Author Archives: Robin Horbury

I see Roger Harrabin and Richard Black – both main environment reporters at the BBC – as a rather sinister version of a modern-day Box and Cox act. Roger does his bit, then up pops Richard, spouting from the same hymn sheet. And here, in type, and on time, is Richard Black – aided by BBC weatherman Darren Bett (and Met Office slave), who, in his own words, became an “environmental scientist” because he didn’t have the grades to become a doctor – softening us up to tell us that despite December being the coldest for a century, we are at the end of the warmest year on record. Actually, Mr Black and Mr Bett, despite your certainty that cold swallows don’t make summers, that’s not as open and shut as you so strongly claim. Try here, here, , here and here. Of course, reporters such as Mr Black and so-called scientists like Mr Bett don’t do such humble research or mention such doubts; they already know – in their greenie fervour and lofty towers – what the narrative is and will invariably be. A ray of hope, though, is here. Climate scare stories are on the decline. Could our very own Box and Cox be for the chop?

(Picture of a production of C19 production of Box and Cox from Wikipedia)

Following up my post yesterday about Roger Harrabin’s partisan antics, eagle-eyed B-BBC reader John Horne Tooke found this gem, about our Roger’s chairing of the Environment Agency’s annual conference in November. This body, of course is chaired by former Labour culture minister, Chris Smith, who long since abandoned his marbles in his zeal for the green creed. The report of the conference is so jaw-dropping about Mr Harrabin that it deserves to be quoted almost in full:

As students and police clashed outside the Environment Agency’s annual conference got confrontational as its chairman attacked the Government for gagging the chairman and cutting its funding.

Against a background of police helicopters and loudly protesting students the Environment Agency annual conference yesterday (November 24) started with an attack on climate change scepticism and coalition cuts.

The event’s chair, the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin, tore into the coalition Government and the apathy he perceived around cuts as well as the climate change movement.

Mr Harrabin, who opened as well as chaired the event in central London, introduced the agency’s chairman Lord Chris Smith saying he’d been gagged: “His words will have been edited in his head otherwise he’s facing the sack.”

The presenter also criticised Caroline Spelman, the secretary of state for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), over the cuts to her department which described as ‘the very worst’.

He said: “Everything is being cut and there’s widespread support for what is happening, everyone seems to be persuaded that cuts are the only way ahead.

“And DEFRA, from the greenest government this country has ever seen, has some of the very worst cuts floods and biodiversity are challenged even more than they were before.

“I hear talk in DEFRA of a lack of confidence, a lack of a sense of direction from a lot officials they don’t quite know where this is all going.”

Mr Harrabin also branded reports of plans to sell of Forestry Commission assets as ‘extremely controversial’.

So let’s get this straight. Mr Harrabin is levering his position as an “influential” environmentalist to earn extra money (up to £10,000 a pop, according the agencies with which he is registered) in chairing government conferences…a role which he uses as a platform to spout what looks like naked, unqualified anti-government, greenie propaganda? Of course, I’m relying on the report on the Edie site to reach my conclusions, and he may have been misreported, or reported out of context. But if only a fraction of what is in the account is correct, then what Mr Harrabin has become is a fully-fledged taxpayer-funded political activist. That squares with what Autonomous Mind and James Delingpole have also noted in terms of Mr Harrabin’s relationship with the Met Office. How does all this fit in with the BBC’s so-called impartiality?

Guess which distinguished BBC correspondent has made these carefully neutral predictions for people to watch in 2011?

Sarah Palin: The momentum is there to nominate her, so how will the world react to the possibility of a Moose-huntin’ right-wing mom as president?

Ed Balls: The Labour Party’s prince across the water (or the corridor) will have a hard time biting his lip if the new party leadership does not improve.

Julian Assange: He ain’t done yet!

The answer is here (clue – he works for Newsnight and he doesn’t vote Tory!).

Back in December 2006,when there was no snow in Red Square, no ice on the Moskva river (for the first time in decades), and some European ski resorts were without snow, the BBC were very keen to report matters. Like a rat up a drainpipe, James Cove was also avid to tell us that many blamed AGW for the so-called problem, and that the OECD (brimming no doubt with climatological expertise) was warning that the ski-ing industry faced a future of sharply diminishing returns.

Over the past few days , it’s been reported almost everywhere on the blogsphere that December 2010 has been the coldest in 120 years, record snowfalls have been falling in everywhere from the Arizona desert to Mongolia, and that Moscow airport has faced a revolt from passengers because it could not cope with the volumes of snow. Not only that, the record cold has cost billions in bills for inadequate infrastructure and repairs to frozen gas-fired boilers that John Prescott ordained were best for dealing with climate change. Ski resorts? They are on a roll, according to latest figures from last winter. On the BBC, there’s so far an eerie silence on all these topics. Nothing. Yadda. Zilch. I wonder why?

Further digging into Common Purpose to follow up yesterday’s post. I accept fully Lloyd’s observation (in the comments) that £150,000 spent by the BBC on Common Purpose over seven years is small beer, when you consider that BBC income was around £17bn in the same period. But John Anderson also made an important point. The BBC should surely not be sending anyone on courses that are not directly related to broadcasting. The fact that senior management is authorising such expenditure on a significant scale suggests endorsement (even if only tacit) at the highest levels of the corporation. And there is further evidence that very senior management do endorse CP – Richard Sambrook (whom I know well), the former head of news, and a pivotal figure in BBC senior management over the past two decades, has attended the course.

Such endorsement does not, of course, mean that the BBC is being run on CP principles. A staff of 20,000 cannot be herded like sheep. However, as anyone who has been involved in political organisation will attest, a 100-or-so dedicated individuals (the figure that have attended CP courses) – if they have support, or are not opposed, in the right quarters – can have a disproportionate and highly effective influence. It looks to me, from the fact that Mr Sambrook and Robert Peston have so publicly supported CP, that the highest levels of the BBC are very definitely not opposed to its agenda and aims.

And although Lloyd drew a blank in his search for further BBC connections, I am not so sure. I looked for example, at Futerra, an ultra-greenie PR outfit which I have noted in the past the BBC has also used for “training” purposes. This is run by Solitaire Townsend,who fully endorses the type of greenie-lefty agenda being pushed by CP. She also sits on the board of an outfit called Tomorrow’s Company, which – like Futerra – is up to its gills in sustainable development, UN goals and everything that the BBC holds so dearly. Also on the board of this outfit is a chap called Grahame Broadbent. He happens to be – wait for it – operations director of Common Purpose, and former managing director of think tank Demos, founded by Julia Middleton (and beloved by the BBC), the founder of CP, and the vehicle through which she has carved political influence.

This, of course, still looks tenuous and is circumstantial. But isn’t this how these organisations operate? And I say it again. Wherever there is vigorous prosecution of liberal-left greenie goals, the BBC also seems to be there. By contrast, has anyone yet found a significant BBC UKIP or Adam Smith Institute connection?

Update: I am happy to accept (see posting below) that Richard Sambrook has spoken at, but not actually undergone CP training. I am also delighted that he has posted here – the highest level (in his case ex-, because he now works in PR) BBC input I can ever recall to B-BBC, though of course, I was also threatened with libel proceedings some time ago by Richard Black.

What Richard doesn’t say speaks volumes. Why did the corporation spend £150,000 on sending dozens of staff on these courses when quite patently they have liberal-left, greenie, EU-supporting, take-over-the-world approach? Why do the BBC send staff on training courses to organisations like Futerra? He says he has spoken at many other groups – but why do anything at all that can be interpreted as endorsement of such a cause? When I worked at the BBC, back in the 1980s, I am pretty sure such actions would not have been sanctioned.

Incidentally, Richard, I do know you well (albeit from a long time ago), even if you do not recognise my name.

I have begun to dig into BBC connections with a shadowy organisation called Common Purpose. This, according to some, is a sinister conspiratorial group – run by a scary woman called Julia Middleton – that is seeking to create an alternative government in the UK under the guise of a leadership programme. Opponents of CP have built interesting evidence that it has already managed to infiltrate many senior posts in organisations such as the police, and is busy consolidating that hold through more than 100 regional operations in the UK and many more abroad.

What are its goals? Broadly – as a perusal of the opponents’ website quickly shows – liberal-left elitist, pro-EU and strongly in favour of “sustainability”, a word used by greenies as shorthand for a left-wing agenda to destroy the capitalist system and the West.

Unsurprisingly for such a group, BBC connections are not hard to find. Bees to a honeypot. The corporation has spent more than £150,000 on sending dozens of its senior staff on CP “courses”, and business editor Robert Peston and International Development correspondent David Loyn are not only acolytes but serve on the board of what seems to be a CP subsidiary called the Media Standards Trust (alongside figures such as Amelia Fawcett, chairman of the Guardian Media Group and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC) which ostensibly aims to improve standards of journalism; in practice this means reporting in line with CP goals and policies.

Scratch the surface of the CP website and it quickly becomes apparent that one of its main goals is to ensure that we are all indoctrinated about the evils of climate change, through projects with names such as CHANGEit(sic). It works towards doing this with Deutsche Bank, an organisation that is so besotted by AGW that it publishes pamphlets on how to spot and root out sceptics.

CP was brought to my attention the other night by a journalist friend; I had never heard of it, but within seconds of digging was struck by the huge neon-lit signposts leading to the BBC. Is there nothing the corporation is not doing to foster its political agenda?

If B-BBC readers know anything first-hand about CP, or better still, have been on one of its courses (or knows someone who has), I’d love to hear from you: robinhorbury@gmail.com. I am not normally one for conspiracy theories, but this one is intriguing. Common Purpose may be completely harmless, but somehow, I doubt it.

On the BBC website, there’s still not a shred of attempted analysis of why this winter has so far been so cold not just here but now in the US – and why their beloved Met Office has got it so wrong. Odd, perhaps, in the context of the BBC’s warming fervour? Elsewhere on the web, there’s acres of discussion, and the warmists themselves have gone into overdrive trying to tell us that this is not climate, it’s weather, and in any case, the severe cooling is actually warming because we might be cold but Greenland isn’t. What will it take, I wonder, for Richard Black or Roger Harrabin to spring into action?

Meanwhile, as the boys and girls of the BBC polish their silence in their nice warm offices, even the BBC’s leading cricket commentator, Jonathan Agnew, has filed this from Melbourne:

It seems a bit odd saying this but for summer it is very cold here. Temperatures have been down at around 13 degrees with a biting wind. It is not much fun sitting in a big ground like that with virtually no sunshine, freezing to death.

A whole army of Neros (back at base) fiddling while Rome burns?