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James Delingpole, of the Daily Telegraph, here, has an excellent assessment of Roger Harrabin’s role in reporting what is now being called Climategate.

Diane Abbott MP, as those who worked with her in the early days of TV-am will attest, is not the brightest tool in the box. But she knows a political opportunity when she sees it. Last night – miracle of miracles – the BBC1 programme on which she reguarly appears, This Week, mentioned “climate change”, and there was a sensible exchange between Michael Portillo and Andrew Neil in which the ex-MP mentioned the CRU emails and said the affair illustrated the need for politicians to exercise caution in backing expensive measures that almost certainly were not needed. Bravo!

Ms Abbott’s response? To pronounce, without any doubt or hesitation (and no evidence, either), that the Cockermouth floods proved that “climate change” was definitely happening and must be halted. An audience member on last night’s Question Time made the same blunt assertion. The culprit responsible for this inanity? Well it must be in no small measure the BBC itself. On the back of its relentless tide of pro-warming propaganda, Ms Abbott – and millions like her – have become self-declared scientific experts, influenced by the “climate change” soundbites the BBC push out round the clock. And Ms Abott – as well as people like last night’s Question Time panellist the charmless Marcus Brigstocke – seize on this propaganda with relish because it accords with their lefty agenda to cripple our economy and create their ultimate goal of a Stalinist state.

One day, the story of how climate change hysteria took over the BBC will be told. Just like CRU, they have disgracefully refused FoI requests to reveal how they shadily arrived at the outrageous political decision to back the scam with every sinew and every resource at their disposal.

Meanwhile, their journalists continue to act like bigoted charlatans when they discuss anything to do with the topic. This morning, Today presenter Sarah Montague and political reporter James Landale discussed as if it were a serious topic a lunatic idea from the Department of Health that we should kill one in three cows in Britain to reduce methane emissions and thereby also improve the nation’s health by reducing meat intake. Landale betrayed his climate change fanatacism by saying admiringly that the idea was “courageous”. Montague tought the whole thing was a bit of a giggle because someone had pointed out that dairy and cattle farmers might be offended.

If the BBC were a true journalistic organisation, the story here would have been an investigation of what the hell the DoH is doing wasting our money by coming up with inane reports that are an insult to the intelligence of a three-year-old.

Yesterday, I said that remarkable things seemed to be happening at the BBC in terms of reporting that there were problems in the global warming/climate change scam. I spoke far too soon. Roger Harrabin and his fanatical, deeply politicised lefty chums have clearly been fighting behind the scenes to push warming up the agenda to blitz levels. Today on the website are at least four stories all of which illustrate just how deeply enmeshed in the scam the corporation is.

First there’s a report that African conflicts go up when the weather is warm, thus showing that global warming is to blame for the continent’s miseries in more ways than one. The idiotic compilers even blame the Darfur fighting on carbon dioxide. I have read a lot of history that is deterministic tosh, but that takes the biscuit. I suppose the boys and girls at the BBC think the heat is more important than fanatical Islam fundamentalism?

Second on the list, is the news that the government/quango employees at the Forestry Commission, aided an abetted by environment secretary Hilary Benn are wasting millions more of our money by urging the planting of millions of trees “to suck carbon out of the atmosphere”. Of course, there may well be some environmental sense in planting more trees, but hoovering up CO2, a perfectly harmless gas, is not one of them. To the BBC, of course, it’s the number one reason.

Third is that the Met Office – which works closely in tandem with the discredited CRU centre in Norwich – is predicting that this year could be the third hottest in the history of the world, ever. Putting aside that such data is hotly denied by “sceptics” (why can’t we call them something less negative, such as “realists”)because the methodology of measurement is hotly disputed, Harrabin has reported such baloney yet again as accepted fact.

And fourth, heavy prominence is gven to the idea that part of East Antarctica may be melting. There’s hardly a peep in the report that, even according to the paper itself, it might not be – because the measurements involved are highly speculative.

What is entirely missing from the BBC website (as far as I could see) is a report about the real impact of all the “climate change” measures the government are introducing. Namely, that thousands more pensioners die in winter than summer because they can’t afford the fuel bills that have been vastly inflated by the EU’s emissions directives and the madacap rush to build hugely expensive and inefficient renewable sources of energy.

Truly astonishing things are beginning to happen at the BBC over the CRU emails. First, Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics yesterday posed some decent questions about what had gone on at CRU and about the climate change record generally. Second, a genuine climate change sceptic (Professor Fred Singer) was allowed to speak, only the second time in recent history that I’ve seen this happen. Thirdly, Neil worked hard to expose the vacuity of the warmist stance.

I’ve never seen an interview like that on the BBC, ever, and believe you me, I’ve searched.

Next, the fanatic warmist Harrabin actually seems to be treating the CRU hacking as a story that might matter. Perhaps it’s because his chum George Monbiot has called for the resignation of CRU boss Phil Jones, but whatever the reason, I’ve seen correspondence that shows him to be on the case. And last night, he actually broadcast a piece on Radio 4 which, to quote the excellent Bishop Hill, was “not a complete whitewash”. That’s a miracle.

Finally, there could be even further reverberations to come. It seems that the BBC weather reporter Paul Hudson – he who last month shocked us all by becoming one of the first BBC staffers to admit that there were holes in warmist propaganda- has revealed on his blog that he had received, and had been sitting on, the hacked email files from CRU for more than a month. You couldn’t make this up.

As a fervent Scot, and son of the manse, Gordon Brown hates Britain’s past; anything to do with the empire and with colonialism, especially. So, of course, does the BBC, which leaps at any opportunity to denigrate British achievements. The government’s absurd and patronising decision to “apologise” for the way children from broken homes were sent to Australia and elsewhere in the Commonwealth to start new lives is thus naturally front page BBC news this morning. Yes, some of these children were badly treated, and it is deeply sad and regrettable that they were. But standards of childcare, and understanding of childcare issues, were very different then. The idea of “apologising” for what happened is preposterous and nauseating.

What’s next? A grovelling apology to Oz for James Cook landing there in the first place? Or to Spain, for beating them in the Armada, thereby postponing the colonisation of British fishing grounds by Spanish fishermen for four hundred years?

Would that this Prime Minister (and the BBC) would focus instead on issues that really matter. How long will it be before one of his successors will be forced to “apologise” for his headlong, wreckless rush towards causing fuel poverty for millions by his fervent belief in global warming? And for wrecking British social fabric and culture by encouraging unrestrained immigration?

…between the license-payer and the BBC does bring benefits to some people!

The lavish salaries of the BBC’s army of middle managers were disclosed for first time amid growing concerns over its spending. They included a series of advisers and strategists with titles such as ‘organisational development and change director’ on lucrative pay packages. Others included a £130,000 a year ‘outreach’ boss, a business continuity official on £117,000 and a ‘reward director’, themselves rewarded with a £196,000 salary.

.. as John Allen Muhammed is executed, the BBC are puzzled by the motives of the perpetrator(s) of a shooting spree.

They weren’t always so baffled. I distinctly remember the ‘angry white male’ theory being aired on the Today programme.

I know it’s difficult to distinguish between a racist murderer (of their ten murder victims, eight were white, one black and one Asian) who happens to be a Muslim (admittedly a member of a Muslim sect that could be considered racist) :

John Allen Muhammad, 45, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 21, brought America’s capital to a standstill in 2002 as they picked off white targets at petrol stations and shops in the city’s prosperous suburbs. Malvo testified that Muhammad, driven by hatred of America because of its “slavery, hypocrisy and foreign policy” and his belief that “the white man is the devil”, planned to kill six whites a day for 30 days.

Or an Islamist-inspired murderer :

(drawing by Lee Boyd Malvo presented in evidence – exhibit 65-057)

but you’d think the BBC might be able to give us the evidence and let us decide for ourselves.

The Englishman takes issue with the latest ‘We’re all going to drown” BBC story, on rising sea levels in Perth, Western Australia.

As he puts it : Two minutes with Mr Google and another scare story falls apart….

also in the Pacific – a teacher is beheaded in the Phillippines :

Police in the southern Philippines say the severed head of a kidnapped schoolteacher has been found in a bag at a petrol station. Gabriel Canizares was abducted by Abu Sayyaf militants three weeks ago. His body is still missing. He was travelling with colleagues on the island of Jolo when he was seized. The militants had demanded a ransom equivalent to $42,000 (£25,000; 28,000 euros) for Mr Canizares, which his family refused to pay. Education Secretary Jesli Lapus expressed shock at the teacher’s killing, saying six other teachers who had been kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf earlier this year had all been released despite threats to behead them.

Hmm. Tell us more about these ‘militants’ ?

Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for many of the country’s worst terrorist attacks, including the firebombing of a ferry in Manila Bay that claimed more than 100 lives in 2005, and the abduction of American tourists in 2001.

A land mine explosion under a military convoy carrying American troops on 29 September killed two US Army Special Forces soldiers – the first US military deaths in the southern Philippines in seven years.

Hmm. Any idea who these people are and what their motivation might be ?

* tumbleweed blows across street *

So sayeth Mark Steyn, referring to this BBC News story :

Shooting Raises Fears For Muslims In US Army

Steyn :

Really? Right now the body count stands at:

Non-Muslims 13
Muslims 0

Even if you are concerned that it would be terribly unfair if all Muslims were to be tarred by Major Hasan’s brush, it is, to put it at its mildest, the grossest bad taste to default every single time within minutes to the position that what’s of most interest about an actual atrocity with real victims is that it may provoke an entirely hypothetical atrocity with entirely hypothetical victims.