BBC Media Action and BBC Arabic have produced two versions of the BBC’s Question Time, called Sa’at Hissab, in partnership with Tunisian television. The audience came to the studio in the hope that the BBC programme would give them an opportunity – for the first time ever – to question their politicians and officials.
Wonder will it be less pro Islamist than UK Question Time? I doubt it…
The progressive shrinking of Arctic sea ice is bringing colder, snowier winters to the UK and other areas of Europe, North America and China, a study shows.As global temperatures have risen, the area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice in summer and autumn has been falling. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a US/China-based team show this affects the jet stream and brings cold, snowy weather.
And for those who can’t be bothered wading through the dross, there’s a nice picture of a Greek city swathed in snow. Oh, and there’s a picture of a Walrus looking sad. Do you think Richard wants us to really really believe in AGW perchance? Right, let’s take this drivel from Black apart…
One of the big problems with the BBC is the bias by omission that singularly characterises much of the daily output. Consider this analysis put together by B-BBC contributor Alan;
“Whilst the BBC isconcerned about the deleterious effects on the democratic process that is beingTrumped by wads of Yankee greenbacks corrupting the smooth progress andundoubtedly fair Scottish government’s imposition of windfarms upon theScottish people it is less concerned about economies being destroyed byenvironmental policies that raise massive green taxes and make energy a costthat is ruinous to industry….as the Germans are finding out but which seemsto have escaped the BBC’s notice…and it surely is a big story, one of greatimportance for every country….consider Britain has targets to reduce CO2 by80% by 2050…..more than any other country in the world…..
‘Government pledges to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. New climate change secretary Ed Miliband sets new goal.’ Thursday 16 October2008
Miliband told MPs that the tough economic conditions were not an excuse to”row back” on the commitment to tackle global warming.’ “To meet it will require determined action from Gordon Brown and every one ofhis successors for the next four decades. Hard choices will be made that willtouch every Briton, but it can and must be done.”
Four decades of green austerity then….on top of years of austerity to battlerecession. Of course if you think perhaps the Tories are against this think again:
‘Greg Clark, the shadow climate change secretary, also welcomed theannouncements. He said: “The choice between aggressive and ambitiousaction on carbon reduction and a successful, powerful economy is, in fact, nota choice at all – they are one and the same.” He welcomed the acceptance of the 80% target, saying: “We have always saidthat we should be guided by the science on that matter.” ‘
So all round delusions.And this is what a Biased BBC commenter has drawn attention to:
‘….a Cabinet Minister indicated – in effect, and with scarcely-concealedregret – that the party line set by David Cameron in response to variousopinion polls, focus groups and other such artifices for identifying andfollowing a consensus rather than setting a lead, and not the objectivescientific and economic truth, was likely to remain the basis of UK climatepolicy.’
So UK policy has nothing to do with either science or economics…..Cameron hasjust decided that is the consensus of opinion amongst fellow politicians andthe bien pensant and so has made his decision regardless of the harm to thenational economy.
Here is what the reality is away from the cosy political clubs(except oneswhere Labour MP’s start a drunken punch up) and agreeable likemindedness of thepoliticians. Shouldn’t hold your breath for Black to report this…and it is surely a bigstory with implications not just for Germany….not even on his Twitter feedthat has infinite space for such links and which he uses in a highly selectiveway to control what you do and do not get to read and therefore think.
Monday morning and a brand new Open Thread to relieve the pressure on the last one! Enjoy!!!
I don’t know about you but I’m with Conservative MP Priti Patel who has claimed the BBC is showing bias in favour of hard left activists as concerns the current “Workfare” issue;
She claimed BBC 2 Newsnight had ‘spent all week putting solitary Government Ministers up against panels made up of the hard Left’. Sources say David Cameron is ‘determined’ to rescue the scheme and is ‘livid’ at the BBC’s role. On Tuesday’s Newsnight, Tory MP Harriett Baldwin was put up against three critics who had experience of workfare schemes. Jeremy Paxman asked Baldwin four times: ‘Do you understand why people find the schemes offensive?’ And on Thursday, presenter Kirsty Wark said: ‘It’s just essentially cheap labour.’ On Friday morning’s Today programme, Evan Davis said: ‘The amount you are going to learn stacking shelves is not going to be very great – it’s been over-sold. What do you learn when you go and do work experience in supermarkets?’
Throw in some of Stephen Nolan’s comments and you have a full on jihad against Government policy which coincidentally echoes the campaign from the hard Marxist left…
The BBC has willingly taken on this agitprop role and this is but the latest manifestation. I have no sympathy for Cameron, he has consistently failed to confront the monster so he cannot be surprised when it bites.
OK, It’s Friday and here is a new open thread to take us off into the blue yonder of the weekend. Please detail your thoughts and concerns here…
It’s not a good week if Richard Black does not gain the interest of our commentariat and so it is that B-BBC contributor Alan observes;
“Richard Black hassurfaced again having gone to ground to give himself thinking time in order towrack his brains to find a line of defence for the person who stole documentsfrom Heartland Institute.
(Should you want some real world science facts listen to this….21 minutes and39 seconds that speaks more common sense than Black has done in his entirecarrer…http://audioboo.fm/boos/679624-matt-ridley-on-why-the-cure-for-climate-change-may-be-worse-than-the-disease?playlist_direction=reversed)
Forced into writing something by the amount of criticism his non-reportinggenerated:
‘I don’t normally do requests, as they say – but I’ve a lot of messages viaemails, blog comments and Twitter asking for a follow-up post on the HeartlandInstitute, and am happy to oblige.’ (as ‘Watts up with That’ reports….UPDATE28: 11:40AM James Evans in commentsreports that “the BBC has finally weighed in, and it’s lame”. It only tookRichard Black 36 hours to be convinced by an onslaught of emails. Whatta guy!The article makeup leaves no question now that Black is biased beyond allhope.’)
This is the best he could do:
‘Firstly, what’s wrong with the Heartland Institute preparing curriculummaterial for use in schools, you’ve asked. “Green groups do it all thetime,” is the allegation.
As a parent and a citizen, if teachers use non-standard curriculum material,the main thing I would be worried about is accuracy.’ He had no such qualms about the fraudulently inaccurate ‘Inconvenient Truths’video peddled by Al Gore. An Al Gore who is making millions from the climatechange ‘business’.Presumably lying fora good cause, or one you have persuaded yourself is a good cause is acceptableto Black.
And of course with Black the problem may or may not be accuracy, his worst failureis to not print the facts if they are ‘inconvenient’….note well that in thislatest effort worthy of Pravda he has avoided completely mentioning that themain document was faked….possibly because he has a good idea who the fakeris….suspicions are all pointing in one direction.
I wonder what he makes of the below where artists and performers are beingorganised to collaborate with ‘on message’ scientists to manufacture thepublic’s consent to their lifestyles being destroyed along with their businessesand futures, energy prices ramped up to extortionate levels on order to pay forpolicies based on at best mistaken science at worst deliberate attempts to hidethe truth:
‘TippingPoint, in partnership with NIReS, will be holding a major national gatheringof those concerned with the interface between the arts and culture on one hand,and environmental issues, particularly climate change, on the other. Our aim is to continue and strengthen the vital process of giving the urgentchallenges of climate change and sustainability a cultural and artisticvoice…..collaborations with scientists, artists can play a vital role inexploring and pointing the way towards the cultural, societal and behaviouralshifts needed in a world subject to a rapidly changing climate.’
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sustainability/initiatives/tippingpoint.htm
Should you be in any doubt that we are being deliberately mislead read this:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/20/the-entrepreneur.html
Which describes the political, not scientific reasons behind biofuels beingadopted as a solution to climate change.
Another one that Black ignores.
As I said at the start Black has gone on the offensive to defend his previousstance on Heartland….claiming the man who fraudulently obtained the documentsis the real victim of the affair…..
‘@BBCRBlack via Twitter
Fallout from Heartland may harm Peter Gleick and others, reports @suzyji@guardianeco http://t.co/G1ZaPUsn‘
A Guardian story of course.
However he does not link to the likes of this:
Heartland Memo Looking Faker by the Minute
Business Feb 17 2012, 12:14 PM ET 1080
http://www.theatlantic.com/megan-mcardle
Here are his full thoughts on the matter…they don’t need much comment as theyare clearly a man clutching at straws to defend the indefensible:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17126699
‘As the old saying goes, “news is something that someone somewhere doesn’twant you to know”
and here was information about a significant player in climate politics that itcertainly didn’t want you to have.
I am very wary of drawing parallels between the so-called”ClimateGate” issue of 2009 and the so-called “DenierGate”issue of the Heartland Institute, because they are very different.
But one thing they do have in common is that each is really a combination oftwo stories: who lifted the documents, and what the documents tell us.
With the Heartland case, we knew last week that someone had obtained thedocuments by the back door – “stolen”, to use the institute’s word.
Now, we know who; and that’s as far as it goes.
Firstly, what’s wrong with the Heartland Institute preparing curriculummaterial for use in schools, you’ve asked. “Green groups do it all thetime,” is the allegation.
As a parent and a citizen, if teachers use non-standard curriculum material,the main thing I would be worried about is accuracy.
The proposed modules would, for example, state that “whether humans arechanging the climate is a major scientific controversy” and that”natural emissions [of CO2] are 20 times higher than humanemissions”. The first is just wrong. It may be a public debate; but within science, thequestion is how much, not whether. In the second case, natural absorption is not mentioned and it’s the differencebetween the two – net emissions – that is the crucial fact.
Nevertheless, the rationale behind the argument is clear. Heartlandacknowledges it ramps its climate work up and down depending on how much moneyit receives.’
B-BBC contributor Alan notes;
“The BBC are stillingtrying to spin immigration figures and downplay the extent of immigration tothis country despite Mark Thompson’s admission that they had not covered thesubject properly in years past. The Telegraph reports the figures from government based on the yearly periodJune to June….June 2010 they were 235,000, by June 2011 they were250,000….so definitely a rise when comparing years.
The BBC has decided to take a different starting point, September 2010…butstill finishes in June 2011. September, the total net immigration would havebeen 255,000 for the year sept 2009 to sept 2010. As the total for June 2011was 250,000 the BBC have claimed this means that essentially immigration issteady and has not risen.
You could interpret it as it actually is….that immigration rose in Sept 2010and has continued at that high level ever since. This is of course the exact opposite trick they play with temperatures whenreporting climate change….here they ignore the plateau of 14 or so years thattemperatures have remained unchanged and claim there is a trend of risingtemperature despite this levelling off. Using the same analogy as the BBC for temperature you would have to sayimmigration is showing a rising trend. (and net migration is a figure which hides a lot…because 500,000 nativeBritish might emigrate, 500,000 foreigners immigrate here and the net figurewould be zero….but in effect you would have a much larger immigrantpopulation percentage wise in the UK slipping under the radar.)”
Thanks to the BBC-lite version of the Today programme, I am unable to link you to the direct item on this morning’s programme but it appears at 8.10am and is between Evan Davies and Chris Grayling, the topic being the various government programmes to get the unemployed into some form of work experience. This interview concludes a very successful work for the BBC which has led a jihad against the notion that Job Seekers should be seeking job experience in exchange for their benefits. This, as the BBC and the Socialist Workers Party would tell us, is “slave labour.” I thought Grayling handled himself quite well, correcting several wild claims by Davies but the brutal truth is that several large UK retailers have been put in a difficult position, thanks to the publicity afforded Big Sloth by the BBC, and are rapidly distancing themselves from the work experience concept. I notice that the BBC chooses not to discuss it’s OWN unpaid work positions – a classic example of the churning hypocrisy in play here.
Anyone catch this John Humphyrs interview with William Hague on Today this morning. What fascinated me was how a discussion regarding what could be done to help those people suffering under the Assad regime in Syria suddenly was switched by Humphyrs into trying to get Hague to say that the UK would never support military action against…Iran. And in particular, should Israel move against the Mad Mullahs, would the UK ensure no support whatsoever would be afforded. To be fair to Hague he did repeat the line that NO options are off the table but it’s the way in which the BBC seems to have linked Assad’s butchery of his own people to that of Israel seeking to prevent the annihilation of their people at the hands of the thugs in Tehran. As I recall there was a similar attempted “gotcha” last week using the same trick and it makes me think the BBC worry more about Israel defending itself than Iran attacking it. I’ve had an exchange in the past day with New Statesman Editor Medhi Hasan and he articulates a defence for Iran that I believe will become the narrative for the BBC as conditions deteriorate.
