Author Archives: Robin Horbury

WHINGE TWO…

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Tim Montgomerie, in his opinion piece, accompanying the Daily Mail editorial about whinge watch, observes:

Most BBC staff members probably make every effort to leave their political views at the door of the recording studio, but if you are surrounded by people who have only ever worked for the state and have never been part of the wealthcreation process, you struggle to think any differently.

What utter nonsense, the sort of thinking that means that the ills of the BBC will never be tackled by politicians, “poor dears, they are under all sorts of pressures, and they don’t really mean to be biased”. The reality is that most BBC staff spend every moment of their working days calculating out how to diss their enemies,and how to ignore points of view that they don’t agree with. On their agenda (for starters): their eternal love-in with the EU; their admiration of Islam, and the follow-on anti-Semtism and anti-Christianity; their love affair with terrorists; the eco-crusade; their hatred of anything that might be called “right-wing”….

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WHINGE ONE….

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First in whinge watch, a perfect story in the BBC green lexicon: nutter scientists call for new EU laws that will see billions of pounds of our money spent on driving out so called alien species from Europe. Of course, the BBC website reports this buffoonery with bated-breath admiration because it involves their beloved EU doing what it does best, that is, pouring cash down the drain. I’m all for sensible husbandry, but the idea that Europe can be returned to a pristine, pre-industrial, Garden of Eden state is green eco-fascism. I can think of hundreds of ways that 12 billion euros could be better spent, for example on new coal-fired power stations that would ameliorate fuel poverty. Or on stimulating economic expansion.

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HARRABIN: MORE FUDGE

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The Global Warming Policy Foundation report into the various “inquiries” that have been held into Climategate was published yesterday, and author Andrew Montford’s very thorough analysis paints a disturbing picture of whitewash and fudge. As regular B-BBC commenter John Anderson lucidly points out in response to my previous post and on What’s Up With That?, coverage of the report by the MSM – even the Guardian – notes that Mr Montford had landed some disturbing punches on the alarmists’ conduct. Predictably, for the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, it’s a different approach. First he claims that the real issue raised by the report is a call for the resignation of the head of the IPCC; second, he gives just three short lip-service parapagraphs to the main substance of Mr Montford’s analysis, buried towards the end of the story; and thirdly, he gives far more space to blustering negative responses from a fanatical warmist MP – who repeats the mantra that the vast majority of scientists believe in global warming, so they must be right, and that those who don’t aren’t scientists – and the UEA, who of course continue to defend their entrenched position. You can rely on our Roger to distort or misrepresent everything to do with climate scepticism.

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NEW ADVANCE IN BBC ECO-CRUSADE

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As readers of Biased- BBC already know, BBC environment correspondent Richard Black has repeatedly filed reports that are rather alarmist about climate change and seem to advance what I would call a crude political agenda, linked closely with the UN’s attempts at world domination.

Mr Black is a busy boy behind the scenes, too. He recently chaired a session about that latest UN buzz-word “biodiversity” at the BBC College of Journalism, which was set up to spread best practice in the corporation’s £1bn-a year news operations and is compulsorily attended by them all.

Mr Black opens by telling the assembled throng baldly that a “staggering” fact is that in the last 40 years, the number of creatures alive on earth has fallen by one third, and that man is responsible.

I am not a zoologist (neither is Mr Black), but a few minutes’ digging on the internet made it clear to me that: a) scientists don’t have reliable, uncontested data on this topic; b) it’s not as simple as that, and projections of extinctions and decline are based on models constructed mainly by biologists who are also political activists; c) claims about biodiversity are inextricably linked with the global warming agenda; and d) some scientists believe that biodiversity is not on the decline, and that the number of extinctions in recent history are few.

In other words, Mr Black’s opening to the “briefing” to the College of Journalism was a crushingly one-sided affair, and it seems that “biodiversity” is the new front in his alarmism – see this post, too. What’s particular chilling about the episode is that it’s clear that this is an organised, systematic attempt at brainwashing, delivered under the guise of “objectivity”. What the corporation is actually involved in is nothing less than an eco-crusade, with Today editor Ceri Thomas’s membership of the Science Media Centre part of the same jigsaw.

There were other major problems with Mr Black’s session, not least of which was was the choice of speaker, but I’ll make those the subject of another post.

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR …

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Can you imagine what would happen if the BBC greeted a visit by a leading figure from the Muslim world with a poll about whether the teachings of the said imam were relevant, believed or liked by a sample of 500 UK Muslims? What would the questions be? Do you believe that those who become human bombers are granted access to an endless supply of virgins? Or, should Iranian women who conduct adultery be stoned, hanged or flogged? Should we treat women equally? Should all Muslims in Bradford compulsorily join next year’s Gay Pride march in Leeds?

Now I know there are thousands of Muslims who maintain that their faith isn’t like this – it’s the religion of peace and enlightenment, don’t you know – but the point is that the BBC would not dream of it. They know if that happened, they would be howled down with protests. So why, when the Pope comes to Britain for only the second time, do the BBC feel it neccessary to give themselves a carte blanche licence to lecture us about Catholicism? Putting aside that a poll of 500 people is not a properly representative sample (that number was no doubt chosen to keep down costs), and though I am not myself particularly religious, I do know enough people who are to respect that their faith is not something that can be probed or dissected or analysed by crude, mechanistic one-liners. The reality is that the boys and girls of the BBC hate – as a fervent tenet of their own secularist religion – Christianity of all shades, and they feel that any device that challenges the authority of the Church is fair game. Their opinion-poll approach reduces their coverage of Christianity to a moronic, agent provocateur, embarrassing charade.

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GADFLIES…

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Back in July, Roger Harrabin discussed climate sceptics’ concerns that the Oxburgh report into the conduct of the University of East Anglia eco-campaigners involved in Climategate had not been carried out properly, principally because there were allegations that the papers considered by the report team had been selected by the so-called scientists under investigation. In a typical Mr Harrabin analysis, he pretended to be objective, but made it very clear what he thought about the allegations:

The scientific establishment is not used to having its proceedings pulled apart by gadfly inquisitors, often armed with Freedom of Information e-mail chains. Privately, some senior scientists say they find this relentless probing to be nit-picking, mistrustful, obsessive and corrosive of public trust.They see it as a waste of time, and therefore of public money.

Spool forward to today. These “gadfly (Harrabin-speak for nuisance?) inquisitors” who are “corrosive of public trust” have burrowed into the answers given by Lord Oxburgh to a House of Commons select committee and found that his lordship was at best being disingenuous and evasive in his answers in explaining the background to the inquiry. First, he and his team spent the grand total of just seven and a half hours in Norwich investigating the background to Climategate with the scientists involved, and second, it looks increasingly like the list of papers chosen for the inquiry analysis was selected by the scientists under investigation, namely Phil Jones and his East Anglian team. More on the problems is here – a brilliant exposition by Tony Newton, of Harmless Sky.

In short, the fears of those “gadflies” that Mr Harrabin was so quick to dismiss have proved to be substantiated; and the Oxburgh report looks increasingly like it was little more than a devious charade. I could go on, there is much more to this sordid tale of an establishment stitch-up. The point is that our Roger was yet again on the side of the villains, and as quick as ever to condemn his hated “sceptics”. I’ve looked carefully to see if there are any signs of the BBC reporting these latest Oxburgh developments; so far, surprise, surprise, there are none – not a peep. That oft-used BBC approach: bias by omission.

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PUMPING AWAY…..

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I am someone who hates new laws unless they can be shown to be really necessary, and I despair as our lunatic politicians – of whatever stripe – see the solution to every issue to be yet more legislation. We are now surrounded by an army of bureaucrats who measure and regulate every aspect of our behaviour, from disposing of refuse to breathing, and it’s my bet that, despite big Dave’s promise to slash quangos, more will be in place when he leaves office than when he arrived.

One such useless body is the Energy Savings Trust, a veritable army of jack-booted public servants whose job is to force us to use less of the power that makes our lives so comfortable, and think instead – guiltily and with alarm – about living in green communities, worrying about climate change, and above all, worshipping at the altar of the lesser carbon footprint. The BBC, of course, reports their every word with religious reverence. Mark Kinver (one of the BBC website’s leading eco-warriors) gives us a sleep-inducing sermon on the marvels of the heat-pump, all clothed in the self-righteous alarmist language that is the default mode used to lecture us. The BBC – if it were a true journalistic operation – would be asking searching questions about why we need to spend billions (that’s what the climate change section of public service costs) on such flatulent outpourings when the real message is that if you design a better heat pump, you save a bit of cash. And you don’t need the fascists of the Energy Saving Trust to tell you that.

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MELTING DOUBTS…

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I have not often written about narwhals, but the BBC’s continuing green obsession and failure to observe journalistic fundamentals takes me there today. Here, BBC eco-campaigner Matt Walker (formerly a writer for the warmist publication New Scientist) reports with bated breath so-called research from some of his fellow obsessives from California which claims that the said narwhals are under threat from climate change because they swim slowly and will not be able to breathe properly when they are surrounded by breaking, melting ice floes.

Now, I am not a scientist, but something that my junior school teacher called common sense nevertheless tells me that narwhals have been around for rather a long time, and that the amount of ice around in the arctic has fluctuated considerably over the millenia (glaciation and all that), so our marine friends must have learned to adapt. But don’t just take my undeducated word for it. Here, and here, a Portuguese blogger called Ecotretas, who clearly has studied deeply the ebb and flow of the Arctic, points out that there was more open sea seven thousand years ago and narwhals managed to survive.

In other words, the California story is alarmist tosh. Mr Walker, had he done even a smidgeon of good old-fashioned journalistic digging, could have found the papers that Ecotretas refers to. But balanced journalism is not on his agenda. Never let the facts get in the way of a good BBC eco-scare.

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HARRABIN: I AM GUILTY

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I’ve listened to Roger Harrabin’s second and final programme about climate change available here (due to be broadcast on R4 tonight). Obviously B-BBC readers will make up their own minds whether the programme could be regarded as balanced, but I have deliberately chosen this out-of-context phrase from Mr Harrabin because in my view his whole construct was deeply flawed. Yes he interviewed so-called sceptics, and yes, he conveyed elements of their perspective. But this was only a classic BBC lip-service ploy to convey fairness. The reality was that, on balance, he was snidely scathing about all those who disbelieve in the warmist fantasies, and at the same time, went out of his way to build credence for alarmists, both by allocating them more space and by talking of them reverentially as “mainstream” and “establishment” scientists. He gave his carefully chosen “sceptics” some space, but knocked them down by a combination of snide innuendo, highly selective editing, and by failing to put across their ideas in a way that showed them respect. The whole exercise reminded me of a Mafia chief saying he must be right because most those in his orbit agreed with him. All very unsurprising – it’s what Mr Harrabin does, after all – but people I know were asking me at the weekend if these two programmes showed he might be having second thoughts about his warmist zeal. The answer is clearly a resounding ‘no’. And he and the BBC are as committed to their green religion as they always have been. In future months the corporation will wheel Uncertain Climate out as an example of them giving “sceptics” airtime. But it was a charade.

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RED LETTER DAY!

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The BBC will go to any lengths to say it is not biased, as Mark Thompson has graphically shown this week with his faux confession that the corporation was guilty of bias in the past but not now. The Leviathan wriggles, it bends, it contorts, it grimaces in pursuit of that central tenet. We on this site know that such defensiveness is a load of hogwash, but it’s nevertheless very rare for anyone who has held a senior position to break ranks and come clean on the record.

September 5 is therefore a red letter day, because former Today editor Rod Liddle, writing in the Sunday Times (frustratingly, I can’t link to the article because of the site paywall),lays bare the pressures he was under in the early noughties. He tells how every week, he was summoned to the office of his boss to be lectured on the need for impartiality on topics such as the US election – by a man who had posters on his wall supporting the Democrats. He also relates a story about something I know something about, having been to some extent involved.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch – back in 2001, a Conservative peer, now of course, soon-to-be ex-leader of UKIP – commissioned a series of independent reports into the BBC’s coverage of the EU. This work, stretching back to 1999, is very detailed, systematic analysis of a range of BBC programmes, and has found – as readers of this site will know – that the BBC’s coverage of the EU seriously under-represents the eurosceptic perspective (to put it mildly).

Mr Liddle recounts how he was persuaded that what the reports said had substance, and he raised this at his weekly meeting with his Democrat-supporting boss. The response? He was told that Lord Pearson and “these people” (behind the report) were “mad”.

Adds Mr Liddle:

“Ah, that’s the BBC. Desperate to be fair, according to its charter, but never truly fair. its editorial staff are convinced that they are not remotely biased, just rational and civil and decent, and that those who oppose their congenial, educated, middle-class poiint of view are not merely right-wing, but deranged. They will not for a second accept that they are in fact biased at all…”

What Mr Liddle does not say is that when he was editor of Today, he was just as guilty of stonewalling complaints as his colleagues. He met Lord Pearson to discuss the issues raised by the reports about the EU back in 2001. Then, exactly like his boss, he resolutely defended his programme’s output and accused Lord Pearson in print of trying to define bias by stopwatch. This was a classic BBC diversionary riposte that conveniently glossed over that the reports were far more than measurement of the time devoted to the eurosceptic perspective. But at least our Roger has at last seen the light.

Peter Hitchens also looks today at BBC bias in the wake of Mark Thompson’s remarks this week. Relevant to what Rod Liddle says, he notes the recent admission by BBC reporter Jonathan Charles about the blind new-era excitement he and his colleagues felt when the euro was launched almost a decade ago. Lord Pearson also complained about that, and he backed it up with solid analysis of how biased the coverage had been. Like everything else, the document was pooh-poohed by BBC top brass as xenophobic fanatasy.

Update: I have been told that one of Rod Liddle’s bosses resorted to libelling the author of the Lord Pearson-commissioned EU reports as part of the BBC anything-goes approach to attacking its enemies. The then chief political advisor told Lord Pearson that the report writer was not to be trusted because he had been sacked by the BBC. This was an outright untruth which she was forced to retract following a lawyer’s letter.

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