Category Archives: Uncategorized

Peter Sissons’ attack on the BBC continues in the Daily Mail today. Though there are no startling revelations – the disrespect he chronicles that is shown to the Royal Family, as evidenced by the handling of the death of the Queen Mother, has been evident for decades – what strikes me is the strength of his writing, and his dignity. This is emphatically not a man expressing bitterness (as the BBC are already claiming), but simple, professional, concerned regret that standards were not met. I look forward to the next installment tomorrow…on climate change.

Early this morning Jon Donnison said something which I’ll paraphrase: “Israel has investigated its own conduct over the Mavi Marmara and it’s about to publish its findings. If, as reports suggest, it exonerates itself, it will be regarded as a whitewash.”

All day, BBC News 24 has featured the news about this investigation, taking care to emphasise the Turkish reaction.
Luckily for me, Elder of Ziyon has already tackled the BBC’s treatment of this topic, so I don’t have to.

Although the investigating committee did include outsiders, I would point out that any ‘self-generated’ investigation automatically faces the issue of impartiality, and I’d love anyone to suggest any other body that would investigate this more thoroughly and more self-critically than the Israelis. As Elder says, one glance at the report itself shows that it is “far from a whitewash, and it takes its mandate seriously.”

If the BBC is going to dismiss any investigation unless it’s done by pro Palestinian sympathisers, I despair.
Update.The BBC has altered the original report, changing the sub headings and much of the content. The new version includes several quotations from the Turkish perspective, and an additional article with some overlapping content has appeared, entitled : Turkey criticises Israel report.
From bad to worse.

(I can’t find any reference to this story on NewsSniffer.)

I don’t know Danny Cohen, the new Controller of BBC1, but I suspect that with his archetypal Oxbridge swagger, his highly-contrived casual BBC-Armani style and £250K daylight robbery taxpayer stipend, he’s going to become more than a regular here. He fits the Sissons mould to a beyond-parody T, and at the same time today confirms that he is on a Marxist mission to ram his cod working class values down our throats. Of course, some would say that this is only what the BBC has been doing for decades, though writers like the great Jimmy Perry (quoted in the Mail item), never claimed (to my knowledge) that they were trying to change the world, but merely to observe it in all its comic unpredictability.

God save us from BBC executives on a mission. The last one I recall was the chilling android himself, Blair acolyte and toady John Birt, who, you may recall, had an incomprehensible “Mission to Explain” that he enforced with vicious disregard for any normal values. That, in my book, is where the BBC rot really set in, though some would argue it was a lot earlier than that – including Anthony Jay (see his take on Cohen-style BBC values here), the writer of Yes, Minister, who, I suspect could tell Mr Cohen a thing or two about real comedy and what the BBC should actually be aiming to achieve. And ‘Allo ‘Allo writer Jeremy Lloyd delivers this sensible verdict here:

But you cannot write comedy through social engineering. Television is in enough trouble as it is without having to overcome prejudices about class.

The Palin/Arizona saga is easily the most important issue today; but meanwhile, Roger Harrabin here assembles a veritable usual-suspect army of green campaigners to shout at maximum volume that the government must appoint a GREEN MINISTER to make sure the “green agenda” continues to be adopted. The horror is that the Cleggerons probably will; but of course, our Roger utters not a peep about those who think that such a move will be a massive waste of our money. I’m all for sensible spending of taxes by cutting out waste and making efficiency savings – but this is not the way.

I’m adding monstrously to my carbon footprint to enjoy some glorious global warming in the tropics, so this will be my last posting for a while. The main task was avoiding dreaded “eco hotels” that ram AGW messages down your throat with every meal, but I have managed. And NO BBC! Whoopee!

I was very struck by this blog this morning, by Joseph D’Aleo, in which he relates that many diligent scientists – even thoose previously blinded by climate change fervour – are having doubts about the ozone hole scare. This, you may recall was the 1990-or-so sprinbgboard for the whole AGW industry, and showed the greenies how they could taste blood, make politicians jump and win their prized goal of new laws, if they yelled loudly enough on the save-the-world theme.

So I started digging into what the BBC has broadcast on this topic. It proved a fascinating and horrifying voyage. First, it was not long before I found the propagandist fingerprints of Richard Black. Here, he proclaims that it’s nasty capitalists who have made the hole worse, but also that AGW is in on the act, too. And here, in April 2010 – despite the fact that, as Joseph D’Aleo points out, those diligent scientists had been providing evidence since 2007 that the ozone scare was overblown – he now maintains that the threat is getting worse.

But this was all very predictable and is not what really caught my eye. I next found “My Risks”, a huge area of the BBC website previously unknown to me. The page I first came across explained that CFCs (the chemicals that greenies fingered as being responsible for ozone depletion) are being progessively banned by the EU towards a total ban in 2015. It makes very sure that the 18,000 boys and girls on the BBC payroll do not transgress. Here is what it says:

A refrigerant register is maintained at all BBC premises detailing: equipment containing ozone-depleting substances (e.g. air conditioning equipment, chillers, fire protection systems); type and quantity of gas used; any losses/replacements to demonstrate if losses have occurred.

Well blow me, so that’s where my licence fee goes; on tracking the minutest trace of CFCs.

I dug deeper into the environment section of“My Risks”. What I found is astonishing; it’s nothing less than a how-to-do, how-to-act manual on AGW fanaticism. It shows that every BBC employee is indoctrinated in the religion in literally a whole catalogue of greenie-infused regulations and instructions. I quote one page in full to show the full horror of what I am talking about and then you can dig for yourself.

All Managers should:

* Identify all environmental impacts associated with your activity
* Understand and keep up to date with BBC environmental management requirements associated with your work activity and communicate these to your staff.
* Ensure that your environmental impacts are reflected in your Division’s Environmental Risk Register
* Set local environmental objectives and targets in line with corporate and divisional environmental objectives and targets.
* Review activities that have an environmental impact to see whether they can be changed, if practicable, to stop or reduce the impact
* Plan environmental controls and measures in advance of activities. Obtain specialist advice at the early stages of planning activities if required.
* Ensure compliance monitoring is undertaken to ensure that the BBC’s environmental requirements are being met and control measures are being implemented effectively. If monitoring shows that controls are inadequate or could be improved, take action accordingly. Ensure any issues raised are logged and tracked through to completion.
* Ensure performance monitoring, including monitoring progress against objectives and targets, is undertaken in your area where applicable.
* Ensure the environmental training requirements of your staff are identified and implemented.
* Ensure emergency response plans are documented and tested for your area.
* Cooperate with the Management Review process as required.

There is much, much more, but I think I have made the point. It leads me to ask what the hell is the BBC? Is it a broadcasting organisation? I fear not. It seems that far more important are the rules for inculcating at every level the green creed.

Something for the weekend…

I feel like a cracked record here but I am not going to let go. Another dime, another day, and Richard Black is at it again, illustrating that the climate alarmists are anxious for any new straw they can clutch. This time, it’s our old friend, the farting cow syndrome – if that nasty CO2 doesn’t get us, say dial-a-scare scientists, then methane will because billions of tons of it are trapped on the arctic sea bed and are about to be released by our grasping, capitalist ways. As usual, Mr Black doesn’t deign to bring us any contrasting views to his own fanaticism. He also glosses over somewhat what seems to me to be the real story, that microbes seem to absorb methane at an astonishing rate. It’s not scary, so let’s not draw too much attention to it. For the cracked-record record, here’s the in-proportion judgment about the importance of methane by a genuine scientist who hasn’t got a greenie scare agenda.

Update: There’s nothing a greenie likes more than the idea of a new tax, and Mr Black and assorted chums from the WWF and other zealot organisations are demanding one with menaces here. He really is in overdrive. I’m all for sensible conservation, and maintaining so-called natural habits up to a point (though spare me from any form of ludicrous back-to-nature idealism – there are 7bn of us), but I guarantee that anything adminstered by the UN (as he advocates) or the EU will end up as a corrupt, stand-and-deliver monstrosity. Isn’t it simply astonishing how greenies think the solution to everything involves handing powers to faceless, unelected, power-hungry, often corrupt bureaucrats? Actually, I think the wonderful Jo Nova could have been writing about Richard Black when she filed this. Enjoy.

I see Roger Harrabin and Richard Black – both main environment reporters at the BBC – as a rather sinister version of a modern-day Box and Cox act. Roger does his bit, then up pops Richard, spouting from the same hymn sheet. And here, in type, and on time, is Richard Black – aided by BBC weatherman Darren Bett (and Met Office slave), who, in his own words, became an “environmental scientist” because he didn’t have the grades to become a doctor – softening us up to tell us that despite December being the coldest for a century, we are at the end of the warmest year on record. Actually, Mr Black and Mr Bett, despite your certainty that cold swallows don’t make summers, that’s not as open and shut as you so strongly claim. Try here, here, , here and here. Of course, reporters such as Mr Black and so-called scientists like Mr Bett don’t do such humble research or mention such doubts; they already know – in their greenie fervour and lofty towers – what the narrative is and will invariably be. A ray of hope, though, is here. Climate scare stories are on the decline. Could our very own Box and Cox be for the chop?

(Picture of a production of C19 production of Box and Cox from Wikipedia)

Following up my post yesterday about Roger Harrabin’s partisan antics, eagle-eyed B-BBC reader John Horne Tooke found this gem, about our Roger’s chairing of the Environment Agency’s annual conference in November. This body, of course is chaired by former Labour culture minister, Chris Smith, who long since abandoned his marbles in his zeal for the green creed. The report of the conference is so jaw-dropping about Mr Harrabin that it deserves to be quoted almost in full:

As students and police clashed outside the Environment Agency’s annual conference got confrontational as its chairman attacked the Government for gagging the chairman and cutting its funding.

Against a background of police helicopters and loudly protesting students the Environment Agency annual conference yesterday (November 24) started with an attack on climate change scepticism and coalition cuts.

The event’s chair, the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin, tore into the coalition Government and the apathy he perceived around cuts as well as the climate change movement.

Mr Harrabin, who opened as well as chaired the event in central London, introduced the agency’s chairman Lord Chris Smith saying he’d been gagged: “His words will have been edited in his head otherwise he’s facing the sack.”

The presenter also criticised Caroline Spelman, the secretary of state for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), over the cuts to her department which described as ‘the very worst’.

He said: “Everything is being cut and there’s widespread support for what is happening, everyone seems to be persuaded that cuts are the only way ahead.

“And DEFRA, from the greenest government this country has ever seen, has some of the very worst cuts floods and biodiversity are challenged even more than they were before.

“I hear talk in DEFRA of a lack of confidence, a lack of a sense of direction from a lot officials they don’t quite know where this is all going.”

Mr Harrabin also branded reports of plans to sell of Forestry Commission assets as ‘extremely controversial’.

So let’s get this straight. Mr Harrabin is levering his position as an “influential” environmentalist to earn extra money (up to £10,000 a pop, according the agencies with which he is registered) in chairing government conferences…a role which he uses as a platform to spout what looks like naked, unqualified anti-government, greenie propaganda? Of course, I’m relying on the report on the Edie site to reach my conclusions, and he may have been misreported, or reported out of context. But if only a fraction of what is in the account is correct, then what Mr Harrabin has become is a fully-fledged taxpayer-funded political activist. That squares with what Autonomous Mind and James Delingpole have also noted in terms of Mr Harrabin’s relationship with the Met Office. How does all this fit in with the BBC’s so-called impartiality?