Author Archives: Robin Horbury

The real story in this item is that fanatical, smug, well-off greenies who want the indulgence of owning cars that do inferior mileage and are hobbled by having to be off the road for hours at a time while they are re-charged, are being handed £43m of our cash in subsidies. Think how many old people that would help keep warm. The second seam of utter nonsense in the so-called story is that a Cleggeron called Hammond spouts platitudes that we can have “convenience without carbon”. Eh? What planet does he live on? These are cars that the public have shown that they absolutely do not want; the only “convenience” is that we have a government of nutcases who are providing a jacuzzi of cash to support the nonsense. As usual, the BBC reports the whole scam as though it’s a major breakthrough.

Here’s Roger Harrabin’s take on Cancun. Pushing the official BBC alarmist line as usual, he’s terribly worried that not enough is being done to “curb emissions”. Sadly, he doesn’t mean his own:

Study after study shows that the current offers of emissions cuts are way, way off track, supposing that the climate models are right.

Of course, Mr Harrabin firmly believes that those models are right, and he and the BBC have done their bit in pushing them hard over the past few days as part of their cheer-leading towards world government.

And as B-BBC contributors have noticed, Mr Harrabin puts a completely different gloss on the “achievements” of Cancun, because elsewhere (unlike in his own eulogy) they have been universally ridiculed as a failed greenie propaganda coup. First, he chooses – as usual – a ludicrous propaganda picture to illustrate his story. Second, compare his take on the story to the normally econut Times, which stated this morning:

The climate change conference in Cancún has ended with failure to set a target date for the reduction of carbon emissions The Mexican hosts of the 16th annual UN Climate Change Conference were determined that Cancún would not share Copenhagen’s fate by becoming synonymous with failure. They persuaded 192 out of 193 countries to accept the “Cancún agreement” by the simple trick of aiming for the lowest common denominator — the agreement was secured by deferring decisions on all of the most contentious issues.

Or try this, from Dr Benny Peiser:

The UN climate summit shows that there is no prospect whatever for a global and legally binding climate treaty. All that the Cancun summit has done is to bless, formally, the Copenhagen accord, and roll it forward for another year.Despite all the usual rhetoric by politicians and campaigners, the fact remains that yet another attempt has failed to reach a legally binding agreement.

I have asked time and time again when Mr Harrabin will show anything other than thick-headed obstinacy in reporting the necromancy that is AGW; I fear the answer is never.

I don’t know culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. But I do know something of his views, courtesy of the Observer, today; and what is increasingly clear is that he talks utter nonsense. This, for example, is his considered pronouncement about the BBC:

“It is one of our crown jewels,” he says. “It produces fantastic TV programmes.” And it has “probably the most respected news service in the world”.

Despite such vomit-inducing sycophancy, he can force himself to offer a few words of criticism about the great corporation that swallows £3.5bn of our cash a year. Although even then, he is mealy-mouthed:

“I think if you were to discover how people vote at the BBC there are probably more ho vote Labour or Liberal Democrat than vote for the Conservatives.. (but)”their commitment to independent journalism comes before any political affiliation”.

and this:

“I think the BBC does recognise that on certain very totemic issues of the last decade it was out of step with where the public are, whether it was on Europe, on immigration or our approach to Northern Ireland.”

So let’s get this straight. We supposedly have a reformist government of the right and all it can muster by way of criticism of the BBC is vague namby-pamby platitudes about left-wing bias in the past and a vague stab at clairvoyance in guessing that some BBC staff might not vote Conservative. Oh, my word, quelle horreur!

The reality is that systematic evidence is available that over the past decade, the BBC newsgathering operation has been fanatically biased on issues such as the British history, the EU, climate change, coverage of Islam and Israel – and much more. Biased-BBC has chronicled much of it, and I know of at least 20 in-depth reports that are publicly available, including one commissioned by the Conservative party itself. There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see. The Tories could do something if they wanted, but the will is clearly lacking…and instead, it looks like we might end up with Blair crony Jonathan Powell as new chair of the BBC Trust. I increasingly agree with James Delingpole that despite all the bluster, this government is indistinguishable from that of Brown and Blair. We have a ruling class that is totally out of touch with reality.

So, an agreement has been reached by the 20,000 fanatics at Cancun. Billions of pounds are to be wasted in battling the biggest non-existent problem ever imagined, and millions of people worldwide are going to be condemned to needlessly intensfying fuel poverty; meanwhile the UN bureaucrats will get fatter and more powerful as they dream up endless Gormenghast laws. The BBC, of course, is crowing about how marvellous this is and still giving airtime only to those who think this criminal straitjacket on development is not enough. And providing ludicrous, lying graphics supposedly outlining the scale of the problem. Get ready for an outpouring of triumphalism…

Update: …as I predicted, here, from Richard Black, on the one hand saying how wonderful and surprising the Cancun accord is, on the other, worrying, as usual, that the meaasures aren’t enough. Scepticism? Not even on the page. For real reporting of the Cancun travesty, try Booker, spot on as usual.

This morning, the BBC focuses on a new government scam to insulate our homes , then there’s fawning coverage of heroic Chris Huhne the ecoloon’s mission to try get a binding treaty at Cancun, and oh, by the way, don’t worry because it’s getting warmer (even though the army has had to becalled in to deal with the heaviest snowfall in Scotland for 50 years after the coldest start to December since 1659). There is a wearisome and continuing common thread to all this BBC hot air in that the usual econuts are quoted throughout, warning us that the end of the world is nigh because of AGW; the message is that we must all support the government and the ruling class in their maniacal plans to impose more taxes to save us all.

However, in the real world, outside the BBC bubble, there are important developments that you will never see reported on the BBC. Around 1,000 scientists active in climate and climate-related fields (many of them formerly part of the UN IPCC process) have published a ground-breaking new report comprehensively debunking the AGW mythology and lies. Here is an extract:

“In essence, the jig is up. The whole thing is a fraud. And even the fraudsters that fudged data are admitting to temperature history that they used to say didn’t happen…Perhaps what has doomed the Climategate fraudsters the most was their brazenness in fudging the data” — Dr. Christopher J. Kobus, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, specializes in alternative energy, thermal transport phenomena, two-phase flow and fluid and thermal energy systems.

If you have time, I also recommend a reading of Donna Laframbois’s marvellous tracking of the UN IPCC lies-assembly process. Effectively, far from being rigorous science, it’s a chance for each of the lead authors to plug their own work. This is another report you won’t see reference to anywhere on the BBC.

Last night, I had a long chat with a BBC man I last saw during 1983 in Derek Amore’s days at BBC Radio London. He subsequently became one of the key developers of the BBC website. He’s out of it now; but the point he made was important. Departing deputy director general Mark Byford – he believes – imposed on the newsgathering and editorial operation over the past decade a centralised control that included rigid policy lines on issues like global warming, where the BBC maintain there is a “consensus”. This, he explained, was a deliberate approach aimed at creating supposed consistency, but its impact on editorial independence has been disastrous. Mr Byford, of course, is an automaton Stalinist by instinct, and so it all seems plausible – the editorial soul of the BBC (if it ever existed, which I increasingly doubt)was hijacked by a leftist control freak.

The BBC is impartial, as we know, because it tells us loudly and often, especially when it comes to reporting the weather and climate. I wonder, then, why it expunges from weather stories figures that show record cold in North Yorkshire? And also why it is champing at the bit in reporting record world heat when a few minutes with a calculator will tell you that even despite natural warming cycles, 2010 is actually not over yet and the figures do not show any records have been broken? Could it be that Richard Black and Co desperately want an agreement at Cancun?

Meanwhile, Roger Harrabin gleefully reports our ruling class’s continued obscene efforts to sabotage the UK energy generation capacity so that we are forced into fuel poverty. When are we going to rise up against this useless, lying, shower?

I have been a victim of this latest manifestation of global warming for the past few days – travelling to London and at the mercy of years of the deliberate running down of emergency cold weather planning caused because our fat, stupid, complacent, ruling class believes only in the AGW myth. On Wednesday night, I was stranded at Crawley when Southern rail dumped me there at 10pm at night; never in more than 20 years of using the London to Brighton line has anything comparable happened. But no worries, it’s the warmest year ever, don’t you know? And don’t worry, the BBC is pushing away to reassure us that windpower will save the day. Honest. What will it take for our idiot politicians and planners to wake up? The BBC generally is treating this major national emergency as though it was a minor hiccup because it does not fit into their narrative, what’s going on is a bit of ice. That’s OK then. And meanwhile, their so-called science and environment page is filled with the usual AGW drivel, giving voice to the idiot Maldives prime minister who, as usual at events like Cancun, has his begging bowl out. I could not find anything on the BBC about this story, though, the Met Office’s High Prietess of the AGW religion, Vicky Pope, stranded at Gatwick on her way to Cancun. And what about this? – we are giving away £37m more in farming subsidies to deal with “climate change” when old folk back home are severely suffering because they can’t afford the government’s artificially-inflated fuel prices.

There’s a wilful burrowing of collective BBC heads in the sand and a cold-hearted determination to keep the AGW lies mill in full production. Me, I’m off to London again, back at the mercy of all that little bit of ice.

Something for the weekend….George, as always wants to hear your views.