Category Archives: BBC bias

I was interested to hear the BBC announce on the news this morning that many companies and banks were ‘deserting’ the Square Mile #DuetoBrexit.  Well some are setting up subsiduaries on the Continent but like Lloyds are not actually abandoning London which many think will remain the world’s financial centre….Lloyds only generating 11% of its profit from Europe.

Jenni Murray is being hounded for her opinions on Transgender people…apparently some students want to no-platform her for her views….much as the BBC no-platformed climate change sceptics…speaking of which…as the BBC pours cold water onto Brexit, we have take another look at some BBC concerns about the reliability of scientifc research…..note climate change is not mentioned…from 2014….

Everything We Know Is Wrong

Every day the newspapers carry stories of new scientific findings. There are 15 million scientists worldwide all trying to get their research published. But a disturbing fact appears if you look closely: as time goes by, many scientific findings seem to become less true than we thought. It’s called the “decline effect” – and some findings even dwindle away to zero.

A highly influential paper by Dr John Ioannidis at Stanford University called “Why most published research findings are false” argues that fewer than half of scientific papers can be believed, and that the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. He even showed that of the 49 most highly cited medical papers, only 34 had been retested and of them 41 per cent had been convincingly shown to be wrong. And yet they were still being cited.

Again and again, researchers are finding the same things, whether it’s with observational studies, or even the “gold standard” Randomised Controlled Studies, whether it’s medicine or economics. Nobody bothers to try to replicate most studies, and when they do try, the majority of findings don’t stack up. The awkward truth is that, taken as a whole, the scientific literature is full of falsehoods.

Jolyon Jenkins reports on the factors that lie behind this. How researchers who are obliged for career reasons to produce studies that have “impact”; of small teams who produce headline-grabbing studies that are too statistically underpowered to produce meaningful results; of the way that scientists are under pressure to spin their findings and pretend that things they discovered by chance are what they were looking for in the first place. It’s not exactly fraud, but it’s not completely honest either. And he reports on new initiatives to go through the literature systematically trying to reproduce published findings, and of the bitter and personalised battles that can occur as a result.

What?  Relatively few scientific papers are tested and of those that are 41% were convincingly shown to be wrong and yet they kept being cited in journals and presumably the media.

Scientists spin results to grab headlines and for career reasons, as well as no doubt due to pressure from other scientists who already hold such opinions…such as string theory…

In 2008 Physicist Lee Smolin’s book ‘The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next’ was published.

What he had to say about the way science worked and how ideas and theories were produced and then supported regardless of reality was a stinging rebuke to those people who jump on a bandwagon and base their career and funding on the ‘truth’ of that idea….if the idea is discredited so are they, and the funding dries up…..

Here is what he says about String Theory and its proponents….

‘….with a cry of joy, most of these scientists seized on string theory as the answer. But their enthusiasm was such that they came to think not that it might be the answer, but that it must be. They formed themselves into a cult. Dissenters and apostates were not just scorned, they were denied posts in universities. Einstein the thinker could not now get a job in any leading physics department. For any young physicist, it was easiest simply to suppress one‘s doubts and go with the stringies.‘

Is this limited to medical science and string theory or is it widespread across science…such as in the climate change community?…I think we know the answer to that…one reason they hate sceptics asking questions, the answer to which might prove embarrassing….still its good that the BBC’s finest, english graduate Roger Harrabin, has decided he knows better than even scientifically educated sceptics and has decided that they should be no-platformed.

Guess we’re a day late  [welcome to April] with this one from the Mail…..

Google blood money: Web giant cashes in on vile four-minute video showing ‘weapons expert’ demonstrating how Muslim extremists can smuggle weapons onto aircraft undetected, turning their beards into murderous makeshift weapons.

A Mail on Sunday investigation today exposes how Google has cashed in on a sickening YouTube video that shows viewers how to weaponise a beard and use it in a terror attack.

The vile video was online for six months despite widespread warnings that UK jihadis use such material for training.

The Mail on Sunday easily found the film online despite promises made last week by YouTube owners Google to crack down on extremist material.

Last night, Home Secretary Amber Rudd condemned the video and demanded that YouTube take action to ensure similar films are banned.

She said: ‘We will not tolerate the internet being used to hide terrorist activities or, as The Mail on Sunday has revealed, provide information to assist them in their terrible activities.

And Labour’s Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘The idea that YouTube and Google should profit from something so depraved is appalling.

‘When are Google going to get their act together and stop making money out of vile hatred?’

Time for a chill….Nora the polar bear…

Gotta love this….the BBC’s response to a complaint about a ‘comic’ calling Jacob Rees-Mogg an arsehole on The Now Show…

This was not about calling random people ‘arsehole’ indiscriminately. This was a satirical piece about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his claim that ‘experts’ were in the same category as ‘soothsayers and astrologers’. Nish Kumar felt this was a preposterous statement from an MP and pick ed up on Rees-Mogg rather pretentiously quoting the Roman philosopher and politician Cicero on Newsnight to support his argument.

Nish Kumar provided a genuine quote from Cicero in return, countering Rees-Mogg’s argument and ended with a comic undercut in the form of the made -up quote from Cicero saying, “the guy is a total arsehole”.

This concluded a sophisticated argument by using anachronistic modern terminology,  which also satirised Rees-Mogg for his pretension.

Rees – Mogg is fair game in this context as a public figure he often plays up to the image of being old-fashioned and more comfortable with classical allusions than modern ones.

Get her…‘a sophisticated argument by using anachronistic modern terminology,  which also satirised Rees-Mogg for his pretension.’….blimey and there was me thinking it was just something slapped together on the 54 bus on the way to the studio….and it seems a bit of a leap to suggest it is somehow justified to call Rees-Mogg an arsehole because he likes the classics…..what can we call Mary Beard then? [No need to answer that one thanks]

And the use of the phrase ‘hideously white’?  Not apparently prejudicial to white people at all….and other media outlets used the phrase, so OK…

It was the lack of diversity and representation which was being described as hideous in this phrase, not any particular ethnicity itself. Other media outlets quoted the phrase from the report too. 

Just in the same way the BBC thinks it amusing to bandy about the phrase ‘Pale, male and stale’…sexist, ageist and racist…but it’s OK for BBC presenters to use it.

Try using ‘Hideously Muslim’ if you believe the BBC has an over-abundance of Muslim employees….see where that gets you….it wouldn’t of course be about ethnicity or religious identity but merely an argument about too much diversity and an over-representation of Muslims in the BBC that isn’t merited by their actual presence in society.

Thanks to Mice Height for this…

James Delingpole is pretty good here …

Yesterday I asked of lying liar climate ‘scientist’ Michael Mann: “Does anyone take this guy seriously any more?” But the question was a purely rhetorical one. I already knew the depressing true answer having just sat, fuming, in my car listening to Mann being given the red carpet treatment on a BBC Radio 4 science programme.

“Oh Professor Doctor Mann, Sir, may it please your eminence to descend from your radiant cloud for a few precious moments and explain to us mere mortals why your amazing and unquestionably brilliant new paper on global warming demonstrates you to be even more right about climate change than you were even in the days when you won your Nobel prize?” fawned and grovelled the BBC’s interviewer from his prostrate position on the studio floor.

Perhaps I exaggerate slightly.

Read the full article – his pay off line is one I fully endorse.

Seen this?

The new series of Doctor Who will see the Time Lord joined by his first openly gay companion. Bill Potts’s sexuality will be revealed pretty much straightaway in her second line of dialogue when the show returns to BBC One on 15 April. “It shouldn’t be a big deal in the 21st Century. It’s about time isn’t it?” Pearl Mackie, who plays Bill, told the BBC. “That representation is important, especially on a mainstream show.”

Ain’t that the truth? The BBC is not interested in entertainment, it is interested in driving a narrative, creating a PC “equality” at all costs. I don’t know why it doesn’t go the full nine yards and make the Doctor a black transgender Muslim. That would give the Daleks something to think about.

Here you go, a new open thread to see us all off into the weekend. I don’t know about you but I am finding the BBC unbearable to watch at the moment as it seethes in the aftermath of Theresa May triggering Article 50. It strikes me that we will have two years now of endless bitching and moaning from the BBC (And it’s print wing, The Guardian) about how IMPOSSIBLE Brexit will be to achieve, how it will cost us the earth the moon and the stars, blah blah blah. Excruciating to endure at one level, fun at another. The BBC is desperate to ensure the “hard Brexit” (=no Brexit) narrative prevails. They will fail.

 

A former Obama administration official who knew Kalugin called his mention in the dossier “a head scratcher” because Kalugin was so capable in his economic job.  McClatchy

The BBC is going big on the Russian angle and is claiming that a Russian diplomat was withdrawn in a hurry to cover his tracks…because he was a spy, a spy that helped Trump steal the election…despite the BBC admitting there is absolutely no evidence…it carries on regardless spinning away..

The BBC has learned that US officials “verified” a key claim in a report about Kremlin involvement in Donald Trump’s election – that a Russian diplomat in Washington was in fact a spy.

So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency – nothing.

Trouble is the BBC hasn’t verified the claim, and it’s not a ‘key claim’ [a rhetorical trick to justify the feeble claims made by the BBC in this piece]…the BBC is merely reporting what someone in the US intelligence wants them to hear…and it’s probably from an agency at odds with the FBI, the ever present inter-agency rivalry…whom the BBC admits is called the ‘Feebs’, ie feeble minded, by the CIA…

If anyone looks like a harmless economist, rather than a tough, arrogant KGB man, it is the bland-faced Kalugin.

But sources I know and trust have told me the US government identified Kalugin as a spy while he was still at the embassy.

It is not clear if the American intelligence agencies already believed this when they got Steele’s report on the “diplomat”, as early as May 2016.

But it is a judgment they made using their own methods, outside the dossier.

A retired member of a US intelligence agency told me that Kalugin was being kept under surveillance before he left the US.

In addition, State Department staff who dealt with Russia did not come across Kalugin, as would have been expected with a simple diplomat.

“Nobody had met him,” one former official said. “It’s classic. Just classic [of Russian intelligence].”

As for the FBI being  so feeble?  If that was the case why did 003.5 only talk to them, deliberately avoiding the Russia ‘experts’, the CIA?…

He gave the FBI the names of some of his informants, the so-called “key” to the dossier.  But the CIA never interviewed him, and never sought to.

Our BBC boy explains it away [contradicting the above where he blames the CIA]…just not the right faces at the CIA despite being the experts….

I understand that Steele himself did not ask to brief the CIA because he had a long-standing relationship with the FBI.

The Russia people at the CIA had moved on and he felt he did not have the personal contacts he would need.

Anyway…a great surprise, a Russian spy possibly posing as a diplomat and being watched by the intelligence agencies… all embassy staff are routinely kept under some kind of surveillance…the fact Kalugin was being watched meant nothing in particular…never heard of a spy posing as a diplomat?…nor has the CIA…er….

A former U.S. intelligence official said it wouldn’t be unusual for an officer in a Russian intelligence agency, or even an American one, to hold an economic post such as Kalugin’s.

“Everyone does that, but the Russians do it more than anyone else,” said the official, who declined to be identified because the issue is sensitive.

So, the BBC tells us no one ever met Kalugin and that he was rushed out of the US pre-emptively…all true?…hardly…..he was a constant on the Russian-American economic co-operation circuit meeting many people [as  the two videos show] and his leaving was known 6 months in advance…one who can tell us ….

Those acquainted with Kalugin, who was chief of the embassy’s economic section, described him in different ways, from shy to arrogant.

Earl Rasmussen, a vice president of the Eurasia Center, a group that promotes trade with Russia and its neighbors, said Kalugin “knew issues of concern to him and of concern to the other side.” He said the diplomat had spoken of his planned departure for months and the two men had lunch a week before Kalugin flew home.

“I knew of his departure a minimum of six months prior,” Rasmussen said. “He was planning on taking time off to get his family settled before going back to work in September in Moscow.”

Did he live like a hermit behind twitching net curtains with his notebook?

A former Obama administration official who knew Kalugin called his mention in the dossier “a head scratcher” because Kalugin was so capable in his economic job.

“He was certainly present at a lot of events with the Russian ambassador,” said the official, insisting on anonymity to avoid damaging relationships. “Normally you don’t want to put somebody in a position to embarrass your government in those public positions.”

Kalugin spoke at an event organized by the U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce of New England and to some other business councils. In a YouTube video, he was interviewed by China’s CCTV-America.

The BBC is bigging up ex-MI6 spy Steele’s dodgy dossier trying to make it sound more credible….a supposedly top intelligence agent who misspelt many names and got many simple facts wrong…such as there is no Russian consulate in Miami as he claimed…not inspire confidence really does it?

Kalugin may well have been a spy but this BBC hatchet job is complete trash and doesn’t even bother to cover the ground properly…they don’t show any of Kalugin’s contacts or public speaking events…a video of which is above and below…easily available…BBC just not interested in providing facts that counter their own ‘facts’.

More BBC fake news……no facts just speculation and supposed intelligence revelations from ‘trusted sources’.  Shame we cannot trust the BBC at all.

Another video…Kalugin’s on the right…he never met anyone in the US says the BBC…..er…

Russia Direct conducted a panel discussion “Future of Russian Hi-Tech/Science Cities and Innovation,” on June 25, in New York, which featured international experts in the field of investments, human resources, economics, high-technologies and innovation.

The BBC et al went to town on the Russians [and by alleged association Trump] for interfering in the democratic process of the US election by hacking, no proof yet that they did, Clinton’s and the Dem’s emails.  Apparently this providing to the American electorate of information about Clinton’s and the Dem’s activities and thoughts, often at odds with what they said in public, was anti-democratic…not sure how that can be…maybe illegally obtained but surely the information is relevant..otherwise why all the squealing?

No such outrage about the EU’s interference in the democratic elections of a sovereign nation within Europe, France, as the EU tries to stop Le Pen being elected [Just as Obama came to Britain and told us to vote for the EU and then trotted off to Germany to tell the Germans to vote for Merkel…and no one objected]…

Given that the French election could have vital consequences for the EU, the European Commission is not taking any chances. In an unusual move, it’s getting involved in French politics, albeit indirectly, with a fact-checking campaign to counter the anti-EU narrative coming from Le Pen’s National Front.

The EU-paid fact checkers rebut Le Pen attack lines such as the assertion that France would be better off without the euro or that the EU destroys French purchasing power.

While the EU seeks to counter core Le Pen Euroskeptic messages, the Commission doesn’t endorse any specific candidate in the French race. But there is no doubt that Brussels insiders see a Le Pen win as a threat to the EU.

Shockingly Trump’s team met some Russkies [so did Clinton’s] and Juncker is in talks with Le Pen’s opponents…no fuss about that collaboration then?….

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is following the French campaign closely, officials say. So far, he has conducted one-on-one meetings with three of the presidential candidates at their behest — the centrist Macron, the conservative François Fillon and the socialist Benoît Hamon.

Once you’re in the EU they don’t want you to leave and will do anything to blackmail you to force you to stay…

Pierre Moscovici, the commissioner for economic and financial affairs, said in a press conference last week that “it’s a mistake” to not to fight anti-EU candidates such as Le Pen. “Europe is France’s future, and we need France to be a driving force,” the French socialist said, adding, in a clear swipe at the National Front leader: “I don’t even talk about those crazy ideas of France leaving Europe, which would both kill Europe and make France choke severely.”

Europe is your future whether you want it or not.

And look at this sneering comment….

One top diplomat likened the vote to Brexit and last year’s U.S. election. The voters who decided the outcome then, he said, were “those who don’t give a damn anymore about politics.”

On the contrary they vote the way they do because they do think politics is important and that we don’t just hand over power without holding the politicians to account as the EU would like…the EU failed Britain…bye bye…Obama failed the US…bye bye.

Vive la France!