‘Policy Exchange’ were constantly referred to as a right leaning think tank, or even as a think tank ‘close to David Cameron’ this week by the BBC.

The IPPR today, at least on the radio, have had no such label attached to them…that of being Labour’s pet think tank…wonder why when you look at their new thoughts on petrol pricing:

From Guido:

‘Labour wonk-shop IPPR have declared war on the Sun‘s Page 3 girls as they publish a report claiming that the government’s bleeding of motorists via high fuel taxes is just a “myth“. Earlier this week the Sun girls jumped on board the Taxpayers’ Alliance campaign to freeze fuel duty by showing their support at petrol stations up and down the country. Now IPPR has hit back, laughably arguing that the Chancellor “should make every effort to avoid further delays in fuel duty increases“.

Will’s argument is unconvincing and not likely to be taken up by the Labour Party. “Vote Labour for higher petrol taxes” is a CCHQ dream slogan…’

The BBC don’t want you thinking Labour want to price you out of your cars…even if the BBC green Marxists do.

In fact I can’t find the story on the BBC website…it was mentioned on the radio…but not on the web…except for this:

Elsewhere on the web

A curious omission you might think.

Stephanie Flander’s must have got hold of Gordon Brown’s crystal ball now that he has no use for it for predicting our economic future…’no more boom and bust’.

Here she is in 2011 telling us to relax, it’s all good, the future is rosy, unless you’re Greek:

‘Everyone says that heightened talk of a Greek default is proof that last year’s bail-out has “failed”. But you could make a strong case for the opposite.

In reality, all that the Greek support programme last year was ever going to do was buy time. And that is exactly what it has done. It just hasn’t bought quite as much as governments hoped.

Governments were right a year ago to kick the Greek problem down the road and buy the system some time.

One year on, they are roughly back where they were, facing the same choice.

What’s changed, from a Greek standpoint, is that its government is now much less popular than it was, and it now has even more debt to repay.

Europe is enjoying a decent recovery.

From their perspective, buying time has worked for the eurozone. It just hasn’t been working out so well for Greece.’

 Wonder how that Greek thing turned out?

Funny how she thinks ‘kicking the can down the road, doing nothing, buying time’ is a solution for Europe but isn’t prepared to wait out Osborne’s policies and give them time to run their course.

The BBC were blasted by Tory Ian Duncan Smith for their insistence that falling unemployment figures  were bad for the economy in some mysterious way….now the Empire is striking back.

The release of the latest borrowing figures ironically (considering they have been calling for more borrowing) led to the BBC having the opportunity to launch a counter attack on the Tories. They also constantly slip in Flander’s question demanding to know why employment is going up in a recession whenever possible.

One of the factors in unemployment falling was that of some people becoming self employed and setting up their own businesses.

Steven Nolan steps up to the plate and set out to do battle with that assertion…that self employment is a proper job, or possible to do.

Nolan brought on a 20 year old called Matt (36 mins in) who has been unemployed for a year and says it is impossible for him to get a job in his area….he could of course just get on his bike as Chinese, Polish and African workers have done and moved to get work…half way around the world in many cases….I know that where I live foreign workers are working a 4 day rota of 12 hours shifts on a farm and then 4 days in a factory…so not just one job but two…and yet the Brits can’t get a job!

Listening to him you get the impression there might be more to ‘Matt’ than meets the eye…he seems to have the patter off, well, pat…and glibly cranks out Labour Party or even Occupy rhetoric….he is almost cast for the part of Labour activist calling a phone in…’authentic working class accent, articulate, unemployed for a long time, ‘can’t afford’ to go to university, angry at bankers and the Tories’.  Perfect….all ‘designed’ to generate as much sympathy as possible?

I’m sure he’s entirely authentic.  I was wrong………

UPDATE:  Thanks to Beeboidal in the comments for digging out this video of young Matt…apparently a member of the Socialist Party….‘A victim of capitalism’s failure Socialist Party member. Hull KR Green Bay and LFC fan’

Funny how the BBC kept that quiet!

He says it is impossible to get a job, there are businesses collapsing left right and centre….he can’t risk coming out of university with 50-60 grand debt and no job…it’s like a mortgage…can’t risk that without a job.

He goes on…the real issue, the core is the bankers and speculators who made this crisis and aren’t being made to pay for it….their money should be taken to be invested in youth jobs instead of hoarding it for the rich….we have a lost generation and a government of rich people who don’t know what it’s like to be poor.

Nolan agrees….no one should have to have that much debt and no job…and that banks ‘hoarding’ money is wrong.

Nolan’s attitude is a big problem…it is an attitude prevalent throughout the BBC…and one resulting from journalistic laziness and one might suspect preconceived notions.

The idea that Student debt is a problem is an astonishingly common assertion both by students and BBC presenters.

It is also completely wrong.

The BBC website explains it quite clearly should anyone (including BBC staff) be bothered to read it……under the new system you in fact will pay less than under the old one…not only that but if you earn under £21,000, or are not earning at all, you pay nothing back….not only that but the amount paid back is not dependent on how much you borrow…..you pay back an amount dependent on your earnings alone…..so even with £60,000 debt you will pay no more than someone with a £30,000 debt….and after 30 years all debt is written off.

It’s a bargain and simple…anyone who doesn’t understand the system perhaps should not be considering going to university…or preaching nonsense on the radio.

Victoria Derbyshire practically joined up with the student protestors last year in their protest against tuition fees….but made only a very weak and short explanation of the fee system to the students.

The old lefty of ‘Wake Up To Money’ (Andrew Verity I believe) last Thursday argued against the tuition fees and insisted they were an albatross around young people’s necks….Martin Lewis, financial expert, came onto Shelagh Fogarty’s show and did battle with him as he repeated his mantra of doom on that programme…unfortunately just timed out on the useless BBC iPlayer.

So student fees aren’t really a problem…accept for the country that has to pay  off all the ones that aren’t repaid eventually.

As for Nolan agreeing that banks ‘hoard’ money…do they? What was the problem with banks? It was reckless lending and not having sufficient capital in reserve to back that lending up. Now they are required by the regulators to hold sufficient reserves and control their lending.

Today on ‘Wake Up To Money’  (27 minutes) we had a KPMG representative on to talk about the banks…their profits being down 17% on last year.

He stated that the reasons for lower profits are…too tight a regulatory environment…at the wrong time…he said the regulations to curb the credit boom should have been put in place in 2005/06 (note sharp intake of BBC breath…2005 was Team GB time! Embarrassing!) and now is the wrong time to tighten credit and limit lending. (note Flander’s 2005 assessment of the Brown policies  Testing the Miracle)

The banks are required now to hold large amounts of capital, which comes from the funds that normally would be used for lending to businesses and for mortgages. 

You can’t have it both ways…you can have Gordon Brown’s high risk based financial system or you can have a careful, safe and steady, risk free lending environment which limits growth at a sustainable level.

Which one? The BBC have plumped for Labour’s choice….that of Brown’s protégé, Ed Balls, who is going for the spend, spend, spend option.

Guess they never learn….Evan Davis insists that ‘Austerity is killing the patient’….clever boy that.

I have been waiting for the BBC to leap into action over allegations of Tory  sleaze, corruption and conflicts of interest, so far they have maintained radio silence on the matter.

Normally they would be turning the screw in no uncertain manner…but not in this case…why not?

Is it because Tory Tim Yeo is in the business of promoting the fable of man made climate change and therefore ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ for the BBC?

Guido has broached the subject of  ‘ Energy and Climate Change Committee chairman Tim Yeo’s conflict of interests with the green tycoon’s taxi company, Eco City Vehicles.’ and Yeo’s  promotion of windfarms whilst having a huge interest in their commercial success.

Yeo loves windfarms…just not in his own constituency backyard….he knows which way the wind blows when it comes to votes….

‘Tim Yeo has pledged his full support to opponents of a wind farm at Chedburgh.

“I fully understand why anybody in a community as beautiful as this will be concerned. On shore wind turbines are visually a very considerable intrusion on any landscape. This happens to be one of the most beautiful parts of my constituency which stretches from here to the coast.”
“You don’t have to take a view about whether you are in favour or against wind energy in principle. This is not about that.”

“But where they are clearly quite inappropriate for the local community as, in my view, they most obviously are here, the voice of the local people should be decisive.”

“Now, unfortunately, of course that is not the way it actually works .” ‘

I did think today that the BBC were on the case:

Steven Nolan standing in for Victoria Derbyshire, spot the difference, asks the question ‘Should MP’s have two jobs?’ (20 mins in)

He asks ‘Does it have an impact on their constituency work?’

We were told by the journalist who broke the story that ‘It is not necessarily a scandal in every case….. 68 out of 650 earn over £10,000/year on top of their MP’s salary, whilst there are 18 earning over £100,000.‘

Tim Yeo earns well in excess of £100,000/year….so he is one of a very select group of well heeled MP’s earning big money from a second job….and yet despite his prominence and the fact that he has been in the news papers recently for his climate change related commercial activities and their potential conflict of interest with his parliamentary duties no mention was made of him.

Yeo stands out a mile…and yet the BBC ignore him.

Why?

It’s not necessarily a scandal….but it doesn’t look good.

This is an update to this post.

The BBC have explained why they completely messed up the weather forecast.

First thing to know is that they didn’t mess up.

Second thing to know is that, no, they didn’t ignore the computer model.

Third thing to know is that they ignored LOTS of computer models from all over Europe.

Why?  Because they all gave different results, or as the BBC put it…‘A massive broad spectrum of weather solutions’.

In the end it was down to ‘human judgement’.

In other words they guessed what the weather would be.

So which one of those computers do they rely on to give us the predictions for weather 100 years from now and the resultant effect on climate and how many very, very expensive wind turbines it will take to change that outcome?

Very dodgy those BBC types…still trying to tell us everywhere is going to cook even when it’s pouring with rain!

BBC apologises for forecasting sunshine after downpours dampen barbecue weekend

BBC weathermen have been forced to apologise after ignoring computer forecasts predicting showers across South East England on Sunday.

Still at least they can accurately forecast the climate in 100 years time and make us pay up front for it!

Taliban Britain, One God, One Faith, One Culture

New Labourite Dan Hodges tells us that ‘The Left has struck Olympic gold. Or the Left has convinced itself that it’s struck Olympic gold, which in Labour circles amounts to pretty much the same thing.

“Have you been watching?” an excited shadow cabinet member asked me moments after Britain’s cyclists grabbed another medal. No, I’ve been hitching a ride on the Mars Rover. “This is good. There’s something for us here,” he enthused.’

The Left, and that includes the ever PC BBC, has got over its shock and horror at the display of pride in Britain and unity shown at the Olympics and are busy making squalid and laughable attempts to claw back the initiative and claim it as a victory for multi-culturalism.

Presumably the latest discovery in the animal world…a spider they have named ‘Trogloraptor’, as it lives in darkened caves and has vicious claws that grasp its prey….was named after these ‘multi-culturalists’ who still live in the darkness and grasp desperately at straws to save themselves and their doomed ideology.

Funny how that prime of example of multi-ethnic fusion, football, is derided as racist by the great and the good. Footballers come from all over the world and they make Britain’s Premier League the best in the world…..is that success a result of multi-culturalism? Apparently not, the Luvvies not really liking the working class’ sport….as the BBC sets out to prove in ‘Is Football Racist?‘: ‘Setting out with the belief that racism has been largely eradicated from the game and that the frenzy surrounding the recent allegations shows the issue is being taken seriously by the authorities, Clarke begins to face a stark realisation on a journey which sees the issue of racism in football come very close to home.’

Next in the series….’Is Islam Racist?’

Here on the Today programme Sarah Montague purrs in agreement and delight with a couple of comedians (no they really are) who push the multi-culti creed.

Essentially we are told Islam made Mo Farah run faster, the games were successful, we won medals, because we are multi-cultural.

Sarfraz Manzoor reveals that: ‘Multi-culturalism lead us to be winners….and that having an immigrant named Mohammed roared on by the crowd was fantastic.’

So Usain Bolt’s multi-cultural Jamaica made him so fast? The Kenyan long distance runners…again so successful because of their multi-cultural society? The Ethiopians? The Chinese? The Americans? The Russians? Of course….

‘Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!’

I suspect the crowd were roaring on a sportsman who was succeeding after a huge amount of effort and hard work…they weren’t applauding him for being Muslim…they don’t care what religion he was…and never have….which is the point…he was putting religion and personal ideologies aside and entering the mainstream.

It has nothing to do with ‘multi-culturalism’….what these people panhandling for Multi-culturalism are really commenting on is the mutli-racial makeup of the GB team…..the success coming from hard work not religion or music you listen to or cultural food you eat.

Manzoor’s approach says Britain is racist….and that only these games have brought us together….that’s more a idea akin to ones dreamt up by the race ‘hustlers’ who depend for their own authority and life style in ‘their community’ on whipping up race division and hatred where non exists.

Manzoor goes on to tell us that ‘Young Muslim men in Birmingham go on jihad because they want to belong to the ‘Umma’, a Muslim world wide community…Muslims don’t believe in nationality.’

Manzour suddenly backtracks…and changes that to ‘extremist’ Muslims don’t believe in nationality…..unfortunately that’s not true…Islam is the only creed to which a Muslim must show loyalty and submission to.

Manzoor claims that no imam would recruit people to ‘extremist’ views….again and again this is proved wrong….C4’s Dispatches opened up that can of worms to absolutely no reaction from the BBC who spent the same week abusing Jade Goody for her ‘racist’ argument with a housemate in ‘Big Brother’.

Manzoor was a not a devout Muslim…however he became more devout after 9/11…which was a ‘Call to Arms’ by Osama Bin Laden…which I guess worked to different extents on Muslims.

‘The terror attacks forced me to understand what it means to be a Muslim and it pushed my Muslim identity to the foreground.‘

The BBC is under no illusions that they can use the Olympic success of Farah to make us understand Islam is OK:

‘ Mo’s display of his faith portrays to the rest of Britain that Somalis can remain true to their beliefs while fully integrating with the wider society, which will hopefully counter-balance the common association of Muslims with fundamentalism. He has remained true to his religious beliefs, giving a Muslim prayer after each win and thanking Allah for his victory.‘

But what of Somalians who refute Islam?:

‘Ayaan Hirsi Ali enters an apartment in New York followed by a bodyguard. The 40-year-old, who for the last six years has been unable to turn up at a venue without it being checked by security, is a writer, polemicist and critic of Islam. She is also a Somali immigrant, an ex-Muslim.’

And of course it’s not just other Muslims Hirsi Ali has to be protected from because the Liberal/Left elite alll set about her for her ‘provocative’ views….surely she is the poster girl for Liberals who believe in integration and communal harmony?  No?

You don’t hear much about her or her views on the BBC.

Elsewhere of course the usual suspects mounted the counter offensive…Freedland, the supporter of multi-culturalism everywhere except in the Middle East where Jews are a problem, in the Guardian, and Alibhai Brown in the Independent. Brown’s piece is probably one of the more nasty articles you will see…all the more odd because she herself has vigorously spoken out against muti-culturalism and its very real and nasty effects (see later):

Freedland:

‘The effect, of both these organisational and sporting triumphs, was a national good mood so unaccustomed in many it prompted suspicion and unease. Some wondered if all this patriotism was healthy for our collective soul.‘

Alibhai Brown being somewhat less than tolerant and multi-cultural herself:

‘The Burleyites took a thorough beating at these Games, watching as not just Guardian-types but the nation exalted in the success of a team as diverse as any British city.

Jesus! More multicultural crap! More bleedin’ foreigners winning our medals!

(Nowhere did Burley say that….Alibhai Brown just invented a bit of racism)

Tory MP Aidan Burley, an immigrant from New Zealand, dissed Danny Boyle’s inclusive opening ceremony in a tweet.

Mixed feelings must have curdled the patriotic juices when Mo Farah, born in Somalia, won the 10,000 metres, hugged his daughter and pregnant light-skinned wife. And when he pronounced himself the proudest of flag wavers. Or when Jessica Ennis, the daughter of a black father and a white mother, wept as she received her gold while 80,000 fans cheered and belted out the National Anthem.

I wonder how the formidable anti-immigration prophets and campaigners react when medals are won by super-fit migrants and children of migrants?’

The Indepenent itself had this headline…

‘Mo Farah hails Britain’s multicultural society for helping him win double Olympic gold’

“It is amazing. As a kid growing up in London, coming from Somalia, sport was a big thing for me. My story shows no matter what or where you come from, if you work hard at something [in Britain] you can achieve it. And it was amazing the support I got from the crowd.”

Unfortunaltely the truth was that Farah’s success owed more to the flag waving, one nation melting pot that is the USA than to ‘multi-culti’ Britain…as the Independent has to admit a little way down…..

‘The soon-to-be father of twins revealed how important his move to America last year had been in ensuring his development after he fell into a period after the 2008 Beijing Olympics of finishing sixth or seventh in races.

He said: “If I didn’t make that change I don’t think I would have been here today and competing with those guys.’

And let’s look at that multi-cultural legacy…what does mutli-culturalism really mean on the streets……..and note, these are British streets, not Islamabad or Mecca or Kandahar.

‘When I married V.S. Naipaul and moved to England in 1996, I thought I had left the horror behind.

Pakistan had drained my resolve, and I was tired of fighting a losing battle. To me, England, for all its ills, was the promised land.

Instead, I have found the horror I fled has followed me here. It is all around, eroding the very core of everything Britain believes in.

Why, then, have successive Governments refused to acknowledge the incestuous cultures that have evolved in these ghettos? Why does no one challenge the existence of the so-called ‘Islamic Parliaments’, with their retrogressive laws, that exist in cities such as Bradford and Leicester?
In these cities, teams of vigilantes terrorise Pakistani communities. They turn up unannounced to homes, insisting that Ramadan is respected and checking that everyone has come to prayers. They force shops to close, they check that the community is fasting, that women wear the veil.
The defenders of our precious multiculturalism must get real. My message to those who promote these entrenched ghetto ideas is this: go home if you want to practise your form of Islam. There is no place for it here.’

Alibhai-Brown seems conflicted and confused…her PC credentials and innermost instincts want her to be all ‘multi-cultural’, loving and praising and defending cultural separateness…unfortunately reality keeps on bringing her back down to earth….

Here is Alibhai-Brown in her ‘all whites are imperialist colonisers’ mode:
‘ In France they refuse to rethink their old assimilationist model. As their populations get ethnically more complex, the state either asks for compliance or enforces post-enlightenment values combined with colonial hubris. Liberty, fraternity and a secular state are the foundations of a good democracy, but even incomers willing, indeed happy, to commit to the Republic’s tenets balk at the underpinning supremacist paradigm.’

So She thinks assimilation and integration are a problem not a boon?

And yet here she is giving it both barrels to ghettoisation and yes, multi-culturalism:

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Who’d be female under Islamic law?

In Muslim states, violence against women is validated. A dark age is upon us.

‘I look out of my study (in the UK) at the common and see a wife fully burkaed on a sunny day. She sits still. Her children and husband run around, laughing, playing cricket. She sits still, dead, buried, a ghost. She is complicit in her own degradation, as are countless others. Their acquiescence in a free democracy is a crime against their sisters who have no such choices in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.‘

 And again:

The Talibanisation of British childhood by hardline parents

‘I have met Muslim lawyers and academics who have turned to Taliban-style beliefs.

These men propagate Wahhabism – the joyless and backward Saudi belief system followed by Al Qaeda and espoused by hate preachers such as omar Bakri and his successor Anjem Choudary.

In 2003, Bakri told a journalist that their brand of Islam would get to increasing numbers of young minds and hearts.

It has – and to their parents, too.

The rapid spread of rigid, diehard Islam is deeply worrying. Yet those in power, focused on terrorist cells, seem oblivious to this other peril.

I could never have imagined, nine years on, that the Taliban would be claiming to have ‘won the war’ in Afghanistan.

Or, much worse, that our politicians and Muslim ‘leaders’ here would allow their twisted ideology to spread across Britain.

Make no mistake, Taliban devotees are in our schools, playgrounds, homes, mosques, political parties, public service, private firms and universities.

And if we are to have any hope of combating them, we need to stop this attitude of appeasement and understand why so many Muslims are attracted to the most punishing forms of belief, suppressing women and children.

Eye-watering amounts of Saudi money goes into promoting Wahhabism.

They fund mosques, religious-schools, imams, conferences and trips to Saudi Arabia.

They are our wealthy allies and so are never questioned or stopped.

Meanwhile, the liberal position is to let people be and do what they wish within the law. Liberals tolerate the intolerable because they don’t have to live with the consequences. Yet the problem is in part caused by liberal values.
The full burka has been banned in France (where the hijab – a headscarf – is also not allowed in schools) and other European nations will follow.

In Britain, where personal liberty is sacrosanct, such state actions would appear authoritarian.

To me, that hands-off approach makes no sense.

Why are we fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and indulging Taliban values here?

Even if it offends liberal principles, the powerful must find a way of stopping Islamicists from promulgating their distorted creed.

If they don’t, the future is bleak for Muslims and the country. Many of us British Muslims care deeply about both.’

The Victimisation of Moderate Muslims

By Guest | Published: January 26, 2011

This is a guest post by Leyton Oriental

We have all read about how moderate/liberal minded Muslims have been the target of assassinations in Pakistan and how some of them have been forced to flee conservative Islamic societies in order to stay alive. But here in the UK, the Muslim community is far more religiously conservative than many Muslim majority societies.

It is shocking but not surprising to learn that one of Britain’s leading moderate Muslim Imams is being hounded out of his job for expressing views which are unpalatable to the conservative Muslims.

There has been a concerted campaign by many Muslims to remove Usama Hasan from his post as Imam of Masjid al-Tawhid in Leyton, East London. The “charges” against him are:

Seeking to reconcile Islam with the theory of evolution

Claiming that the Hijab is not mandatory

Acceptance of secularism in the practice of good governance

It’s important to note that the elements of religious intolerance which are seeking to remove him are not extremist Muslims but mainstream conservative Muslims. It just goes to show how intolerant and thuggish traditional Muslims have become and how liberal Muslims are the real victims, even here in the UK. This campaign to denounce Hasan have included calling him an unbeliever and an apostate. Needless to say that these accusations come with the calls for his execution which some have been “brave” enough to make.

Celebrating diversity and multi culturalism.

 From the New York Times:

‘Like a fever, fear has spread across India this week, from big cities like Bangalore to smaller places like Mysore, a contagion fueling a message: Run. Head home. Flee. And that is what thousands of migrants from the country’s distant northeastern states are doing, jamming into train stations in an exodus challenging the Indian ideals of tolerance and diversity.

What began as an isolated communal conflict here in the remote state of Assam, a vicious if obscure fight over land and power between Muslims and the indigenous Bodo tribe, has unexpectedly set off widespread panic among northeastern migrants who had moved to more prosperous cities for a piece of India’s rising affluence.’

“What is at stake is the unity and integrity of our country,” Mr. Singh said. “What is at stake is communal harmony.”

Never mind they will win a lot of medals at the next Olympics due to their multi-cultural society making them such good runners.

‘Guest Who’  points out this article in the Mail in which the Tories complain about Flanders being the Voice of Labour:

‘BBC host accused of ‘peeing all over British industry’: IDS fury at ‘carping and moaning’ broadcaster as report casts doubt on jobs boost

• Iain Duncan Smith has made a formal complaint to the BBC over its coverage of employment figures
• The Work and Pensions Secretary accused Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders of showing a pro-Labour bias
• Claimed the BBC seizes every chance to ‘dump on the Government’
• BBC said it was confident coverage of the figures was impartial and fair

Is Flanders the ‘Lady Haw Haw’ of out time, broadcasting propaganda?  Strangely not only did she have relations with the two Eds but is distantly related to George Osborne with some very posh ancestors….

‘Probably less good news for Ed M and Ed B is that they are also linked to the Chancellor of the Exchequer via Stephanie, whose rich vault of ancestors includes Sir Thomas Osborne, the ninth baronet, and George’s great-great-great… well, you’d need Steph’s phenomenal grasp of figures to work that one out.’

‘The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: ‘l don’t intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God.”Don’t you think God knows the facts?’  Bethe asked.   ’Yes,’ said Szilard. ‘He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts.‘

The BBC continues its cover up of wrong doing and the obscuring of the evidence trail when asked to be fully transparent and accountable for its actions.

We have had the Balen Report and its evidence of anti-Israeli reporting kept under lock and key, now the BBC has decided that the ‘expert’ people who influenced one of the most important strategic changes in its stance towards reporting climate change should be kept anonymous….as related by Bishop Hill.

‘My long struggle to find out who attended the BBC’s seminar on climate change has come to an end (if you are not familiar with the story, see here). Readers here will recall that the seminar appears to have been attended by a bunch of NGO people, who decided that there was a consensus on climate change that meant that sceptics could be sidelined in the corporation’s output. The BBC Trust then falsely reported that the decision had been made by leading scientists.

My FOI request, dating back several years, has been repeatedly turned down and the appeal has gone all the way to the Information Tribunal, a rather more formal process than the Information Commission, being overseen by a judge.’

Bishop Hill also releases his submission to the Leveson inquiry which includes a section on Roger Harrabin’s CMEP which he ran in conjunction with climate change activists and was partly funded by the University of East Anglia…of CRU Climategate fame..

Here is some of that submission:

On 6th January 2010, and in the wake of the Climategate scandal that had engulfed the University if East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Professor Richard Tait, chairman of the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee (ESC) announced that the BBC would conduct a review of impartiality and accuracy of their coverage of science.

It seemed to us that if such an exercise was to be useful, then input from the BBC’s critics would be essential, therefore we wrote a very constructive joint letter to Professor Tait asking if we could make a submission to the inquiry.

In spite of an extensive correspondence with the BBC Trust over a period of four months, we were unable to obtain confirmation that the letter had been delivered to Professor Tait.

The view that we formed was that the last thing the BBC Trust wanted for their review of the impartiality and accuracy of its science coverage was any input from critics.

We ask that the Inquiry should look at the submission that we then sent to Professor Jones too.

In summary, it identifies a rather shadowy organisation called the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, set up and co-directed by the BBC’s Environment Analyst, Roger Harrabin, and Dr Joe Smith, a lecturer and environmental activist from the Open University.

We provided evidence that CMEP had been financed by a leading climate research institute, a major environmental NGO and a government department among others.

The purpose of CMEP was to organise seminars at which senior BBC staff would be joined by specialists in particular fields relating to environmental matters. CMEP’s partners in these ventures were the BBC itself and an environmental lobby origination called the International Broadcasting Trust.

We provided evidence that these events had a real impact on programming.

We also drew the BBC’s attention to a statement in John Bricut’s seminal report From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st Century, adopted and published by the BBC Trust in 2007 and signed off by Professor Tait.

This notes the care that the BBC takes to preserve impartiality in reporting controversial subjects such as climate change by saying:

‘The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.’

This event took place in January 2006 and was organised by CMEP…meantime, an eyewitness account of the seminar posted at Harmless Sky indicates that the experts advising the BBC at this seminar were in fact climate change activists.

Between the time when Professor Jones was appointed by the BBC and the publication of his report, he had things to say about climate sceptics in an article for the Daily Telegraph headline “Gods, floods – and Global Warming’:

’Global warming is a myth.

‘Type that into a search engine and you get thousands of hits – but global warming is not a product of the human imagination; or no more so than any other scientific claims for – like them – it depends on its data, the accuracy of which has been affirmed by the inquiry into the leaked East Anglia documents. The subject has, alas, become the home of boring rants by obsessives.’

This hardly suggests that the professor would be likely give anyone who might question the current dogma on climate change, or the way in which it is reported by the BBC, a fair hearing…BBC news gathering and editorial staff had got far too close to environmental activism for impartiality to be preserved.

Over five years after we started to try and discover who the “best scientific experts” that the BBC relied on when it first decide to limit coverage of climate scepticism in its output, we still do not have an answer.’