"State or private?"

Cristina Odone:

I am sitting in a BBC Green Room. It’s school holidays, and I have no one to baby-sit Isabella, aged 6, so I bring her along to my interview. The programme presenter, well known for her liberal views, pops in: “Hullo – your daughter?” she smiles at Izzy. I nod, yes. The presenter looks at me: “State or private?”

“State or private”. Not, “how old?” or “how sweet” or any number of friendly comments a grown-up makes upon meeting a child who is feeling self-conscious in an unfamiliar place. State or private: that has become the ultimate litmus test for so-called liberals today. (So-called, because what is liberal about a group that mocks and ostracises anyone who does not share its values?)

Setting The Tone

Here are the opening paragraphs of two articles from the BBC today, both from stories about anti-government protest movements. One discusses the “egalitarian” Purple People movement in Italy while the other is about the “conservative” Tea Party movement in America.

“Think of a world of politics without spin doctors, teleprompters, stage-managed conferences, party headquarters, manifestos, cynicism or even leaders.”

“When the bearded activist in wraparound sunglasses put his hand on my shoulder, I felt his anger.”

No prizes for guessing which is which. (Compare the pictures, too. One group is happily “festooned” in symbolism, the other has “declared war” “bitterly”.)

Cringe Spotted

From Autonomous Mind:

John Inverdale, the BBC presenter fronting the Scotland v England Six Nations Rugby today, said a few moments ago on BBC1 that Christine Bleakley successfully managed to water-ski ‘across the whole of the British Channel’ yesterday.

MANKY BAN KI

Richard Black strikes again…he reports that the IPCC is going to be reviewed, but fails to tell us the most important point: that all the national scientific organisations chosen to conduct the process long since sold their collective souls to the climate lies machine. Guess what they will find? And old manky Ban Ki has already made up his mind. The science is “robust”, he declares, without an ounce of doubt. I am reminded of the Papal deliberations on infallibility during the Reformation.

TANGLED WEBB…

Have a listen to Justin “I love Obama” Webb of Today trying to persuade Sir Martin Rees – the climate change fanatic president of the Royal Society – that journalists who reported the Climategate “controversies” were being irresponsible for daring to voice concerns that science might not be settled. Predictable, I suppose, but seriously biased all the same.

BRITISH BRAINWASHING CORPORATION – PT 1

British Brainwashing Corporation. That’s what it should be called because it is a central part of a massive, sustained effort to brainwash children throughout the world about climate change.

The impact of this devil’s work is that thousands – if not millions – of children are growing up are terrified. Surviving may be difficult, and life tough, but why are our kids being made to arrive in their classrooms each morning and be told that we are all doomed because of the wicked ways of the West? And indoctrinated with cod science?

Not only that, the BBC is at the centre of a nexus of organisations that is training our children how to be “campaigners” – climate change activists, whose highest goal in life is to become political activists trying to persuade the developing world to rise up against the West.

From Lusaka to the Shetlands kids are absorbing the climate change lies peddled by the corporation via its schools programme.

At the heart of this – and the subject of my first posting on this topic – is the BBC World Class project, which working with the British Council, links children throughout the world in climate change alarm.

The BBC is the propaganda arm; the British Council is the honey pot, because it provides information about grants which enable schools in Britain to link with other schools round the world to join in climate change projects that can involve overseas travel for teachers and kids and are worth up to £22,000 a pop. The money is naturally from the taxpayer, via bodies such as DFID.

The British Council, like the BBC, takes its brainwashing role very seriously. This is what it says in its annual report

:

We work with young people aged between 11 and 35 who share a passionate interest in climate change and want to make a difference. We provide training in areas such as project management and communication to help build a network of champions. By offering inspirational visits to organisations already working in this field we develop their knowledge of climate change and their project ideas.

As a result of efforts like this, one of the children from Sanday Community College on the Orkneys wrote this on the BBC website, illustrating the level of terror, ignorance and nonsense involved:

“We have storms on our island that sometimes lead to flooding on the roads. Lots of houses are below five metres above sea level and if sea levels rise many homes will be under water and the island would be divided into three islands. Lots of grazing land would become useless for farmers. I’ve noticed the water getting further up the side of the pier and the banks. We are all affected by climate change and it is our job to look after the natural world.”

And this came from a terrorised little girl in Lusaka:

We are also experiencing abnormal rainfall which leads to floods. They destroy our crops and kill people. Last season, many people were displaced.
People’s properties are getting damaged due to storms and floods and they have nowhere to stay, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat.

Climate change poem
Climate change, climate change,
Life has been lost because of climate change.
The rapid change in temperature has melted ice in polar regions.
It has left animals like bears homeless.
Plus, all over the country, lots of buildings have collapsed.
Fields of maize have been washed away,
Leaving farmers without food.
Climate change, oh spare life.

Political activism for kids is also firmly on the agenda of BBC World Class. In the related BBC learning Zone (of which more in another post), there is this neat little guide about how to go on a climate change demo. World Class helped send a number of such activists to Copenhagen to practise their techniques, and the site says:

Graeme, 14, from Shawlands, Glasgow, attends Hillpark Secondary School and is a UNICEF UK young climate activist.
He is already in Copenhagen for the Children’s Climate Change Forum, which takes place from November 28 to December 4, and has been inspired by what young people in developing countries are getting up to.
The forum is setting an example for world leaders. “All the young people have come to an agreement on how climate change can be tackled,” he said.
He believes that if a treaty is not agreed at Copenhagen young people will be severely affected. “It will be a threat to their health, a threat to their human rights and a threat to their right to feel safe,” he added.

So there we have it. The BBC is funding the brainwashing of a whole generation of little eco-warriors, already conforming to the BBC mindset and ready to fight to the barricades for carbon dioxide taxes and a whole plethora of lunatic legislation. Not only that, its mission to inform and entertain has been grotesquely perverted to include the deliberate, calculated frightening and indoctrination of our youngsters. In a week in which the exploits of the Hitler Youth have been re-visited, Adolf would be speechless with admiration that his techniques have been so refined and sharpened.

FISHY….

The Environment Agency – which, from its support of windfarms should actually be known as the Environment-wrecking agency – has a new fantasy. It has spent shedloads of our money producing a survey that claims our energy needs could be met by building 26,000 water turbines on rivers round the country. Most taxpayers when faced with such codswallop would want to know how much damage that building schemes on this scale would do to the environment, how much it would all cost, how much such lunacy would put on the price of electricity bills and how practical it was in meeting the country’s energy needs. But the intrepid boys and girls on the Today programme – greenie fanatics all – had only one concern when they covered the report his morning: whether the turbines can be built without affecting…fish. I kid you not. Meanwhile, real journalists, like Christopher Booker, are dealing with the real issues that are raised by this disastrous focus on green energy schemes; Britain is facing major power blackouts unless we abandon such idiocy.

SYBILS OF THE MET…

The BBC slavishly reports the findings of the Met Office, even though it is headed by a climate change activist, and even though – with funding of £243m from the government to carry on its climate change mission – its forecasts are totally unreliable, its measurements systems highly questionable, and its overall credentials are totally shot. So the latest report from this august body (published, naturally, by the BBC, its house PR agency, before appearing on its own website), that recent research papers confirm increased man-made warming, is elevated to reverential headline status. No one at the BBC ever seems to even begin to question why it is so partisan; its utterances are treated as sacred, like the Delphic oracle was to Athens.

Thank god, then for people like Richard North, of EU Referendum. From his Bradford semi, he’s been toiling and chipping away, working out how much our so-called government is spending on climate change “research” – those confections that the Met Office seems to think are real evidence rather than agitprop. In a cracking posting today, he points out that in the US, to date, at least $89bn has been spent on climate change measures and hot air; here, by just scratching the surface (as he puts it), he’s found that no less than around £500m has been spent purely on funding research projects. And surprise, surprise; they don’t bite the hand that feeds them.

Chances of the BBC uttering a word about this national scandal of our money being tipped on to the climate change gravy train? Zero. Yet the research involved from the Sybils of the Met has about as much credibility as that of a paper on human biology by Mengele.

Update:Fascinating post from Joe Bastardi of Accuweather (definitely NOT in the sway of government grants)here about why the Met office gets it wrong every time…

***Update:
The Met office throws in the towel and admits it can’t see three months in advance with any certainty. But still, it – and its press officers, the BBC – claim to be right about what will happen fifty years hence.

*****Update: For the sort of debunking of Met office hot air that BBC journalists ought to be pursuing – instead of pushing their propaganda – take a look at this. I quote from the conclusion:

So the work of the Met Office is just about propaganda. It’s not science. It’s about their attempts to intimidate people by suggesting that there are hundreds of people who may disagree with you if you disagree with AGW. But none of them actually has any argument that would be ready for a detailed promotion in isolation. It’s only the quantity, the brute force of the people who have a vested interest for the panic to continue.

POOR LITTLE RICH KID….

When a spoiled little rich kid called David de Rothschild decides to blow millions on world-saving fantasies , the BBC immediately elevate him to being an “eco-warrior” and devote acres of web space to what amounts to hero-worship. Dear David – whose banking ancestors helped fund Britain’s great industrial expansion – has seeemingly spent his life on a guilt-trip drawing attention to the follies of the West, and of course, in the BBC’s eyes, that makes him a candidate for sainthood. Especially as his main activity is listed as Adventure Ecology, a fanatical “expedition group” raising awareness about climate change.

Our Dave’s philosopy, uncannily like the BBC ‘s, is outlined on one of his websites, this one about his failed mission to traverse the Arctic in 2006:

“Now that I’m back at home safely it’s crystal clear in my mind what I left behind is a rapidly dying ecosystem. Over the last 100 days I’ve had the unique privilege to call the Arctic Ocean my home. This opportunity has given me a first hand glimpse at the truly devastating effects of global warming and climate change. It’s fair to say that most eco systems are usually very capable of maintaining themselves but like everything in life there is always a breaking point when you push things too far, the same applies to the Arctic.

“Prior to this expedition I don’t think I had truly grasped the sensitivity of our climate systems. The bottom line is they are littered with a multitude of tipping points and feedback loops which when crossed replace the so called ‘slow creep’ of environmental decay with a sudden and self perpetuating collapse.”

With a grasp of science like that, no wonder the BBC thinks he’s a true eco-warrior!

Battle of the First Night Stand-Ups

Richard Bacon (Radio Five Live, August 27, 2009) vs Sarah Palin (Tonight Show, March 2, 2010)

Varying levels of cringe arise from both first-time efforts (and, yes, some people in Palin’s Leno crowd seem overly keen to express their support, though no more so than your average please-reinforce-our-worldview Now Show audience) but I think she wins with the better gags and snappier delivery. The self-obsessed BBC presenter (and renowned Palin-hater) is simply dire. One-nil to the Barracuda?

Richard Bacon:

Sarah Palin: