The Somerset Levels…..climate change has meant they are now more like the Lost City of Atlantis…or that was the line we were being fed early on.

Then the locals started kicking off….demanding dredging…..if the rivers had been dredged as they were 20 or so years ago this flooding would never have happened they proclaimed.

All a bit inconvenient for the climate change brigade….not climate change but lack of dredging caused the floods.

The solution…..the Met. Office rushed out its rainfall analysis, three days early, telling of ‘record rain’…except it wasn’t really….UK floods: January rain breaks records in parts of England…….because the records were very localised….and not the total rainfall for the UK as a whole (1948 being heavier)….just as in 1682….A severe thunderstorm at Oxford 31st May (old-style calendar). Nearly ‘2 feet’ of ‘rain fell’ into a 4 foot diameter container. Almost certainly accompanied by a tornado and there is much speculation about how much of the rain was due to a collapsing very strong updraught or tornado vortex.

And of course…as we know…that’s ‘weather’.

According to Bishop Hill they have started down the climate change route again:

Lord Krebs, the zoologist who sits on the adaptation subcommittee of the Climate Change Committee, was on the Today programme yesterday telling us that:

“What we are experiencing now in terms of flooding and extreme weather is likely to become more common in the future due to climate change”.

 

With that in mind…and the fact that ‘climate change’ happens all the time…just that when someone like Krebbs uses the term he does so in a rather disingenuous way….with the intended but unspoken message that it is man made climate change…..with that in mind….perhaps this might be of interest and put such ‘extremes’ into perspective:

British Climate from 4000 BC to present day

Thousands of years of massive storms, endless floods covering much of England, tidal surges, typhoons, lighting storms 9 days in a month, long droughts, long periods covered in snow and ice….the climate has always been ‘extreme’ and changing.

Shame we are fed the lie that such ‘extremes’ are unusual.

What is the difference between the BBC and fellow alarmist climate lobbyists and the witch doctors and priests of old (and UKIP councillors) who rushed out to proclaim floods, famine, plagues and pestilence were a punishment from God, and made a very good living out of doing so?

Funny what the BBC misses out of its news reports.

One of the big political  battlegrounds is ‘fairness’….just how much are the Rich really suffering for instance…just how much are they paying in taxes?

That’s right at the heart of Labour’s attack on the Tories…accused of being the party for Millionaires and big business.

First of all though, no mention of this by the BBC in their report:

Growth expected to be 2.6% in 2014 …Growth of 2.6% would leave the UK amongst the fastest growing developed economies.

Yeah…definitely don’t want to mention that.  Why let people know the good news?

Then there’s this…..from the Telegraph:

UK tax system is ‘punishing success’ says Institute for Fiscal Studies

IFS voices concern about state’s growing reliance on tax revenue from small number of high earners

“The Government might be concerned if the Exchequer becomes increasingly reliant on one particular revenue source, as it increases the risk that a shock to one revenue source would have serious implications for total revenues,” the IFS said in its annual Green Budget.

Politicians should resist the “knee-jerk” urge to tax the rich harder during downturns or risk them leaving the country, the economists said.

And the Daily Mail has this big old headline:

Top 1% of earners already pay almost 30% of all income tax as IFS warns half of spending cuts have still not been made

The BBC do not have that headline….and in fact do not mention the rather important statement by the IFS in their report on the IFS’s analysis:

Cost of living crisis to turn around this year, IFS says

Which is curious really because the BBC mentions everything else that is eyecatching except this one very politically relevant fact contained in this IFS press release:

Still not half way there yet on planned spending cuts

Harder to quantify are the risks associated with our increasing reliance on a small group of very rich taxpayers. The share of income tax paid by the top 1% of taxpayers rose from 11% in 1979 to 27.5% in 2011–12. The income tax alone paid by these 300,000 very high income individuals accounts for 7.5% of all tax revenue. These individuals will of course also pay a large fraction of VAT and capital taxes.

And it’s not the only time the IFS has mentioned this ….from a few days ago…here being more explicit that there is a risk:

The Exchequer is, perhaps worryingly, reliant on this very small group of individuals for a very large fraction of revenue: the 1% of income tax payers with incomes in excess of £150,000 pay somewhere between 25 and 30% of all income tax.

And income tax is set to become even more important as government’s switch from trying to impose corporation tax on will-o-the-wisp multi-nationals and raise it instead on the income of employees, VAT and NI….

‘….government is becoming increasingly reliant on the three main taxes–income tax, VAT and National Insurance contributions (NICs) –which will account for two thirds of all revenue by 2018–19‘

In other words we will be even more reliant on the top earners….so Labour scaring them off by imposing even more taxes (50p + rate?)  is possibly not a good idea if you are reliant on them to stay and pay taxes…..see the effect Ed’s mate Hollande and his socialist tax has had on the French rich….they’ve all moved to London….along with their income tax.

Interesting the BBC doesn’t want you to know that the rich are paying such a huge sum of money that we are too ‘reliant upon it’….and that there are risks associated with (Labour’s policy of) relying upon soaking the Rich.

Not something Ed Miliband would like to have broadcast.

And note yet again the BBC concentrates on ‘real wages’…which the IFS tells us is misleading as a measure of the cost of living…as it does not equate to actual income received.

In other words even if ‘real wages’ are still rising only slowly it doesn’t mean there is a ‘cost of living crisis’…..sluggish wage growth appears to be a long-term pattern that has little to do with the recession or the current government.

“However painful falling wages may be, it is important to note that they may have been instrumental in preventing a much larger increase in unemployment,” is how the professors put it…..Labour has repeatedly cited the IFS’s research on falling wages without quoting them on this important point.

The BBC as well funnily enough.

‘……But never mind the facts, perhaps it really is how people feel that is most important to the politicians.

As Mr Miliband knows, 81 per cent of respondents in a recent YouGov poll said they believed prices grew faster than household incomes over the last year.’

Here you go, a middle of the week Open Thread! Enjoy!

Not so long ago the BBC was accused of being Miliband’s Moutpiece:

BBC accused of becoming Ed Miliband’s mouthpiece

The BBC is facing calls for an inquiry into the extensive coverage it has given to Ed Miliband’s dispute with a newspaper.

Now it looks like they have managed to avoid publicising another dent in his reputation:

From the Mail….

Ouch! Ed Miliband is left off list of Britain’s best-connected men but his brother and spin doctor are IN

The Guardian reported it:

Ed Miliband fails to make UK’s 100 most connected – but his brother does

Rupert Murdoch, David Beckham and David Miliband on list of ‘influencers and socialites’ which also excludes Nick Clegg

And look…even the the Gloucester Citizen reports GQ’s list:

Prince Charles and Stephen Fry listed in GQ’s 100 Most Connected Men in the UK

Not the BBC though…despite Tony Hall being on it.

Wonder why they didn’t want to publish this bit of fun and games that dismisses Miliband as a bit of a non-entity?

Just been listening to a bit of a royalist love-in on 5Live as Charlie makes a good impression with the boat people of Somerset-Under-Water….and the BBC ‘Royal’ correspondent.

The BBC had no problem with his highly political comments…in fact they give them the headline on the website:

Somerset flood delay a ‘tragedy’, says Prince Charles

How times change when it suits…normally if Charlie interferes in the political process by writing letters expressing his opinions there are cries of outrage…not so here when he’s slating the Coalition….and promoting climate change….suddenly the ‘non-political’ Prince is a valued commentator to whom Government must respond…..

Asked to respond to the Prince’s comments, David Cameron’s official spokesman said: “The prime minister has repeatedly said… that the situation that a number of communities in the Somerset area find themselves in is unacceptable.

As said…not always so….  

Prince Charles is the voice of Mel Phillips, not the people

From Chelsea barracks to education, the Prince of Wales’s abuse of position cries out for constitutional action.

Way back in 2012 we learn from the BBC that the Prince’s comments must be kept secret or he would  “forfeit his position of political neutrality” and would as such “be seriously damaging to his role as a future monarch”.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we heard this:

What the BBC doesn’t report is often as telling as what and how it reports other news stories.

It does seem that if for instance you are Muslim, or someone positioned to influence government policy on climate change, you are pretty safe from critical BBC investigation.

Andrew Gilligan has spent a long time investigating and reporting on the extremely dodgy happenings in Tower Hamlets where Muslim extremists look to have the whip hand…and a £1 billion budget to spend on their favourite prejudices.

The BBC downplayed and often ignored totally all such serious events….had the council been run by, oh say a UKIP mayor, you can guarantee the BBC would have been in Tower Hamlets turning the place upside down looking for dirt.

In order not to give viewers the impression that any Muslim could in any way be associated with criminal or unseemly behaviour, and thereby give rise to the possibility that people might then associate all Muslims with that kind of behaviour, the BBC censors the news and edits out the uncomfortable bits in the interests of community cohesion….ala Rochdale before the **** hit the fan.

In a similar way the BBC has long ignored the copious evidence gathered by Guido on Tim Yeo, now the de-selected Tim Yeo.

Yeo is of course the chair of the highly influential  Energy and Climate Change Committee which informs and guides government policy on climate change…and of course Yeo is fully on board the AGW bandwagon, as well as having numerous, and highly lucrative, green industry business interests, and so the BBC has looked to protect his position and not expose him to any charges that might get him removed as chairman of that committee and thereby lose their green champion.

News, just not all the news.

There again the BBC isn’t too keen on accountability and openness in its own affairs:

Former BBC executive given £680,000 pay off says ‘I did a big job’

Good how Mark Thompson won’t admit he knew about Savile and now won’t admit he knew the IT disaster was on the cards.

Maybe all those big payoffs were ‘hush’ money…just don’t spill the beans!

Man has been warming the planet by puffing out CO2….since the 50’s…before that it was Mother Nature….apparently.

However these two graphs from the Met. Office are interesting:

This shows the UK annual sunshine….and you can make a direct relationship between sunshine and apparent global warming time frames…..and a leveling off at the end of the 90’s….

This one showing the UK summer sunshine is perhaps even more clear…the rise in sunshine from the end of the 70’s to the distinct drop off of summer sunshine at the end of the 90’s:

Are the oceans sucking up the missing heat as Harrabin (English graduate) insists…or is the heat just missing because the sun ain’t shining?

No doubt the answer will be…yes the sun has an effect but man has made it worse.

Oops…more language problems at the BBC:

From the Independent:

Unfortunately the BBC News’ subtitle system didn’t understand the memo quite right, and instead declared this the ‘year of the whores,’ too much the embarrassment of the channel.

“Welcome to the year of the whores. People around the globe celebrate,” read the subtitles.

Peter Hitchens shows the BBC’s strange double standards:

The BBC just loves swearing – until it gets a dose of its own @!X*! medicine

The BBC have refused  to accept a complaint about bad language transmitted on national radio – because the complainer’s letter used exactly the same words that they had used on air.

They told Colin Harrow that his letter’s tone and language were ‘unacceptably abusive or offensive’.
In other words, the BBC are ready to transmit words into our homes which their staff are not prepared to read.

The programme involved, a Radio 4 play called Paradigm, was broadcast on Tuesday, January 21 at 2.15 pm, long before any sort of watershed.

No warning of bad language was given. An 80-year-old spinster, or a small child, could have been exposed without notice to a dialogue including the words p***, s*** (lavatory expressions), s*** (a sexual expression), b******s, b****r , b*****d, and some other crudities I’ll omit.

Mr Harrow thought he would treat the Corporation as they had treated him. He opened his letter with the same words and a similar tone (he did not use asterisks, but I have).

‘This afternoon’s play was sh***. It p***ed me off. The b*****d who wrote it needs sh****ing. Perhaps the b****r should be kicked in the testicles while stark b****** naked.’

He added: ‘I hope whoever reads this  is not offended by the language used so far, but then if they work for the BBC why should they be?

‘After all, every swearword and obscenity was used, some several times over, in this “afternoon” play, so I guess the BBC regards them as perfectly acceptable, including, I’m sure, in letters of complaint.’

The metropolitan sophisticates of the Corporation (in my experience well used to every rude word in the language and then some) drew up their skirts like Victorian maiden aunts, and primly rejected the complaint, saying they felt ‘unable to circulate it more widely to our colleagues’.

‘When handling your complaint,’ they continued piously, ‘we will treat you courteously and with respect. We expect you to show equal courtesy  and respect towards our staff and reserve the right to discontinue correspondence if you do not.’