Category Archives: Roger Harrabin

Roger Harrabin is quite the card. Here he is on the BBC this morning warning that “Environmentalists” now fear that the UK government’s draft energy bill to be published on Tuesday will end in a new “dash for gas”.

They want the bill to be guided by the government’s stated wish to almost completely de-carbonise the electricity industry by the 2030s. But there has been no guarantee such a target will be enshrined in the bill.

I’m sure that they do what this – after all their eco-lunacy knows no economic constraints. However my question is why does Harrabin feel the need to virtually cheerlead on behalf of their anxieties? Why do these Green groups matter so much that THEIR concerns come before those of the rest of us who have to cough up increasingly large amounts of money to underwrite the watermelon agenda?

Biased BBC favourite Roger Harrabin has been missing in action for a while now from the BBC airwaves. However the ever resourceful folks at Biased BBC have tracked him down and Alan has the goods.  Enjoy..

“What has he been up to? Well it seems he has been having a very nice time on an all expenses paid (not by the BBC) ‘Fellowship’…..

‘Roger Harrabin is taking unpaid leave on a Knight Wallace Media Fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/ariel/15937222

He is being well paid by the Fellowship….’U.S. fellows receive $70,000 – distributed as $8,750 monthly – from September through April. Stipend details vary for international fellows and are worked out on an individual basis. All tuition and course fees at the University of Michigan are paid for by the fellowship. Spouses and partners are invited to partake in university courses as well.

In addition, all fellowship trips – domestic and international – are covered. Health insurance is provided to fellows and their families, if their employer does not contribute to their insurance coverage.’

Source Link: http://www.fundsforngos.org/fellowships-2/university-michigans-knightwallace-fellowship-20122013-lifetime-opportunity-kinds-midcareer-journalists-academic-prerequisites-world/#ixzz1rFowfBQz

…all of which might lead to some amusement as to his study subject:

 ‘Roger Harrabin, environmental analyst, BBC (London); Scarcity: How many rich people can the Earth take?’

It’s the rich what are causing Global Warming with all their blooming consumption! Get rid of them! He is not the only BBC journalist to have taken this ‘life changing’ opportunity….and many of their subjects are also what you might expect. Maurice Walsh stands out for his perceptive view that the BBC aided the IRA…..’their key victory was in mobilizing public opinion in Britain and the rest of the world.’

‘Maurice Walsh, World Service news editor, BBC, London.

Irish War of Independence.

“The News from Ireland” by Maurice Walsh ’02 has been released in paperback. The Anglo-Irish war of 1919-1921 was a historical landmark: The first successful revolution against British rule and the beginning of the end of the British Empire. However, the Irish revolutionaries did not win their struggle on the battlefield – their key victory was in mobilizing public opinion in Britain and the rest of the world. In his book, Walsh recounts the work of British and American correspondents in Ireland and offers a persuasive assessment of the revolution’s place in world history as well as the role of the press and journalism in the conflict.’

For interest I list the others from over the last decade:

http://www.mjfellows.org/fellows/

Sarah Robbins, senior producer, BBC World News America; The Economy of Brazil.

John Walton, senior broadcast journalist, BBC (London); Data-Driven Journalism and its Uses in Interactive Storytelling.

Roger Sawyer, deputy editor, BBC Radio (London): Reporting science in an accurate, but inclusive and comprehensible manner.

John Cary, editor, “Drive,” BBC Radio 5 Live.

How children are educated – Does a teacher’s gender make a difference?

Joanna Mills, assistant editor, BBC World Service News.

How is the way crime is covered in the media impacting society?

Patricia Whitehorne, senior broadcaster, BBC.

On-Line Social Network Sites.

Charles Partridge, managing editor, BBC Radio Lincolnshire.

What does “Local” Mean in Today’s On-Line World?

Hilary Bowden, duty editor, BBC.

User Generated Content.

Richard Lister, reporter, BBC.

Should the EU Adopt the US Constitution?

Stephen Titherington, editor, BBC World Service News (London, England).

How Science is Covered.

Alicia McCarthy, senior broadcast journalist, BBC (London).

The impact of terrorism on media, politics and people.

Pam O’Toole, reporter, BBC (London).

Migration and asylum.

Andrew Whitehead, editor, BBC (London), “The World Today”.

Origins of the Kashmir crisis in 1947.

Joanne Episcopo, arts producer, BBC (London, England).

Spanish history and Basque culture.

David Edmonds, Current Affairs editor, BBC, London.

German History/Film Studies.

Caroline Finnigan, producer/bureau manager, Havana, BBC News.

Origins of investigative and campaigning journalism in the US and Britain.

Every year the Knight Wallace Fellowship publishes the work of these journalists in its archive…..this years of course is not out….it might be interesting to come back to this at the end of the year and see what Harrabin has produced:

KWF Journal Archives

http://www.mjfellows.org/news/journal_archives.html

Seeing as Robin Horbury, our own expert analyst in these matters, is on holiday we’ll let Autonomous Mind pick up the slack.

Some time ago, I noted that Roger Harrabin seemed to be offering his services for hire as a speaker at greenie events, and was seemingly paid amounts up to £10,000 and more for his appearances. I can’t confirm this, of course, because I haven’t seen his financial records, but I believe it is a reasonable inference to make; he’s registered with a fee-making agency as a “performing artiste” (no less) and I don’t imagine that he is there purely for the good of his health. If he doesn’t accept payment, I will be happy to put the record straight, though he hasn’t responded to my invite to do so.

I also suggested that his colleague Richard Black was similarly making money. That led to yelps of protest (and, in due course, a BBC solicitor’s letter) that he did not allow his integrity to be thus prostituted, and I accept that Mr Black does not similarly hire himself out. But this rather begged the question of why, if Mr Black thinks it is so wrong to be a hired gun, Mr Harrabin is seemingly happy to be so. Oh hum, such are the complexities of being a BBC environmental activist.

I’ve been digging a little bit deeper in this patch, and it doesn’t stop there. Our Mr Harrabin is also listed as a speaker with an outfit called Green Business Events (GBE). This is a body which frightens me to the core, and – I submit – shows the extent to which greenie madness has taken hold of the establishment, with activists persuading each other on a regular basis that they are on a righteous crusade to save the world. In reality, it’s a conspiracy of rich companies finding new ways of extracting the maximum amount of money out of subsidies, grants and taxes under the guise of “corporate social responsibility”. Said GBE holds an annual “Green Strategy” screw-the-poor, love-in conference (which our Roger chaired in 2009), and also monthly “Green Mondays” around the country in which 200 or so of the senior management acolytes (chillingly called “corporate climate change leaders”) of this religious-fervour group get together in rather plush venues to crow about their save-the-world policies.

(Incidentally, the whole shooting match was founded by a young whizz-kid called Ben Patten. He seems to be on a good money-making wheeze. His qualifications for running this climate change extravaganza? A dreaded MBA and a degree in, er, ancient history. He thus has as many scientific qualifications as Mr Harrabin).

When I found GBE, I was gripped with a mixture of abject horror and fascination; horror that such a group actually exists and fascination that so many companies, organisations and arms of the government have actually willingly signed up to this brainwashing process. What it means is that there is now a shadowy momentum (as well as the declared mainstream political agenda) towards entrapping us all in the climate change machine, subscribed to by the most powerful organisations in the land.

Mr Harrabin’s involvement reveals something far more worrying. It shows that the BBC not only seemingly allows him out as a hired gun, but also does not care if he is directly associated with an organisation that has a declared partisan goals. Groups like GBE might claim be saving the world; in reality, they are ramming a political agenda down our throats and are working flat out behind the scenes to subject to us to fuel poverty, to invest billions in crackpot wind schemes, to reverse the industrial revolution, and to ensure that the developed world transfers billions of pounds to the corrupt pockets of developing world dictators. The BBC should be ashamed of itself.

Update: Mr Harrabin (having been complicit in spreading the Met Office’s climate change propaganda), is now professing indignance at their conduct in keeping quiet about the recent cold snap. Pot. Kettles. Black. (h/tip B-BBC readers)

…is this sort of journalistic inquiry by the quietly brilliant blog Harmless Sky. Here, it rips apart the idea that green energy – and in particular wind power – is gaining traction as an industry. The stark reality is that people aren’t investing their cash in wind power because it’s not a viable proposition. Share prices have slumped despite the ridiculously massive government subsidies. This reality check ought to be high on the agenda of the latest round of UN climate talks, which opened today, and the BBC should be analysing such issues with robust fierceness. Instead, Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s resident greenie parrot, spouts the usual eco-nut nonsense about his peoples’ worries that “agreement” (ie more measures to hobble the developed world)will not be reached. Oh, and our investigative-journalist-of-the-year Roger has apparently deliberately also ignored (for now at least) the hottest news about the UN talks: that IPCC boss Patchy Pachauri is under investigation again.

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.