Remember Leveson and all that when so much was made of the dominance of one media giant…..no, not the BBC.

Seems that all that foot stamping and those pious demands for media plurality was just so much hot air.

Apparently Cameron has taken them at their word and gone forth and spread the word, literally, amongst the highest and the lowest in the land.

Cameron has been talking to regional journalists and broadcasters and the Big Boys don’t like it.

Downing Street hogs the remote control: The PM’s use of tame media is annoying the big guns at Sky, ITN and the BBC

Of course as the BBC is by far the most dominant of the news providers with the lion’s share of the audience for news it is the BBC that should be losing out…its stranglehold on the national narrative perhaps being loosened…no bad thing if true.

Cameron talking to local concerns is a good ploy, back to the soapbox almost…but he still needs the national media, so the BBC still has a significant role to play no doubt.

Jim Al-Khalili has shamelessly, shamefully, set aside his scientific principles and those of his newfound career in Journalism to bring us half an hour of climate change propaganda….not science at all…just pure, outright hard sell and ‘facts’ that would not look out of place on Press TV.

 In The Life Scientific he interviews (and I say that advisedly as it is more a scripted ‘one-two’) Joanna Haigh who pushes the IPCC’s case and ‘explains how she deals with Deniers.’

Haigh is somewhat of a fanatic and one who refuses to countenance any doubts about her science…..she says she objects to calling people who have reservations about the causes of cliamte change ‘sceptics’…she prefers to label them ‘deniers’ because they apparently deny climate change is happening.

  As far as I can see most ‘Deniers‘ in fact say climate change does occur….it always changes…the question they ask is ‘What causes that change?’.

Haigh tells us that the IPCC’s science is reviewed rigorously…the IPCC is not a consensus body of green lobbyists…and consensus is very hard to achieve.

She also tells us that the computer climate models are in fact very accurate and reliable…..input a few equations into a computer and there you go…..the climate predicted for the next one hundred years…’Amazing!’…it gives us faith in the future, allegedly.  Simple really, how could anyone have ever doubted her and her kind.

She tells us that long range forecasts are more accurate than short term….I suppose that’s why the Met. Office stopped publishing its long term ones as they were continuously embarrassed by them.

Of course that is somewhat hard to prove…..a forecast for 100 years from now is more about that ‘faith’ she was spouting earlier than reality.

And of course it is difficult for the Public to know what to believe because of all those ‘Deniers’ blogging away distorting the science.

As for the 15 year or so standstill…well you know there are always going to be errors and a range of predictions….and the climate always varies but….the trend is upwards, ever upwards…no really.

All the signs are that we must do something radical.

Now that the last BBC review into its climate change coverage has been and gone it seems normal service has resumed….not a sceptic, sorry, denier, in sight or sound of a BBC studio as far as I can see.

The BBC know full well Alastair Crooke’s ‘pedigree’ and who holds the leash for this particular lapdog.

Just a couple of months ago BBC Watch commented on the BBC’s use of Crooke:

If readers are now beginning to suspect that the BBC simply saved itself a phone call to the Syrian Ministry of Propaganda by inviting Alastair Crooke to this programme, they might not be far wrong.

It looks though that the BBC just don’t care that Crooke is somewhat compromised as a commentator on events in the Middle East as he pops up again today on  World at One (13:14:30) where we were told merely that he ‘fostered contact between Islamic political groups and the West’

The BBC knowingly led him onto the point they wanted to make….Israel, and Saudi Arabia are ‘providing the intelligence’ about these gas attacks…..and we are to infer…the  intelligence is therefore highly dubious….because of its source.

Hmmm…well the ‘fact’ of  the gas attack was not provided by the Israelis to the world…..and the UN are  presently at work on the ground trying to establish what did happen, and by whom.

Crooke went on to tell us it definitely wasn’t the Syrian regime that used chemical weapons…because the Russians said so…oh, and Iran said, 100%, that it wasn’t Assad.

I’ll leave the last word to BBC Watch:

Providing Alastair Crooke with the opportunity to spout the spin of a terrorist organization and a murderous dictatorship to millions of listeners unchallenged is obviously bad enough. But when that is done without due disclosure of the political connections of the man and his very dubious organization, then the BBC is displaying wanton disregard for its own obligation to impartiality and once again putting its own political colours – and agenda – in full view. 

Another one…let ’em have it!

Paul Mason, soon to have his steel toecapped suede booties under a Channel 4 desk, seems to have cast off the shackles of BBC groupthink and ventured out into the world of thinking for himself…..well, tentatively:

The economic recovery may be patchy, but the left is wrong to ignore it

It’s not the same across the country, but there are signs of growth. The challenge for Labour is how to make the most of the new reality

Still hedging his bets, and acting as unpaid, I hope, adviser to the Labour Party, but he ventures that austerity may have worked…so much so that it may be possible to reduce it to some extent.

Of course he rounds it all off with a brickbat…

The real problem may not be the weakness or fragility of recovery, but the fact that large parts of the population are locked out of it.

……but I guess old habits are hard to change.

You may have noticed on your travels that any wind turbines that you come across have a rather unusual operational approach.

On windy days they can be seen to be completely motionless, whilst on almost windless days they are ticking round quite nicely.

I often thought that some clever chap who works for one of the turbine producers has come up with a cunning plan…..when there’s no wind put the turbines in reverse, that is, draw power from the electricity grid to turn the turbine to encourage the public to think ‘Turbines are turning…great….it’s working…government must buy more!’…..a little promotional stunt for the wind turbine industry…keeps the blades turning and keep the money coming in (though you couldn’t come up with a better stunt than getting paid to actually turn off your turbine!).

All nonsense of course?….apart from being paid to turn off the turbines….that’s all too real.

However the Telegraph has looked into wind turbines and just how effective they are in a snapshot:

According to RWE’s own data, three wind farms on Thursday afternoon appeared to be taking electricity from the National Grid rather than supplying it.

The eight turbines at Knabs Ridge, which is close to Harrogate in Yorkshire, used up 86KW of electricity while Lambrigg wind farm’s five turbines in Cumbria took 10KW from the grid.

Llyn Alaw wind farm, which is in Anglesey, and consists of 34 turbines also produced a negative output, according to RWE’s own data, of minus 80KW.

Somewhat indirectly connected to BBC bias….but it helps inform the debate and provides some background with which to judge BBC coverage of climate change and measures taken to supposedly combat it.

Andrew Marr hasn’t changed…he’s still Red Andy and pushing the Left’s agenda…this time a few thoughts from the IPPR, left leaning think tank:

Who runs Britain? An Army of unregarded, unpaid carers. Now it’s time we cared for them says Andrew Marr and his wife who nursed him after stroke

 As a report today from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) points out, thousands of women in their 50s are being hit by a ‘triple whammy’ of work, childcare and caring for elderly parents.

Good that the BBC allows him to have other interests outside of work….hard to tell the difference to be honest between his work and play.

Guess the answer to ‘Who Runs Britain?’ is that the BBC runs Britain…or tries its best to.

BBC officer class enrages people, chief admits 

Executive salaries at the BBC have created an “officer class” which is causing “resentment and anger” among lower-paid workers, Lord Hall, the director-general of the corporation, has admitted.

Liz MacKean, a former BBC Newsnight journalist, said: “The whole issue about severance payments gets to the heart of something that has gone badly wrong with the BBC over the last decade and more, which is the creation of an officer class that seems to fly in the face of the principles of public service broadcasting.”

Alan Yentob, who earns £183,000 as the BBC’s creative director, joined Lord Hall on stage and rejected a call for more transparency over salaries. He said: “The BBC is not a local authority, OK? We need to invest, we need to get people to come in. Who wants to come to an organisation where their privacy is [affected]?”

Talking of privacy maybe Yentob should listen to this:

Mariella Frostrup asks:

Is Privacy Over Rated?

And talking of officer elites Evan Davis asks:

What’s the Point of an Elite?

Both programmes very BBC…both jam packed with worthy, highly educated middle class ‘elites’….you can hear Davis has the decency to be embarrassed about the makeup of his panel.

But…Evan Davis admits that he wouldn’t have wanted to go to a school like Eton…because he would have a been a small fish in a big pond, whereas at a state school, where he was headboy, he was a big fish in a small pond….a small pond intellectually and academically he means.

Charmed I’m sure to know how the BBC’s finest look down upon their fellow state school inmates…..intellectually wanting but that’s good as it makes Evan look better.

Listening to both programmes, and well, any such programme from the BBC, and you keep hearing ‘The Poor’ being mentioned, concern for the ‘lower orders’, but where are their voices?

How is it that concern for the ’Poor’ and ‘Disadvantaged’ is the sole preserve it seems of middle class intellectuals? Do ‘The Poor’ not have any thoughtful comments about ‘elites’ or ‘privacy’?

We’re told that ‘The Poor’ are shut out more than ever from the higher reaches of society and that privacy is the domain of the rich….so how come they have no voice on these BBC programmes, a seat at the table rather than picking up the crumbs thrown to them by their ‘betters’?

The BBC’s latest review of its lack of impartiality from earlier in the year has resurfaced as one of its authors, Mike Berry,  pushes the lie, lovingly created and honed by him and those ex BBC employees now ensconced at Cardiff University who manufactured this ‘report’,  that the BBC is actually biased towards the Right.

The BBC say it went to Cardiff University but you might conclude that it took a wrong turn and ended up in Cardiff on the day the Circus was in town.

Even the BBC has admitted it is biased towards the Left so either Berry is a fool or a liar.

DB has mentioned this in the Open Thread and Is the BBC biased has picked up on that and delved into Mike Berry’s left wing, anti-Israeli background.

The usual stuff.

We have already had a look at this report and its authors and I think it is obvious that you can dismiss it as yet another BBC smoke screen.

Just what is the point of the BBC commissioning such reports into its impartiality when the people it gets to conduct the reports either have very close ties to the BBC or have very obvious, strong, political leanings that indicate they will not be impartial?

This is Berry’s final conclusion:

So the evidence from the research is clear. The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda.

A more dishonest and misleading statement about the BBC would be hard to find.

Pro-Conservative, anti-Europe, pro-Business?  Did he not have the room to add on pro-EDL, pro-Christian, pro-Israeli?

Amazing how Berry can get those big clown feet into his mouth ….but he has such an appreciative audience who clearly like their news spoon fed to them because thinking for themselves is so hard to do as the Twitter mob of the usual left wing trolls that come out from under their stones to celebrate his nonsense admirably demonstrate:

Seumas Milne ‏@SeumasMilne 19h  Contrary to media mythology, #BBC coverage is dominated by Conservative, corporate & City voices, research shows http://bit.ly/15klDyq 

 You have to laugh at this from Berry (If I was  a student at Cardiff I’d be asking for my money back if taught by Berry):

The fact that the City financiers who had caused the crisis were given almost monopoly status to frame debate again demonstrates the prominence of pro-business perspectives.

I’m sorry, I have to choke back the tears of laughter….I thought that tripping on LSD was so 60’s…does it still go on?….apart from the fact that the Banks have been massively reined in weren’t we told that it was ‘Occupy’ who had framed the debate…even by Mervyn King and Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England:

The BBC is pro-Occupy, it encouraged the ‘youth’ to riot and protest, it damns bankers and big business at every opportunity, it fanatically supported Labour’s Plan B, it has done everything in its power to knock the confidence of business, investors and consumers and to push the belief that Osborne’s policies are bringing us to the brink of ruin…even now as the ‘green shoots’ emerge they find ways to tell us we’re all doomed rather than look on the bright side.

You just have to listen to one of their recent efforts to see the BBC’s approach:

How You Pay For The City

The title alone gives away the drift of the programme.

Why not ‘How You Pay For Tescos’?  Because of course you do….…or ‘How You Pay For Your Own Wages’…by buying products from other businesses…whose workers go out and buy products from your company…which pays your wages …and so on….Capitalism is so awfully complicated.

or even  ‘How You Pay For The BBC’?.

The BBC isn’t free you know.

The programme was half an hour of anti-city, anti-business, anti-government policies, that condemned the banks for making profits and claimed Quantitive Easing was a terrible idea that stole money from the poor and put it in the pockets of the rich bankers…never mind that it was pension funds and insurance companies that held government bonds that received the money….designed deliberately not to put money into banker’s coffers.

 You heard nothing good about QE on this programme, that it stabilised and kept confidence in the economy, it was merely a highly politicised anti-banker rant with only one dissenting voice…on for a moment….no points for every time ‘casino banking’ was mentioned.

In one half hour programme it covered QE, oil speculation, Banks diversifying, commodities,  interest rates, inflation…..even if it was possible to, the BBC had no intention of looking at these subjects in any real depth, it merely cherry picked data and quotes to back up its narrative.

  It told us that banks were manipulating oil prices….a man came on briefly and said there was no evidence for that…the BBC ignored him and carried on anyway.

Never mind that oil prices are always manipulated…notoriously by the likes of OPEC and Saudi Arabia and of course now Russia with gas prices….funny, no mention of that though.

So yes, the BBC is pro-Business, pro-Conservative.

I see now, I was blinded by my own prejudices before.

They fill up quick these days.