UK industrial output rose at it fastest rate for 25 years.

But you would hardly notice if you rely on the BBC….the story being relegated to an also ran position on the UK news page and not the Frontpage.

Who would doubt that if the figures had shown the biggest drop in 25 years it would have been headline news?

After the initial statement that output rose then came a long list of warnings and doubts about  future prospects.

It looks like someone at the BBC doesn’t want you to think that things may not be quite as bad as they are being painted by the BBC and Labour.

You might have thought that the possibility of coming out of recession would be big news:

UK’s double-dip recession over, economic surveys hint

A series of economic surveys has provided fresh evidence that the recovery is gathering momentum and the double-dip recession is finally over.

Apparently not.

Linda Pressly on the BBC’s ‘Crossing Continents’  tackles the problem of fanatical religion in the Middle East…no not Hamas or Hezbollah, but that presented by Orthodox Jews in Israel.

How good of the BBC to deign to report from inside Israel….however the choice of subject, whilst legitimate in many senses, is one that presents an unpleasant face of Israeli society…..wonder why the BBC chose this rather than the effects of thousands of Palestinian missiles raining down on Israel on its children?…or indeed the Fogels….or the massive success of Israeli high tech industry and the benefits it has brought to the world?

Was it chosen deliberately to highlight the bad side of Israel and to say look, you have fanatical Muslims…but also fanatical Jews?  Maybe the fanatical Muslims aren’t so bad.

The tone of the piece was one of ‘shocked horror and outrage’….when a ‘secular’ Israeli attempts to drive away Orthodox Jews who are moving in to his area he, amongst worst things, puts up copies of famous artworks showing undressed women…obviously to offend the religious.

Pressly is outraged judging by her reaction claiming that they are ‘extremely provocative’…..they might be but when do you hear a BBC reporter ever say that about Hamas rockets in that tone of voice…or ever report on Palestinian Authority TV which teaches children to hate and want to kill Jews?

One other thing…Pressly says the orthodox Jews are suffering poverty because they cannot get jobs….but as I understand it not only are they excused military service but because of their special religious status they do not have to work at all in order that they can study their religion and can claim welfare…..could be wrong about that but if not it seems just another opportunity taken to talk down Israel.

Also listen to what the Orthodox Jews say about their growing population (having possibly 7 or 8 children in a family)….‘We’re taking over’…you wouldn’t get the BBC broadcasting that from Muslims in the UK…in fact the BBC went out of their way to try and downplay any concerns about Muslim demographics by commissioning a special video for YouTube  about the subject.

Clearly Muslims are the BBC’s special ‘project’.

Yesterday on Midweek  Libby Purves brought us ‘Chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi were born in Jerusalem in the same year – Sami on the Arab east side and Yotam in the Jewish west.’…a Palestinian and a Jewish chef working together.

No doubt the BBC thought this was a suitable message for the warring factions….you can talk it through and live and work together in harmony.

All was going to plan until reality broke in upon the BBC’s utopian dream and the Palestinian chef opened his mouth…..

Talking about Houmous (28 mins in) and who claims it as part of their national food he said that the Jews ‘when they started arriving in the Middle East and Palestine claimed it as theirs…..Israelis being Israelis and wanting to take things over …as Israelis do.’

I’m pretty sure Jews have always been in the Middle East and ‘Palestine’….and as for taking things over how about Temple Rock where the Muslims have been squatting for centuries?

From such an attitude it would seem unlikely, even with BBC sponsored ‘diplomacy’ through the medium of TV cooking programmes,  that an enduring peace will be effected.

If they fall out over Houmous what hope can there be?

 (and Billy Bragg gives a good interview about Woodie Guthrie…shock horror!)

Here I start you off with a passage from a Telegraph article….One point of which is the renewed popularity of Gordon Brown…..no surprise really when the BBC has done all it can to smother any and all criticism of him….you will rarely hear his name on the BBC despite him being both Chancellor and PM and leading us into the most disastrous financial crisis possibly in history. Also included are further parts of the article to illustrate the BBC’s economic narrative is lacking in realism, aligned as it is with Balls’….

‘Both David Cameron and George Osborne found themselves roundly booed at the Paralympics this week. No surprise there, you might think, given that the Government is failing to deliver the economic recovery it promised. And austerity, even in the limited dose so far applied, is never going to be popular.

Rather more startling was that Gordon Brown, the former prime minister and chancellor, was cheered. Memories, it seems, are very short. That little more than two years after losing power, the man who presided over the worst financial road crash of all time could find himself publicly celebrated is quite a turnaround.

Even Brown, who has long believed that the judgment of posterity will be kinder to him than the voters were at the last election, could not have expected such a swift rehabilitation.

Something of a reality check is called for. The Coalition may be failing on the economy, but the idea that the Left offers credible alternatives is dangerous poppycock.

To understand what’s really happening here, it is necessary to revisit the underlying causes of the crisis. The consensus is still very much that the main mischief was years of Thatcherite deregulation, which allowed bankers to run riot. In this Brownite narrative, there was nothing much wrong with the pre-crisis economy which sorting the banking system wouldn’t fix. Get the money moving again with repeated rounds of monetary and fiscal stimulus, and demand would quickly return to the way it was. Confronted with the uncomfortable truth that bankrupting governments with deficit spending has failed to work as predicted, proponents argue either that there was simply not enough of such spending, or that it has been withdrawn prematurely.

Regrettably, there is a much more painful and altogether more plausible way of looking at the crisis and its causes than this “get out of jail free” approach. Confronted by a steady loss of competitiveness, governments in many advanced economies started spending more than they could afford to support growth, and they actively encouraged households with low interest rates, credit expansion and misguided social policy objectives to do the same.

Unsurprisingly, this growth has proved unsustainable. To believe that the crisis can be corrected simply by doing more of what got countries into such a mess in the first place is to descend into fantasy.’

And here is an additional piece about Japan…The BBC’s ‘Wake Up to Money’ team always use Japan as an example that ‘austerity’ doesn’t work claiming government spending is the only way out of recession….however the truth is Japan ‘stimulated’…’spent’…. enormously and its economy stagnated for decades…they have decided to change that policy:

At last, Japan may be about to abandon its disastrous Keynesian consensus

‘What is newsworthy is that, having tried and failed with every other option, the Japanese government may be taking a remarkably novel approach. It appears as though they are going to try to spend close to what they receive in taxation. The Keynesian consensus is coming to an end in Japan, although not before it has wrought enormous damage to one of the world’s great economies.’

So there we go….the BBC supports the Labour approach to economics and is helping to rehabilitate Gordon Brown’s reputation and hence Labour’s electoral chances.

The BBC’s approach is, as mentioned above, to refuse to mention what Gordon Brown’s government did for Britain and conversely mention every little problem that the Coalition has…and blame it on their policies.

But hang on even Ed Miliband doesn’t believe in Brownian economics anymore:

‘If we came along and said ‘look, we can just carry on like the last Labour government did’ – I mean it’s politically crackers to do that, because we wouldn’t win the election and we wouldn’t deserve to win the election. We can’t say: ‘Look, we just want to sort of carry on where we left off, you know, the electorate was wrong, we were right, thanks very much…” It’s not realistic…..Centre-left governments of the future will have to make work pay better by doing more to make work itself pay.  That is how we are going to build growth based not just on credit, but on real demand.’

Alastair Sooke in his BBC programme on Roman art  tells us that…..‘In Ancient Rome Caesar, Augustus, played a clever and cynical game, secretly killing off the Republic whilst at the same time paving the way for his vision of the Roman Empire…and Art played a leading role in this deception.’

All very evocative of how the BBC operates….it providing the televisual ‘Art’, the programmes into which it slips its political messages, that allows it to deceive the Public and pave the way for Labour’s return and thence a Union with Europe….Hurrah!!!

A prime example of this ‘revolution through Art’ is the latest Panorama programme suggesting that cuts to emergency service’s budgets will lead to deaths.

It was a thoroughly confused programme, unsure if it was examining government cuts or emergency service inefficiencies. At the end you had little real idea of what the issues really were but were left with the general impression that government cuts were definitely a bad thing…as no doubt intended….perhaps ‘bullshit baffles brains’ serves as well at the BBC as in the Army.

The programme was half an hour long into which it tried to pack analysis of the police, fire and ambulance services, each one in themselves deserving probably an hour at least to do them justice….Panorama has effectively been neutered and sidelined but is still brought out to use its once impressive credibility as an investigative programme of mark to provide authority to the BBC’s anti-government rhetoric.

It of course relied on the usual trick of bringing in ‘personal stories’ to illustrate everything that’s wrong. One, of a granny who fell over, was a complete waste of time as it turned out the ambulance service reacted properly in accordance with guidelines. Others were hearsay and apocryphal tales from disgruntled police or senior fire brigade officers defending their budgets.

There was no context for the cuts, of whether the services were inefficient and could improve or why the cuts were necessary….it was just taken as read that cuts were not really necessary and would produce a dangerous drop in emergency response times to incidents….in essence the programme was ‘feeding the beast’….that being the insatiable and ongoing BBC appetite for undermining the government with stories of doom and gloom and disaster.

What is completely disingenuous is the lack of reference to past performance and cuts in Services under Labour.

In 2009 the very same level of cuts that the government are implementing were being suggested by senior police officers…whilst at the same time being opposed by other uncooperative officers as now:

Police budgets to be cut by 20 per cent, says senior officer

Sir Hugh Orde proposes widespread mergers of the country’s police forces / Amalgamation is ‘best way to make use of shrinking Home Office budgets’.

Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says amalgamating some of Britain’s 43 forces is the best way to make use of Home Office budgets, which he believes are set to shrink by up to 20 per cent due to the recession.

His comments revive an idea which dates back to 2005, when the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke suggested merging neighbouring forces to create 17 larger police regions.

Sir Hugh says the plan should now be reconsidered given the current economic climate. But due to the unpopularity of the proposals four years ago, and the lack of police co-operation, he says that politicians are fearful of backing a similar plan. “I have raised [amalgamations] with every political party, and I do not detect any political will to deliver this in the foreseeable future. The sense I get is that it is not an urgent priority,” he said.

The primary reason for suggesting mergers is the weak economy.

Forces are expecting budgets to be cut, but are aware that the public will demand that frontline officer numbers do not drop – the areas in which savings are possible are back-office functions. Many also believe that smaller forces are simply not equipped to deal with the threat of large-scale organised crime.

Sir Hugh said: “This country is in a recession. There is no more money for the public sector and I can confidently predict cuts in police budgets of 10 to 20 per cent over the next few years. We really have to focus on what is important – what keeps people safe, what works and what does not.

“[Chief officers] are looking at driving out efficiencies from the back office. They are looking at amalgamating tasks across different police forces – so major inquiry teams will cover more than one county – human resources functions, finance functions, anything we can do to protect the front line will be done.”

There are plenty of reports about police service cuts under Labour should the BBC care to look and provide more context.

The Daily Mail told us that under Labour ‘A senior judge has warned of a rise in vigilante crimes caused by slow police response times.   Richard Bray said citizens were increasingly taking matters into their own hands because of lack of confidence in the forces of law and order.
A police pledge, to which all 43 forces in the country have signed up, promises that in urban areas police will arrive within 15 minutes and in rural areas in 20 minutes.

But Judge Bray’s scathing comments make clear he feels they are falling short of those commitments.

Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said ‘This will continue so long as the police are forced to respond to the priorities of politicians rather than ordinary people. They’ll spend their time trying to meet arbitrary and distorting targets rather than trying to catch serious criminals.’

Even investing large quantities of money can lead to loss of performance if badly implemented (As was normal under labour):

‘Police response performance notably declined’ in Barnet after the opening of a £33 million hi-tech call centre in Hendon.

A report delivered by the Metropolitan Police’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick to Barnet police in January obtained by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the number of crime scenes reached in 12 minutes dropped by eight per cent.

In December 2004, 69 per cent of calls were dealt with in 12 minutes, and by June this figure had slumped to 55 per cent. By September it had fallen to a low of 47 per cent.

“Performance in this area response times has notably declined since the Basic Operational Command Unit’s Barnet call centre migration to MetCall in July 2005,”‘

Oh and there’s this:

‘GREATER Manchester Police is to lose 300 officers after overspending by £5m.

The force will also order a freeze on civilian recruitment and crack down on overtime, training and travel as it seeks to balance the books. 

Accountants have forecast the force will overreach its £560m annual budget by around £5m when the financial year ends in March. The planned cuts will leave GMP with about 7,900 officers – falling further behind the target of 11,000 set by ex-Chief Constable Mike Todd in 2004.’

and the BBC must remember this:

‘The chief constable of North Wales Police says officers could be taken off the beat because of the latest budget settlement from the UK Government.   Richard Brunstrom said that in real terms there has been a cut in his force’s budget of £3m.

Meanwhile, South Wales Police said they were “disappointed” at the budget set for 2007-8. Dyfed-Powys said the future was “distinctly bleak”.

Mr Brunstrom said”Not only are we losing backroom staff, we are having to take officers off the beat in order to fill in the gaps.”

A Home Office spokesman said government and central spending on the police had increased by 56% – almost £4bn – between 2000/01 and 2007/08.  He said: “The 2007/08 funding settlement provided an increase of a minimum 3.6% for every police authority in England & Wales.  “This increase of 3.6% is above inflation (around 2.7%) and is higher than last year’s settlement.”

As to the Fire Service, budgets are only being cut by 3% from central government and response times can go up because of a variety of reasons…..not just ‘cuts’……

Review of Fire and Rescue Service response times

Fire Research Series 1/2009

Response times to Primary Fires were examined for the period 1996 to 2006. It was found that response times to each type of Primary Fire in England increased from 1999, primarily due to increased traffic levels.

Using response time fatality rate relationships, it was predicted that the increased response times may contribute to about 13 additional fatalities in dwelling and Other Buildings fires each year, possibly 65 additional deaths in Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs) and an £85m increase in Other Buildings fire damage.

Traffic levels increased by about 14 per cent in the study period for England, while the number of pumping appliances fell by about 3 per cent.

In order to reduce average response times back to 1996 levels, a ‘broad brush’ analysis indicated that the necessary increase in FRS resources is likely to incur costs (of £750m in additional to capital costs) disproportionate to the impact on loss of life and loss of property.’　

In that case it was increasing traffic on the roads blocking fire engine access.

The Fire Service is also being diverted from its main task to that of providing ‘emergency’ cover for the ambulance service thereby using up resources in tasks not primarily of their concern…..

‘Ambulance services are ‘massaging’ response time figures by increasingly sending firemen out on medical emergencies, it emerged yesterday.

Firefighters trained in first-aid techniques are being despatched to deal with ‘life-threatening’ incidents when the nearest ambulance is too far away.’
 

Here is what the West Sussex Fire Service Union says about cuts under Labour and their effect upon the Service then……‘

‘Prior to 2004, the Fire Service worked to National Standards Of Fire Cover. These concentrated on providing emergency response to fire in urban areas, at the expense of rural areas. This approach was, in turn, replicated in Fire Protection & Prevention Legislation. This concentrated on reducing the financial impact of fire to business.

While the standards of fire cover remained unchanged, the Fire Service improved. New equipment enabled the Fire Service to engage in more technical and efficient fire fighting procedures, and Fire Authorities began utilising the Fire Service for other emergencies. Special Services such as road traffic accidents, flooding and chemical incidents were all dealt with by the Fire Service.

Due to this extra workload, it became apparent by the 1980s that the standards of fire cover were not meeting the public’s expectation of the Fire Service. Fire Brigades were under resourced, and firefighter safety was compromised.

Government has used Fire Service legislation to concentrate on cost of delivery rather than cost at outcome.

The Union regards measuring cost in this way to be loaded against emergency response, as response is seen as a cost. Thus the only savings presented are savings made by reducing emergency response. No measurement of outcomes are made. The implicit cost saving of saving life by rescue, or preventing the spread of fire to beyond the room of origin, is not measured.

Between 1997 and 2006 domestic fire damage claims rose by 46.5%.

Commercial fire damage claims rose by 51.2% .

The numbers of whole time firefighters has fallen by 3.7% since 2002, to 30,596.

Between 2004 & 2008 12 firefighters lost their lives at incidents. ( 4 between 1997 & 2004 )

This last statistic takes the firefighter death rate to 9.6/100,000 workers per year. The average figure is 0.71/100,000 workers/year.’

There was a distinct lack of critical inquiry and real depth to the Panorama report…..the BBC were lecturing or preaching at us rather than informing and educating…they want a passive audience that is unquestioning and receptive to the message…no thought needed here.

Much like the old days when those in control didn’t want the ‘people’ to be educated in case they got ideas above their station and started thinking for themselves the BBC restricts the information they allow you to have because the highly educated doyens of the BBC know what’s best for you.

 There is plenty of descriptive and emotional content from the BBC but little in the way of explanation to provide a thorough understanding of the issues. At the end you are merely left with general impressions that cuts are wrong….all critical inquiry is paralysed, all dissent and thought made impossible as you haven’t enough information to consider any different scenarios.

It was a BBC political polemic disguised as thought provoking investigative journalism.

This is the BBC’s take on how the Olympics went for the troops working there:

London Olympics: How was it for the troops?

The public love them, their efficiency, friendly nature and some of the women coming into the Park often admit there is that man-in-uniform factor.

“I was very happy to see the soldiers,” says Liz Gluckman, arriving with her family from Cobham. “They were very friendly and smiling.”

Well it seems not all the Public love them…or at least one certain section of the Great British Public:

Cannot find any reference to this story  on the BBC:

‘Army officers and police are investigating a spate of attack on soldiers who were on duty covering the Olympics.

They have now told troops on duty for the Paralympics to travel around in groups after servicemen were attacked, verbally abused and harassed during the Olympics.

In the worst incident a lone off-duty soldier was targeted by four men who abused him for being in the Army and then attacked him close to the temporary base where soldiers were housed in east London.

The soldier was not in uniform, but was targeted by the attackers because he was carrying a military bag.

Police are investigating the attack by four Asian men which took place in the early hours of Monday August 6 close to Tower Hill tube station.

The soldier was not in uniform, but was targeted by the attackers because he was carrying a military bag.’

When G4S were underperforming and troops were being drafted in to fill the void the BBC showed a lot of concern about troop welfare.

Not so much when they are actually being beaten up it seems.

For the BBC British soldiers are more valuable when dead or injured…a grieving widow or mother says more than words ever can…and the BBC use such images relentlessly in their anti-war campaigns.

Mere pawns in the BBC’s game.

The BBC never knowingly allows a chance to attack Mrs Thatcher go by however unlikely:

Dr Daniel Conway, author of a paper on the politics of Margaret Thatcher’s clothing, and Tory MP Claire Perry, debate the what these suits reveal about the Iron Lady.

According to Conway Thatcher’s dresses were a physical manifestation of her politics…. which were all about ‘narrow, selfish class concerns.’

No they weren’t…if anything the complete opposite of that.

Conway clearly drinks too much coffee and doesn’t have a real job….a paper on the politics of Margaret Thatcher’s clothing?  Who in his university authorised funding for that research?  Never mind world beating technology and engineering design…let’s fund a course on ‘power dressing’.  Is Conway at a university or working for Cosmopolitan…or Private Eye?

Still I suppose it saves Labour having to go cap in hand to the Union Barons for more money if the BBC coninues to provide so much free anti-Tory propaganda.

Wake Up To Money

A classic example of the BBC proving that they play the man and not the ball…..or rather attack the Tories whatever policy they come up with.

How many times have you heard someone dragged onto the BBC to complain about banks not lending to them? How many times have you heard the answer to low growth is building more houses? How many times have you heard a BBC economic guru tell you that governments only go for policies that have short term benefits that can win a few votes in a coming election? (And isn’t China the model of government that we should follow…not having to bother with awkward democratic requirements like winning votes and the People’s consent, they can do as they like for as long as they like).

Apparently, now George Osborne has decided to cough up £40 billion for construction projects, relax planning laws and guarantee lending, and perhaps create a government business bank, all those concerns were rubbish…we want short term answers, we don’t want massive spending when we don’t know where the money comes from, we don’t want more building if projects aren’t financially credible..

If Osborne is shelling out money the BBC now tells us we’ve got to ask where’s the money coming from, is it going to make the deficit worse and isn’t this a long term project that helps no one immediately, and isn’t there a contradiction here…if to get a guarantee your project needs to be financially credible then presumably the banks not lending is because the project is not credible…and isn’t all this just to massage the economic figures for political benefit?

You know it’s a funny old world…those are the very questions you might have been asking about Balls’ ‘spending big for growth’ plans…..unfortunately the BBC generally wasn’t too concerned about asking such questions of Labour’s economic genius.

It looks as if whatever Osborne does, even if its pretty much as he’s been pressured into by the Media, he’s wrong…because he’s not a Labour Chancellor.

In a healthy economy you wouldn’t absolutely need growth…it is only because we were left enormous debts to pay off that we need growth to pay them off or even larger cuts in government spending. There’s nothing wrong with having no growth ….what is growth anyway (is it exports, or earnings or spending, or borrowing?)…and why do we need it?…the BBC never explains…to do so might undermine the ‘drive for growth’ that they have used as a weapon against Osborne.

Growth can only come from suddenly finding oil under this green and pleasant land or some such resource, or by training our people with skills they can sell abroad or use to make products that we can sell abroad, by people working longer or harder for the same money…and by exports. Growth does not come from governments borrowing money to build houses paid for by people borrowing more money for mortgages….and filling them with sofas and plasma TVs bought on the never never. If I borrow £100,000 and buy a Ferrari am I suddenly rich? The neighbours might think so…but they don’t see the debt, only the Ferrari on the drive. Your income hasn’t grown a penny…in fact it’s dropped ..because you are paying interest on the loan as well as capital.

Such ‘growth’ is illusory and purely a short term book exercise…much like Labour’s PFI spending.

It looks good for a while until the bills start rolling in…and then you’re back to square one or worse…..teetering on the edge with even bigger debts….and financial markets upping the interest rates on your loans making repayment even harder.

Still….if the BBC tells us that’s the answer who are we to doubt? After all Stephanie Flanders thought that the government should employ more public sector workers…because they would pay tax and the government revenues would go up. Clever girl that. Try that with your bank….say you will repay your loan if they will lend you another loan to pay off the first loan.

So it seems the BBC were all for ‘Stimulus’ when balls was trumpeting  its merits but aren’t quite so sure now Osborne has succumbed…and perhaps they are right to be sceptical…China isn’t looking so hot just now even with its own stimulus package…….

Has stimulus really helped China  or is it a short term mirage?

‘More determined stimulus measures could help the economy regain momentum and resuscitate the investment demand that is crucial to China’s growth model.

But they also could produce nasty side effects of the sort that followed a huge stimulus package in the wake of the financial crisis in late 2008. Combined with lower interest rates and a flood of bank lending, the spending package helped the economy bounce back quickly in 2009. However, it also led to high inflation, soaring property prices and an increase in loans that could ultimately go sour.’

And of course it was a property boom and soaring prices that got us here in the first place!  (Not ‘casino’ banks….but retail banks overlending mortgages that would never be repaid…….Vince Cable talks rot)

Did he walk or was he pushed?

Parting words from Richard Black:

Farewell and thanks for reading

This is my last entry for this page – I’m leaving the BBC to work, initially, on ocean conservation issues.

While this page will no longer be updated, it will stay here for reference.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog down the years – I’ve enjoyed writing it, and have appreciated your comments.

To keep up to date with news and views about the environment, I hope you’ll keep reading the science and environment pages of the BBC News website, and my science correspondent colleagues Jonathan Amos and David Shukman.

There comes a time in every successful criminal’s ‘career’ when, after evading Plod with ease for a long time, they become complacent, arrogant, cocky….careless…of course not being caught means they stay in the shadows…they get no recogniton, fame or infamy.  For some this ‘fame’ is undoubtedly a draw, a factor in the game….so much so that they start to tease the police, tempting them to catch them…almost wishing to be caught.

Richard Black has reached this stage in his career….having given years of diligent service in the cause of promoting AGW to a sceptical world he gets ever more obvious and determined to push the pro-warming agenda seemingly regardless of any requirements for truth.  This of course is not a crime…no hang on….it might well be….the BBC is by law required to be accurate, fair, impartial and balanced in its reporting.

This is his latest tour de force…it’s a clever piece…obvious in its bias only if you know what Black’s intentions are and the background to his comments.

It is in essence merely a vehicle to support pro-global warming scientists whilst discrediting sceptics. 

The scientists..Muller and Hansen have been roundly discredited before…Muller’s BEST research even failed to get the backing of a scientist who worked on the project saying ‘that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.’…..whereas Black claims… ‘ it proves ‘sceptics’ were wrong about denying AGW’……. and the BBC later blatantly lied about Muller when he claimed he had once been a sceptic but had ‘seen the light’ and was now a fully converted believer in man made global warming….Muller was always a pro-warmer.

Black wants to talk about the role of formal scientific processes in climate science.

Muller released his ‘research’ without peer review…and so it is untested…..apparently this is the method used in String Theory science…..let’s have a look at what a scientist has to say about the inner workings of String Theory research:

‘In 2008 Physicist Lee Smolin’s book ‘The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next’ was published.

What he had to say about the way science worked and how ideas and theories were produced and then supported regardless of reality was a stinging rebuke to those people who jump on a bandwagon and base their career and funding on the ‘truth’ of that idea….if the idea is discredited so are they, and the funding dries up…..

Here is what he says about String Theory and its proponents….

‘….with a cry of joy, most of these scientists seized on string theory as the answer. But their enthusiasm was such that they came to think not that it might be the answer, but that it must be. They formed themselves into a cult. Dissenters and apostates were not just scorned, they were denied posts in universities. Einstein the thinker could not now get a job in any leading physics department. For any young physicist, it was easiest simply to suppress one‘s doubts and go with the stringies.‘

Does that remind you of any scientific environment now?   Any Consensus?

Black is supposedly using Muller and Hansen’s ‘research’ as examples of how such research is transmitted to the public and how it is perceived….the reality is that Black is purely trying to push their ideas forward yet again as ‘real science’ that is trustworthy and done by ‘real scientists’….unlike the sceptics who of course are totally unqualified….or mad…or maybe even Nazis.

Here are a couple of lines from Black which are somewhat out of place in a BBC news report…..just too ‘personal’……

‘Rarely if ever have I seen a published scientific paper that states the rationale for its existence so baldly in terms of public perception.’

‘The original BEST study particularly got up the nose of meteorologist turned sceptic blogger Anthony Watts.’

Note the ‘meteorologist turned sceptic blogger’ dismissive tone.

Black goes on to tell us some scientific journals have a ‘politicised slant’ on issues….but what does he choose?  A ‘sceptical’ journal and…..a ‘loony’ creationist journal…an obvious attempt to damn by association:

‘Peer review is far from perfect – especially in a politicised arena such as climate science where some journals exist with a specific, directed slant on the issue.

Energy and Environment, for example, proclaims itself “a forum for more sceptical analyses of ‘climate change'”.

Creationists have attempted to clothe themselves in scientific garb down the years by establishing publications designed to look and feel like scientific journals…..The Journal of Creation.’

Black saves the best slur, or is that BEST, till last…..

‘You can create a parallel world where it isn’t, if you really try.’

Ahhh…that’s it then…the sceptics live in a little world of their own, one they’ve made up?

The only person living in a world of their own is Black….a world that hasn’t ‘warmed’ for over a decade….as proven by ‘BEST’ itself…..

‘Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.
A report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website.

This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.

‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’

It is astonishing really that Black is still employed by the BBC.  He is so far from the requirements of a BBC journalist that somebody somewhere in the bowels of the BBC must have noticed he isn’t up to scratch.

Black clearly has not the slightest problem or qualm about twisting the truth nor  any conscience in trying to smear and blacken climate change sceptic’s characters and scientific qualifications.

He is engaged in propaganda against sceptics and for that reason he should be out on his backside looking for a job at the Guardian….or UFO’s Weekly.

‘

Now we’ve had a comedy programme showing us the softer side of  Muslims perhaps the BBC will do the same for climate change sceptics who get a rough Press.

Perhaps they could just show this.

Black & Co have a history of trying to discredit climate change sceptics…claiming they are in the pay of big business or influenced by rightwing news papers, that they are nazis, or were abused in their childhood and have a  lack of human empathy.

A quote from one of Black’s efforts to malign sceptics:

“I’ve been debating the science with them for years, but recently I realised we shouldn’t be talking about the science but about something unpleasant that happened in their childhood”.

 Is this an orchestrated campaign?  You bet your ass it is. 

‘BBC insiders say the close links between the Corporation and the UEA’s two climate science departments, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, have had a significant impact on its coverage.

‘Following their lead has meant the whole thrust and tone of BBC reporting has been that the science is settled, and that there is no need for debate,’ one journalist said. ‘If you disagree, you’re branded a loony.’ ‘