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Bishop Hill has a clip from BBC Radio 5 Live in which presenter Peter Allen tells a phone-in listener that he is not allowed to question global warming. I wonder which department issued that diktat?

The comedian Mitch Benn, having been fingered as an active Greenie by taking part in a Green party fund-raising event, attempted to justify in a series of responses to this post his partisan approach. I suppose I sort of congratulate him for at least making an effort; but his foray into what he clearly regarded as enemy territory ended in tears – he departed waspishly calling all the contributors to this site right-wing ranting bigots. His stance yet again illustrates all that is wrong with the BBC mindset. Like all of them, Mitch, talented as he may be, regards any view that is not suitably trendy and liberal as right-wing thuggery, flat-earthism or racism.

And his justification for taking part in the show was totally bizarre. He claimed he was not a green, but thought he would join in because as a struggling party, it deserved a shot in the arm; sadly, he couldn’t do the same for BNP because they were racist thugs. That’s as may be. But I’m afraid, Mitch, that turning up to take part in a gig which had the sole aim of trying to get a Green party candidate elected in Brighton is partisanship, however it is presented.

One further thought. Isn’t it strange that all the comedians who appear on BBC comedy show seem to support the same views? I can’t see Brigstocke et al turning up to do a fund-raiser in John Bercow’s seat to support Nigel Farage of UKIP. Can you?

Bishop Hill has an interesting post which reveals yet again the hardcore pro-climate change mindset at the BBC. The post is about a public discussion about the impact of Climategate, held at Oxford University on February 26 between environment journalists Richard Black (BBC), Fiona Harvey (FT), Ben Jackson(Sun) and David Adam(Guardian). Richard Black made relatively few contributions, but his first was this:

I’m not surprised at the level of UK scepticism as the main impacts of climate change are decades away and in other places. The problem is poor science awareness. We need to improve science education so people properly understand climate science.

Our man Black also made a contribution to the Q and A session at the end:

Q: I’m disturbed by the panel’s attitude. Scepticism is legitimate, denialism not. The events shouldn’t be called anything-Gate as that implied conspiracy and there was none. Why haven’t the media found out who stole the emails and wasn’t the timing of their release interesting?
DA: We can no longer call people deniers. We need a new term. Some people have suggested “climate creationists”.
FH: Sceptics were clever in choosing their name. We do need a new name, denier won’t work because of Holocaust associations.
Q: What was the influence of the blogosphere?
RB: probably bad.
FH: I’m astonished by the viciousness of anonymous people on the internet.

And there we have it. The BBC’s intrepid climate guru feels that the fact that the blogsphere exposed the lies of Climategate was a “bad” influence. His other answer betrayed starkly that he thinks that people don’t believe his constant propaganda because the impact of climate change is 30 years away. Oh, and if they are educated properly about “science”, they will start to believe climate change lies; that is to say, his audience are dumbos who need educating. That’s the BBC mindset, in glowing Technicolor.

As someone who has tracked the BBC’s coverage of the EU for some time, Question Time last night from Cardiff was wearsomly predictable. Nigel Farage was bumped off last week’s programme from Teesside because the producers were worried that he would have made highly damaging remarks about how the EU was responsible for the closure of Corus steelworks. He was reinstated for last night’s edition. The audience was palpably strongly anti-UKIP (evidenced when they applauded loudly when gratutious insults were made against Mr Farage); and so, too, of course, were the four other panellists. The question chosen about UKIP was this:

Are Nigel Farage’s rude and attention seeking remarks about the President of the European Council not conclusive proof that UKIP and he have become nothing more than a boorish national embarrassment?

This showed breath-takingly deliberate (even by QT standards!), ad hominem bias against Mr Farage. Dimblebore proceded to shut Mr Farage up every time he made, or tried to make, a point in his defence. The exchange became a vicious tirade against both Mr Farage and his party. UKIP was treated exactly the same way that BNP was when it appeared. Mr Farage was called – variously – cartoonish, racist (by the boorish Janet Street-Porter), and a carictaure of himself, all without a breath of balance or attempt at intervention by Dimblebore, other than to say Mr Farage must take it all on the chin. All the while, the blood-crazed ‘audience’ jeered and booed at every opportunity.

UKIP’s appearance on this programme could and should have been an opportunity to discuss a substantive issue about the EU. Instead, the producers made it open season against both Mr Farage and his party. This was bias at its very worst.

When will the BBC finally wake up to the fact that ‘climate change’ is a scam? When will some light penetrate the thick skulls that inhabit the corridors of the corporation of overspend? When will they start writing balanced journalism instead of agitprop? The evidence of this piece about river flooding is not for a very long time. Lord Smith is a Nu Labour ex-minister who in his new role in charge of floods propaganda has become a latter day Cnut. The picture illustrating the alarmist hogwash is near the King’s Arms riverside pub at York which I know very well. It has been flooded regularly by the Ouse since it was built in medieval times, so often that on the wall is a horizontal bar which charts the level of each incursion. It’s a well-know tourist attraction. The reason for the floods is quite simple: the Ouse has been directed into a man-made narrow channel that can’t cope if there’s heavy rain in the Yorkshire Dales catchment area. For the BBC, of course, that’s not important; it’s proof of Lord Smith’s moonshine.

Did the BBC withdraw Nigel Farage’s invitation to appear on last week’s Question Time in Middlesbrough over fears about what he might say regarding the closure of the Corus steel plant on Teesside? Tata and Pachauri do like to threaten their critics with lawyers (remember the BBC’s spineless response to complaints by the Muslim Council of Britain following Charles Moore’s QT comments). Or does the BBC not need a specific reason to piss UKIP around?

(Hat tips to PacificRising in the comments and Not A Sheep)

Update. More on this from Tory Aardvark and EURSOC (via George R. in the comments)

Lord Carlile, the veteran Lib Dem peer, is complaining to the BBC Trust about the corporation’s biased coverage promoting the legalisation of so-called assisted dying. The phrase itself, of course, is repulsive Newspeak that citizen Smith would have instantly recognised. It’s a classic liberal BBC cause: how can it not be right to show ‘mercy’ to a dying loved one by smothering them or filling them with poison? My analysis of the BBC website this morning shows that every utterance by those in favour, such as the novelist Sir Terry Pratchett (who wants the establishment of killing panels); camapaigner and MS sufferer Debbie Purdy; and the lefty journalist Ray Gosling have been slavishly followed and boosted to headline status as if their words were the Holy Writ. To be fair, those against – such as George Galloway – have also been given some airtime; but the overwhelming coverage has been of those who want this form of murder legalised. And of course, the BBC Trust, as they always do, will firmly but politely tell Lord Carlile to go forth and multiply.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2006 – and thus the world’s climate change fanatic-in- chief – is stepping down from his lofty role. He’s off to make megabucks as a consultant at KPMG, the multi-national accountants and business consultants who are leaders in the carbon market scam, their efforts aimed at making sure their clients benefit from the trillion dollars bonanza. He will be joining in his new job Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, KPMGs international boss of corporate social responsibility, who had the same role at the BBC and is still an advisor to the BBC World Service Trust and Comic Relief on its climate change policies. And Mr De Boer will also surely soon be sharing platforms again with the BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, who in March 2009 was chair (no doubt for a fat fee) of the Carbon Market Insights conference (also attended by KPMG) which was an international glutton-fest of all those groups who want to get their snouts into the CO2 trough. Mr Harrabin led Mr de Boer in the in-depth discussions about how the new CO2 regime would be introduced and policed.

In the corrupt world of climate change it’s all very, very cosy for those who make the running.

Apologies for returning to him so soon, but Roger Harrabin has become in some senses the story; his endless spinning, dissembling and contorting are at the heart of why BBC so-called journalism is rotten to the core. His latest posting gives – in reverential tones that Wackford Squeers himself would have been proud – Professor Phil Jones’s account of why he is right about climate change and the rest of the world is wrong. To be sure, Mr Harrabin has clothed the good professor’s utterances with weasel words that acknowledge that sceptics exist and that he might have handled the odd bit of data, the odd fact, ineptly. But Harrabin’s overall message is that professor Jones is right, the facts and the datasets prove global warming, and it is a tragedy that Copenhagen did not achieve the world governance that he so desperately craves. Bishop Hill has a very different take on the professor’s words.

Every time there is an opportunity to put the warmist case like this, Mr Harrabin takes it, savours it, and embellishes it; and he never troubles to give another side of the story, even though Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Anotny Montford (Bishop Hill)and others have shown time and time again that the very data that Professor Jones so exults is as full of holes as a colander. One final point. Surely, even Mr Harrabin does not believe this (at the end of the latest story)?

He said many people had been made sceptical about climate change by the snow in the northern hemisphere – but they didn’t realise that the satellite record from the University of Alabama in Huntsville showed that January had been the warmest month since records began in 1979.

But because Professor Jones said it, perhaps he does. In the world of alarmists, the words from on high must be true.

Mark Kinver, one of the BBC’s most prolific global warming alarmists,was quick off the mark today to say that an “independent panel” is going to review the leaking of the Climategate file from UEA, and also whether climate research has been accurately conducted there. Mr Kinver is telling monstrous economies-with-the-truth and he knows it. The panel is anything but independent; as Bishop Hill points out with his usual eloquence, most of them are solidly wedded to to climate change in the same way that quacks are to snake oil. Not only that, the Royal Society are involved, whose website already proclaims that the world is coming to an end – based on material almost exclusively provided by the UEA climate change mob. Oh,and last but not least, the head of the inquiry has announced he’s investigating a hack, not a leak – thereby showing his true colours from the outset. Mr Kinver was no doubt fed news of the inquiry because of services by him and his employers to the cult of climate alarmism; they knew he would loyally trumpet their “independence”.

Update: No sign yet on the BBC website that Phil Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature, has already resigned from the panel because he patently and blatantly was not ‘indepedent’. I wonder why?