Author Archives: David Vance

Had to laugh at BBC Today this morning. They were crowing how Lord Patten had written to Maria Miller warning her not to question the impartiality of the BBC! Of COURSE this should be questioned and the fact that Patten, that wettest of “Conservatives” felt obliged to “warn” Miller shows just how sensitive the BBC must feel towards the charge of bias. I see that Bland was wheeled on for a “debate”..did you catch this?

Blimey, busy day so no time to blog so instead here is a new one of these.

Thought this worth sharing…it’s in the form of an Open Letter from Lord Monckton to Jeremy Paxman…

“Your Newsnight segment on Arctic sea ice (BBC2 TV, 8 September 2012) featured a “scientist” who said ice loss since a high point in 1979 would cut the Earth’s albedo and, by this feedback, cause warming equivalent to 20 years’ global CO2 emissions.

On the IPCC’s current central climate-sensitivity estimates, 20 years’ CO2 emissions would only warm the Earth by ¼ C°. But since the IPCC’s first projections in 1990, temperature has risen only half as fast as predicted: so make that just ? C°.

The glaciologist the programme relied on got the math wrong. Ignoring the growth in Antarctic sea ice since 1979, as the programme unwisely did, the loss of 2.5 million km2 of Arctic sea ice (measured as the linear trend on the NSIDC data) will warm the Earth by only 1/20 C°, and only then if the ice loss is permanent. Halve that to allow for the compensating effect of record Antarctic sea-ice growth: say, 1/40 C° of global warming, equivalent to just 2 years’ CO2 emissions on the IPCC’s current projections, not 20 years’ emissions.

See more here

Wonder if anyone else caught this debate on BBC Radio 4 concerning the oxymoronic concept  “Open Borders”?

 “In this week’s programme, Professor Sandel visits the heartland of America’s deep south, hosting a public discussion at the University of Dallas in Texas. He challenges ordinary Texans to consider the moral issues raised when it comes to controlling immigration and deciding who should be entitled to citizenship.

Texas has a long frontier with Mexico and the issue of immigration divides people sharply. A million people in Texas are “undocumented” living without immigration papers. Many Hispanic voters want immigration to be reformed and President Obama recently outlined initiatives aimed at this base. Mitt Romney, too, is reaching out to Hispanic voters but many in the Tea Party movement pull the Republicans in the other direction. They insist that the border must be closed and deportations must be stepped up.

Against this backdrop, our public audience will be asked: “how far should an open society go on accepting outsiders?” Michael Sandel weaves through these issues with the help of philosophers past and present.”

Struck me that Sandel was inherently pro the idea of “Open Borders” and it showed in how he conducted the debate but perhaps the MOST interesting aspect was when the Harvard Professor Sandel  (sic) asked for a show of hands on who favoured Open Borders. There was a NARROW majority against this liberal proposition. In Texas. Now HOW did the BBC construct THAT audience??

I was on the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live programme the other week and met journalist and feminist crusader Julie Bindel. I debated her and Donal McIntyre on the need for tougher prison regimes. Anyway, I happened to tune in to BBC Woman’s Hour yesterday to hear Julie “debate” whether woman “own” the abortion issue. I thought she got a VERY sympathetic hearing which I am sure is nothing to do with her arch-feminism arch-lesbian values. Men haters DO seem to get a rather good hearing at the State Broadcaster for some reason….

Well, further to David’s post below, I was most interested in the final Presidential debate that took place in the wee small hours. I was intrigued to hear Mark Mardell inform the listening audience of BBC Today that the debate had no clear winner and that Romney has adopted “a softer position to persuade Americans that he is not a war monger”.  Interesting, Mark. Just wondering why you chose not to editorialise Obama adopting a position that deflected criticism of him being seen as “a weak kneed dhimmi” when it comes to foreign policy. Heaven forbid that there could be a “war monger” in the White House, right? Dhimmis, by contrast, seem welcome by the BBC.

It’s interesting the language that the BBC chooses at times. As we know language and images are the main currencies of the BBC so words matter. The BBC were to the fore in attacking every action of NOTW when it came to phone tapping and most certainly adopted  high moral tone suggesting that Murdoch’s newspaper empire was evil.  Come this morning, we read that the Daily Mirror has “been hit” by legal claims that it engaged in similar acts of phone tapping. Curious – almost as if this was an accident. There was the Mirror, innocently churning our day and day of left wing propaganda and trash, and ..whoops.. it “is hit.” Throughout this entire phone tapping saga, I have felt that the BBC seemed determined to place Murdoch at the center when in fact, as we all know, the practise was common across the media. It’s a pity nobody tapped Jimmy Savile’s phone…

Compare and contrast the current top stories on BBC and Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9625623/British-al-Qaeda-gang-from-Birmingham-planned-another-911-in-UK.html

Subheading in the Telegraph: ‘An al-Qaeda inspired gang of British Muslims planned to carry out “another 9/11” in the UK with up to eight suicide bombers, a court heard today.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20007532

…but on the BBC, they’re just ‘men’. Or ‘Birmingham men’. The only mention of Muslim or Islam is at the end of the story, to tell us that they tricked muslims into giving them cash for bona fide Islamic charities.

Bias? It seems to me the BBC seems determined to obscure inconvenient details.

Hat tip to the Biased BBC reader for the story

Further to Alan’s post below, Savilegate continues to damage the BBC.

“The Newsnight editor responsible for dropping a report into claims Jimmy Savile sexually abused people is stepping aside, the BBC has said. Peter Rippon’s move is for the duration of an inquiry into Newsnight’s handling of the planned report last year. Earlier this month, in a blog, Mr Rippon explained the editorial reasons behind his decision to axe the report. The BBC has now issued a correction, calling the blog “inaccurate or incomplete in some respects”.

Or, if you like straight language, …wrong. The BBC has major questions to answer into WHY it played along with Savile for ALL those years.  There must be DOZENS of people who turned a blind eye to Mr Fix It. It seems like institutionalised avoidance of sexual abuse going on right under their noses.  Time for arrests?