Author Archives: Robin Horbury

CHAKRABATI STRIKES AGAIN!

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One of the main BBC stories this Monday morning is that efforts are being made to create a new ‘anti-slavery’ law in the UK. Surprise, surprise, it is supported by the BBC favourite harridan-in-chief, the ubiquitous Shami Chakrabati, as well as Anti-Slavery, described as ‘the only British charity to fight slavery’. The concern among some sections of the political classes who have sanctioned the influx of millions of immigrants is apparently that some of these incomers are being forced to work long hours for little money by ruthless gangmasters.

The chaps at the BBC, of course, support the whole idea of more new laws, first by giving such heavy emphasis to such a non-story (even Anti-Slavery concede there are only 1,000 people possibly affected), and second by ensuring that, in the write-up of this non problem (which, in reality, can easily be dealt with by existing legislation), those who want a deluge of new laws to regulate our behaviour, including Ms Chakrabati, are given the greatest prominence.

This particular topic is viewed as esepcially important by the BBC because, of course, to them, slavery was a nasty and inexplicable part of our imperial past, and there’s nothing that the BBC hates more than Britain’s colonialism.

And missed altogether in the reporting is the obvious link to why Nick Griffin and his racism thrive; that this ‘problem’ has been created by the very liberal classes (including the BBC) who are somehow surprised that, if you allow in to Britain on an unregulated basis hundreds of thousands of people with different types of behaviour, you import elements of their criminality, too.

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COPENHAGEN OR BUST

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Nick Griffin reverberations continue loudly, but meanwhile our friends at the BBC are pushing as hard as ever this weekend in their climate change nonsense. The corporation desperately wants agreement in Copenhagen, and is leaping at every opportunity to support moves which will have only one real effect: to condemn millions in Britain and throughout the world to fuel poverty.

Posted this morning was a story which, as usual, has related pictures of melting ice and a forlorn polar bear. It suggests that a sub-group of countries and legislators are working behind the scenes to ensure that agreement is reached to cut emissions come what may. As is wearily predictable in BBC “reporting” of such issues, the anonymous writer of the story accepts without question that cuts are needed; and he or she fails to report that thousands of scientists do not accept at all that global warming is even happening, let alone that measures are necessary to combat it.

What’s truly chilling about the report is that, according to the reporter, it seems that this shadowy sub-group possesses the power to implement its recommendations irrespective of the outcome of Copenhagen.

Meanwhile in the real world, Anthony Watts continues to report what is happening with the climate: temperatures in the US this fall are continuing to set record lows; and as this year’s hurricane season comes to an end, the tally for the storms that Al Gore so confidently and loudly predicted would escalate in numbers is this year? – er, none.

Reporting of any of this on the BBC? No.

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BBC "Tramples political impartiality into the dirt"

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As the dust settles over the Question Time BNP appearance, one thing is certain – the programme’s editors broadcast an atypical programme that was designed to attack Nick Griffin rather than explore (as it usually does) the issues of the day. I used to publicise the programme for the BBC. The then editors would never have permitted such a change in format, which they would have seen as a compromise of their independence and integrity. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has an editorial which says it all about today’s BBC. Read and enjoy:

Talk about bare-faced hypocrisy.

Amidst the furore over the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin on to Question Time, its director general, Mark Thompson, claims that he had no choice because of the Corporation’s ‘central principle of political impartiality’.

What a pity that the BBC for years has comprehensively trampled this so-called ‘central principle’ into the dirt.

This is an organisation that’s utterly in thrall to the left-wing agenda of the majority of its staff.

Until very recently, the BBC systematically censored any debate about immigration into Britain, a nation which, as was revealed yesterday, is on its way to a population of 70million.

It also treats global warming with the fervour of a religion, and is so pro-Brussels that even a report commissioned by the BBC itself found that it was hopelessly biased against the Eurosceptic position.

It’s an institution that by its very nature promotes alternative lifestyles and minority groups at the expense of traditional values, and it doesn’t have much time for Christianity, capitalism, or the countryside either.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of letting Mr Griffin onto Question Time, the BBC can’t pretend that some sacred principle of political impartiality had anything to do with it.

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BBC AGITPROP THAT WILL KILL MILLIONS

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One of the BBC’s favourite goals is promoting the views of lefty organisations that operate in the developing world – the charidees favoured by the likes of Bono, and NGOs supported with unilateral fervour by DFID . Most of them are on the global warming bandwagon, so for the boys and girls in the BBC newsroom, finding an excuse to publicise them and their anti-capitalist, anti-industry views is not difficult. Today’s peg is a report from the Royal Society which (not unreasonably for once) wants to improve crop production so that the world can feed more people. Among its highly sensible recommendations are a gradual shift to genetically modified plants, which have much bigger yields.

This, of course, a cue for the BBC to talk to every organisation under the sun which wants to ban such production, as well as to show a picture of Paul McCartney, a rather good singer who, for some reason best known to himself, has appointed himself a scientific expert and thinks he knows that GM foods are dangerous and harmful. This BBC kow-towing to the views of destructive left-wing groups is dangerously Luddite and will condemn millions of unborn children to starvation and premature death.

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BLACK BBC MOONSHINE

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I have read very carefully Richard Black’s defence of the BBC’s reporting of the so-called problem of “climate change” (mentioned by David Vance in a previous post). It’s an important statement that shockingly reveals the depth of the malais and dishonesty in BBC journalism. He’s in that strange cloud cuckoo land that BBC reporters inhabit, and he’s deployed all the standard BBC responses to claims of bias, especially the one that if both sides of a particular argument complain about a BBC feature, the corporation must be in the middle somewhere and therefore right.

What he doesn’t take into account, of course, is the fanatacism of the warmists who yell “rape” loudly the minute anyone questions their cherished religious beliefs; and what he studiously avoids (the elephant in the room) is the fact that in the years I have been following the BBC’s “climate change” coverage, there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of stories where the views of warmists – no matter how ridiculous or untrue (as in Gordon Brown’s maniacal codswallop this morning) – are reported unchallenged, while those containing the views of so-called “sceptics” can be counted on a few hands.

What he also doesn’t say is that the BBC Director general recently told a meeting of the Parliamentary media group that in his view, there is a “consensus” of scientific opinion that supports global warming, and therefore the BBC’s responsibility in reporting such “science” is to give prominence and precedence to the warmists. Thus there is deliberate, systematic under-reporting of “scepticism” sanctioned at the highest level of the corporation.

A test of Richard Black’s assertion that the BBC is getting it right could not be simpler. Take for example, the stunt a couple of days ago when the (Muslim, western-hating) cabinet of the Maldives met underwater to protest about “climate change”. Their views were given wall-to-wall Beeb coverage, not only on the website, but in BBC1 bulletins. What was conspicuously absent from the BBC’s reports were the views of the many scientists who have surveyed the Maldives and found that sea levels there are actually falling. The Watts Up With That website has shown persuasively that the government of the Maldives not only know that this is the case, but that also, they have actively censored the evidence.

When Richard Black and the rest of his BBC chums start publishing such information, I will be open to the idea that they might be changing. Until then, they remain climate change fanatics, bent on spreading scientific hocus-pocus of a type not seen this seen of the Enlightenment.

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DUMB AND DUMBER

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I caught only the last ten minutes of Today this morning. The main item was that Bob Dylan has released an album of Christmas songs. This was the cue for an inconsequential ageist chat about his career and whether he’s lost it. Yawn. What is happening to Today? This is the self-declared flagship of the BBC’s £800m-a-year news operation, but increasingly it fills its airtime with trivia about non news. I did analysis recently that shows that such Dylan-like content has risen from 2% of Today’s feature time five years ago to more than 14% now. No doubt the BBC news bigwigs believe that this is what people want, that the audience is interested in arty-farty stuff that fits in with their worldvew, and that wall-to-wall news is a bad thing. People such as Dylan are just as important in this picture because their lefty hogwash views are about changing the world. But meanwhile, coverage of the real issues that matter, such as the slow motion coup d’etat by the EU, are virtually ignored.

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NOT A FAIR COP

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Has anyone been watching the BBC1 drama Criminal Justice (running every night this week)? Critics are mostly raving about it, because the cast – led by the marvellous Maxine Peake – are first rate. There’s no doubt, too, that ex-barrister Peter Moffat, the writer, has considerable story-telling skills. But one aspect of it stinks to high heaven. As in almost every BBC drama that I can think of (apart, perhaps, from Waking the Dead), the coppers in it are portrayed as both idiotic and corrupt. Andrew Billen, in the Times, put it very well:

Are we expected to believe that policemen still remark in a solictor’s hearing that she has “nice tits” or that a senior officer encourages a suspect to make a confession after her lawyer has left or that he instructs a PC to lie about where they both were for a crucial hour?Even Moffat did not seem happy with having his wicked DI Chris Sexton baldly deny that rape within marriage is possible, a fallacy beaten out of coppers’ heads by any number of consciousness-raising workshops in the past decade.

I am not as sure as Billen that there aren’t cops who still think like this, and I also hate the way the police have become agents of political correctness gone mad. But one thing is certain: in the BBC’s world, cops are mostly incorrigibly bad, even when it makes their otherwise powerful dramas look idiotic and far-fetched.

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PAXMAN TORY TOFF CLAIMS

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I’ve known Jeremy Paxman since I worked with him on the university newspaper in Cambridge in 1971. Then, like most students of that era, he was an crusading lefty. Over the years, his politics have undoutedly changed, partly, I suspect, because he’s now firmly part of the hunting/fishing set. But elements of that sneering lefty, it seems, are still not far beneath the surface. They came out last night when he interviewed Boris Johnson on Newsnight. Boris strongly pooh-poohed suggestions that his past as a member of the Bullingdon Club was relevant to what he is doing now. Jeremy was having none of it. He descended into muttering name-calling, the main theme of which (though it was largely incoherent) seemed to be that Boris was a toff and the Tories were a party of privilege. That, of course, is a constant theme of BBC coverage of the party conference. Well worth a look.

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"SIMPLIFYING THE EU"

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Bias can take many forms. One the most basic is the use of language; consistently misrepresenting a subject can render coverage totally one-sided. In the case of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which is taking place today, the BBC decided some time ago that the treaty itself was about “simplifying the EU”. Liz McKean on Newsnight last night deployed the phrase at the beginning of her report; and it’s also here, on the BBC website. I’ve heard it used in almost every report about the topic, to the point of it being a mantra. Somebody, somewhere in the ranks of two thousand BBC journalists decided it was the correct description.

But I despise the EU, hate the whole exercise and want out. And to me – and those like me on sites like the excellent EU Referendum – the treaty is anything but “simplification”. That’s what Brussels itself calls it, the propaganda it has rammed it through by using. The reality is that every aspect of Lisbon is a stupifyingly complex, labyrinthine, anything-but-simple, slow motion coup d’etat through which the unelected and undemocratic ruling elite at the Barlaymont is creating further integration in the moves towards a Stalinist superstate. If you doubt me, you can read the document here.

The BBC loves the concept of “simple” because it wants with every sinew to allow the EU to ram through more measures on climate change, and because it will make the sainted Tony Blair the first EU president. What can be more “simplifying” than that?

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BBC IGNORES CLIMATE CHANGE FRAUD

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For years, the respected Climate Audit site has been warning that the famous “Hockey Stick” – a graph based on tree ring proxies used by the IPCC and Al Gore to “prove” their AGW propaganda – is inaccurate. Over the past few days, he has published conclusive evidence that it it is. The compiler simply took the most dramatic tree ring data and ignored the rest. The true picture is that surface temperatures have actually gone down. This was scientific fraud on a massive scale, and you can read about it here or here. The “hockey stick” graph was pivotal in the attempts to persuade the public to panic about AGW.

Chances of reading about this on the BBC? Absolutely nil. Today’s lead climate story is the Met Office warning that temperatures are going to rise by 4C by 2050. That, from a body that cannot even predict what will happen five days away.

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