have your say….

Frank Words in the comments suggests that maybe the BBC could get a couple of musical jokers like ‘Chas and Dave’ to present the Proms. Why do that when the BBC has its very own in-house musical joker…step forward Mr Paul Mason…a man of great depths and hidden talents.

Is it April Fool’s Day? I don’t suppose it matters to a rebel like Paul Mason who longs for the Revolution and the breaking down of all societies petty rules, structures and iconography. April 1st can be any day he wants it to be.

Tell me I’m wrong when you read the below that Mason isn’t pulling our legs and having a laugh using the BBC to peddle his mockery of Osborne…..

Did a medieval monk predict the double-dip?

[Musicians created] sounds that shocked their audience instead of soothing them.

One of the earliest examples of this is the Kyrie Osbornum, an anonymous manuscript recently found in the archives of an English Cathedral.

What has startled musicologists is the similarity of the Kyrie to a graph of the UK’s quarterly GDP growth figures since before the Lehman Brothers crisis.

Like the UK economy, the melody starts stable, plunges to unheard of depths, recovers, but falls again at the end. And like the Kyrie, the UK growth graph speaks of disruption, depression, failed recovery, uncertainty.

Controversy rages about the Kyrie, with some scholars determined to prove it is a fake, planted perhaps by an economist who is also a musician, and who has simply projected each 0.25% rise or fall in output onto a four-stave graph.

This school of thought has dubbed the piece the Kyrie Darlingianum.

Good that the BBC’s  business editor on Newsnight can push such nonsense and all with a straight face……any clearer sign of anti-Osborne sentiment couldn’t be found.

The photo at the top of this post is a discovery that was found in an old cellar in the KGB headquarters…..apparently it is the blue print for the creation of the BBC, some say.

No wonder Mason was nominated for the Orwell Prize not once, but twice!

Andrew Marr graces our screens again bringing his expertise and insight to the subject of world history.

I shan’t watch it as Marr isn’t actually a historian, and isn’t just reading a script produced by historians…it’s all his own work. The fact that Marr had such left wing politics at university that he was called ‘Red Andy’, and that he is a favoured son of the BBC, makes it unlikely that any historical narrative comes untinged without a pinko blush.

Judging by his last efforts in which Darwin was to blame for Hitler and Britain’s war against the Boer’s led directly to the gas chambers for the Jews of Europe might also colour my view of his views.

However not watching the programme does not preclude me from criticising it….as said I think it is pretty certain what Marr’s take will be……you might rightly complain that I am jumping the gun, Red Andy could have changed….more Randy Andy now than Red.

Evidence points to my presumptuous conclusions not being premature nor still born.

The Telegraph gives us a foretaste of what to expect:

‘In his blockbusting new documentary series, Andrew Marr must condense a couple of hundred thousand years of human history into just eight hours of television. How has he done it?’

“This series is Andrew Marr’s History of the World in the sense that I’ve chosen the stories,” he says, “but I am not pretending that I have a unique take on world history.’  (Oh yes you do..ed)

As you would expect, Marr’s skills are journalistic rather than academic, but because the principal challenge of his new series is to condense and collate a dizzying volume of information into a clear, compelling narrative, he could scarcely be better qualified.’

 Journalistic rather than academic?  Great.  And perhaps he should take some advice from his colleague Justin Webb and not take on too much….’The crush of “facts” actually reduces people’s ability to see the other point of view.’

Marr gets in a spoiler before we can claim, as I do, that perhaps he might colour his story with his own personal views……

As he merrily admits: ‘His is not a personal, proselytizing view of history in the style of Kenneth Clark…….’  (Of course not!…ed)

However, he does admit to having ‘an over-arching thesis.’

Which is:

 “Clearly the human story is one of acceleration. There has been a Moore curve in terms of the number of people alive on the planet, our technological ability, and our ability to understand ourselves. We have had this extraordinary, explosive growth in our ingenuity.

“But, at the same time, we haven’t had anything like the same advance in political understanding, our ability to control our desires, to act fairly for future generations. We have had political advance. We are less violent than we used to be. But our ability to govern ourselves wisely has not matched our technical development.

“Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has this great conceit: in the next two generations, he says, mankind will enter the rapids, the white water. These are the dangers of nuclear war, famine, plague, overpopulation and radical discontinuous climate change.

“Either this is the beginning of the story spreading across the cosmos, or it’s the end of everything.”

So the programme is really about the development of radical politics making a fairer world, controlling our desires (consumerism?), climate change and ‘fairness‘ for a future generation……maybe he has had a script after all…..Did Paul Mason write it whilst in his tent at an Occupy rally?

Andrew Marr’s History of the World starts on Sunday on BBC One at 9.00pm

Let me know how he gets on.

It is an irony that Webb here suggests blame for distorting and polarising politics in the US can be laid at The Web’s door.  The ‘fabrications, the lies, the nonsense’ that comes from the Web are all to blame.  Well yes….he’s right….it’s just that he blames the wrong Web.

Webb returns to his old stomping ground to add his wit and wisdom to Mark Mardell’s who clearly isn’t biased enough for the BBC.

Webb wants to know:

How did US politics become so polarised?

Remarkably for a BBC man who has spent much of his career doing his best to trash President Bush and the Republicans he  admits:

[That] this bile matters. It has real consequences. It leads, in Congress, to deadlock. A nation beset with urgent issues to confront – of which the size of the national debt is probably the most serious – cannot find the cross-party consensus necessary to act.

So media misrepresentation of political figures and their policies results in extremely bad consequences for Democracy? Go Figure! Who’d a Thunk? A political journalist who just worked that out!

Naturally of course such an impasse is always blamed on the Republicans.

However it is not just the Republican politicians to blame….it is that shapeless, writhing monster the Internet and its sinister army of swivel eyed, foam flecked (Right Wing) bloggers that reduce democracy to a hollowed out shell in which only the most sharp elbowed and well heeled succeed in getting their message across.

Does he mean Obama who used the internet to raise a massive amount of money and agitate for votes?  No, that’s the ‘good’ internet.

If only we had an impartial, unbiased provider of news, facts and fair comment to inform, educate and entertain us and that would provide a balance to all the highly political and partisan comment and opinion out ‘There’!!!

Webb goes on:

‘…..newspaper columnist Carl Hiaasen. He made an interesting point about the sheer number of sources of information on offer to the average American in the digital age. The TV of course, and the radio, but also from the net the blogs and the YouTube video and the snippets of half noticed opinion on Twitter and Facebook. A maelstrom of fact and opinion and sheer nonsense. All mixed up.

“The ability to twist and fabricate makes it so much more difficult to sort through what’s true and not true. You need to dig twice as hard.”

In these circumstances, no wonder many people defend themselves with the obvious human psychological defence mechanism – they believe what backs up what they already think and disregard the rest!

The crush of “facts” actually reduces people’s ability to see the other point of view.’

It must be true for Mark Mardell also admits he is overwhelmed by information…..

‘If you are anything like me you will find there is too much to read, too much to absorb.’

That interpretation is the latest ‘thinking’ from the Left….ignorance and psychological problems are the causes of ‘right wing’ thought and ideology….it is deployed with increasing rapidity to combat critics of climate change, immigration, Islam and Europe…..and then the usual add-on….it will all lead to another Auschwitz if we allow such bile onto the internet…..

According to Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian Prime Minister who now leads the Liberals in the European Parliament, “The ultimate consequences of identity thinking are the gas chambers of Auschwitz“.

What Webb is really upset about is that the BBC and its ilk are now held to account (if I might say by the likes of this site) and its stories can be checked…..and are often found wanting.  No wonder the BBC and the Left would like to close down the bloggers.

But wait there’s more….not only are the lies and nonsense of the internet making a mockery of Democracy it is the ‘nastiness’ of real life….as practised by the Republicans….if only we had the cosy, cosseted world that Liberals and Democrats would provide…cradle to grave State funded generosity carpeting the world for us…just like Roosevelt’s New Deal…….

‘Michael Slote, Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami, agrees. But he wonders as well if there is not a deeper issue – an issue that goes to the heart of what it really means to be an American.

He sees that community spirit I identified at the start of this piece as a diminishing quality of American-ness. In fact, he believes it was a recent aberration. The real America is a tougher place, a place where bullying politics is part of the scenery.

He is depressed by what he sees as a nation reverting to type after a period of gentleness – brought on originally by the Depression and the New Deal politics that came after it – which suggested to Americans that in good economic times they could afford to help each other out.

and of course there is always that final kick in the teeth to Webb’s political bete noires….remember Romney being lambasted for not caring for the 47%…….well you know never let a good quote go to waste……‘the hatreds are ideological as well. Some Americans don’t see us as having basic obligations to our fellow citizens.”‘

That’s Romney told…what a nasty fellow he is….ideological hatred for the poor and downtrodden by a callous, bullying politician.

Gosh…Vote Democrat chaps for a nicer world! 

For the BBC any talk about climate change can only be in one direction…the science is fixed (I use that phrase rather than ‘settled’ as it seems more apt)….but so it seems is the politics for the BBC.

The Lib-Dem Ed Davey, Energy Secretary, has been jumping up and down recently sounding off about Tories destroying the planet.

 The BBC seem to have lapped it up…and as the science is fixed they feel no need to get a Tory in to answer Davey’s wild assertions.  The only other ‘witness’ to this climate crime is Vince Cable, who nods sagely in the corner and mumbles something about polar bears dying in their millions and being fed to Mitt Romney’s dogs and ice bergs floating down the Thames.

Well he might not have said that.  But I’m sure the BBC would have written it had they thought they could get away with it.

What was said was :  ‘Vince Cable has warned of a “populist backlash against everything green”.’

Ahhh…that old Richard Black trope….‘it is ignorant, uneducated, self interested selfish ‘Plebs’ (er…to use a phrase in current usage) that don’t know anything about science that are denying the TRUTH, Man!’

The BBC are quite unabashed to report that the Tories are turning into the Tea Party Taliban, a lunatic right wing fringe of planet destroying thugs who would only become concerned about climate change if the island tax havens of their rich capitalist  friends were going to be sunk under ever rising sea levels.

The BBC, never unknowingly biased.

I wasn’t going to post this yet as I was saving it as part of a longer post but it will be a while before that gets done, so here is a prime example not only of BBC anti-climate sceptic propaganda but  a deliberate attempt to ‘smear’ sceptics and dismiss their ‘scepticism’ as some sort of psychological problem which is not based on rational thought or science:

Political Prejudice

Availability: over a year left to listen Duration: 30 minutes First broadcast: Monday 17 September 2012 

If you think that you are rational and unprejudiced, Michael Blastland hopes you will be open minded enough to listen to the evidence which suggests that you are probably not.

We might think our views about global warming, nanotechnology or the value of IQ tests are based on scientific evidence. But the beliefs we hold about these issues often say more about our ability to screen out the evidence we dislike than it does about the scientific facts.

Michael Blastland investigates the causes of our cognitive biases and our remarkable ability to not let the facts get in the way of a deeply held belief.

The programme concentrates on ‘right wing climate sceptics’ almost to the exclusion of anything else….it mentions Left Wing ‘deniers of scientific truths’ but blink and you’ll miss it….presumably just included to provide evidence of at least a minimal attempt at balance.

Good of the BBC to leave it on the iPlayer for at least a year…..can’t have you missing out on the facts.