‘They have helped to build a media culture in which feeding frenzies have become the norm, making life intolerable for innocents caught in the glare of  their spotlights.’  

That was a quote from The Guardian 2003 attacking its fellow newspapermen…or rather those on the ‘Right’.

It is of course very apt 10 years on in the wake of Leveson and the introduction of the Press regulatory Royal Charter…or the ‘Crooks and Creeps Charter’ if you prefer.

What is perhaps a paradox is that it is of course the ‘Rightwing Press’ that is the target of this legislation….promoted as it was by a cabal of very wealthy left wingers along with some even more wealthy donors in cahoots with the Labour Party…in effect carrying on its ‘war against Murdoch.’

The News Of The World was vilified for phone hacking and its stories on celebrities and members of the Public….and yes some of that was highly dubious….but in the scale of things perhaps not as serious as the actions of some other media organisations…particularly those on the left whose active promotion of, and careless incitement of, anti-Semitism must surely rank higher than the dignity of a public figure photographed in a compromising position.

The Guardian for instance…. So well known for the anti-Semitic tracts inside its pages that it has had to publish a disclaimer of sorts….. both accepting anti-Semitism whilst denying it:

The readers’ editor on… averting accusations of antisemitism

‘Guardian reporters, writers and editors must be more vigilant about the language they use when writing about Jews or Israel

As a newspaper the Guardian has been critical of all sides, but it is seen as being especially critical of the Israeli government and its actions. And that has led to complaints that the Guardian, in print or online, is carrying material that either lapses into language resonant of antisemitism or is, by its nature, antisemitic.

For antisemitism can be subtle as well as obvious. Three times in the last nine months I have upheld complaints against language within articles that I agreed could be read as antisemitic.

I have been careful to say that these examples may be read as antisemitic because I don’t believe their appearance in the Guardian was the result of deliberate acts of antisemitism: they were inadvertent. But that does not lessen the injury to some readers or to our reputation.…reporters, writers and editors must be more vigilant to ensure our voice in the debate is not diminished because our reputation has been tarnished.’

The BBC is guilty of something similar….its Middle East coverage whilst probably not intending to be anti-Semitic has the same effect when the journalists deliberately demonise Israeli actions whilst covering up or ignoring Palestinian violence and war crimes.

The BBC’s coverage has the effect of inciting and encouraging anti-Semitism around the world leading to attacks on, and possibly even deaths of, Jews wholly unconnected with the conflict other than for the fact that they are Jewish….never mind the BBC’s cruel use and sacrifice of David Kelly so that it could get its ‘scoop’ in its fight against the Iraq War.

To my mind such reckless, or even deliberate shaping of a story which leads to such serious, harmful, and dangerously lethal effects must be considered far more damaging than any embarrassment from a story about sordid politicians or even the hacking of a missing girl’s phone.

Nicky Campbell was on the case earlier this week on 5Live ‘Your Call’ in which he was discussing the Press regulations.

The first caller was ‘Geoff from Oldham’ who launched straight into a tirade against the Rightwing Press and the millionaires backing Cameron. Well I think I’ve already noted the hypocrisy of that.  Geoff apparently is a frequent caller.

We were then met with a familiar figure…Labour’s Alistair Campbell who preceded to cover the same ground as Geoff, making the same claims.

Campbell, the BBC’s new friend, was allowed a long and uninterrupted say.

Brought in to oppose his view was ex News Of The World Journo Neil Wallis.

Wallis hardly got a word in being constantly interrupted by A. Campbell and rubbished.

Wallis then had to leave and Campbell remained.

This is the same Campbell that Max Hastings in the Mail today describes thus:

‘Campbell, meanwhile, has become the darling of the BBC, forever a guest on its chat shows and invited to air his views on news programmes as if he was an elder statesman rather than spinmaster of the most mendacious government of modern times.

Campbell’s off-camera behaviour, as a foul-mouthed bully, was brilliantly captured in the political satire The Thick Of It. But the man himself is nowadays welcomed into studios as if he was a national treasure.’

Campbell of course worked hand in glove with Murdoch all during Blair’s reign….to now attack the ‘rightwing press’ has to be some of the most dishonest and hypocritical opportunism we have seen….especially as Labour’s new spin meister is none other than Tom Baldwin….ex-Times journalist and the man who channelled Campbell’s ‘stories’ into prominence in the Times paper.

As the New Statesman reveals: Baldwin saw it as his job as a journalist to: ‘keep Labour in power as long as I can.”

The Daily Mail also has some revelations:

‘Alistair Campbell was known to liaise with Baldwin in endless attempts to ­discredit the Labour government’s enemies, the results of which regularly ended up prominently in The Times — a paper once admired for its thundering independence.

Like Campbell, Baldwin, 44, has a ferocious, emotional hatred of Tories….one fellow political journalist puts it: ‘His judgment was completely blinded by his hatred for the Tories and his fixation with Alastair Campbell, who used Tom as a stool pigeon to find out what other journalists were up to and as a cipher for stories he wanted to place….allowing himself to be turned into a blatant propagandist.’

The BBC using a man whose sole aim in life was to gag the Press or to get a favourable story planted in it for his political masters is perhaps one of the greatest ironies of this saga…especially so as Campbell is probably most famous for his ‘war with the BBC’ over the Kelly affair.　

The rest of the programme went in a similar vein mostly taken up with attacks on the ‘Rightwing Press’ and Tory millionaires.

A couple of Nicky Campbell’s own contributions were his attempt to make excuses for regular BBC contributor and Labour politician, John O’Farrell, whose comments that he was disappointed that Mrs Thatcher didn’t die in the Brighton bombing were brought to light in the Eastleigh by-election….a gross injustice according to Nicky Campbell.

Another was the case of Louis Walsh when the Sun printed unfounded allegations and had to pay him £500,000 in damages…..this, apparently,  was a damning example of Press irresponsibility and intrusion ruining people’s lives….Campbell reckoned £500,000 was nowhere near enough for over a year’s battle with the Sun.

Trouble is Campbell made no mention of the BBC’s own recent attempt to ruin someone’s life…that of Lord McAlpine, by making completely false allegations against him….having never even contacted him for his reaction to the claims….the BBC only paying about £180,000 to McAlpine for the extremely serious allegations.

The whole programme was in essence just an excuse to lay into the Sun and Murdoch and when they could, the Daily Mail and its owner Paul Dacre.

Janet Daley sums it all up:

The ‘BBC Left’ is using hacking to get revenge

Left-wing politicians and broadcasters do not want to debate ideas but they do want to remove their opponents.

And if that’s the case perhaps it’s time for serious thought about the BBC’s privileged existence and the journalists who pump out so much damaging leftwing propaganda on the license payer’s shilling.

Time perhaps for wondering if it should be allowed to continue abusing its unique position and whether the harm it does by far outweighs any good.

Read this and slowly digest…it’s from the Guardian in 2003.……it’s about ‘The Press’ and the dark arts they apply to the News as they spin it to weave a web to catch unwary readers.

Relevant to the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War and in the wake of Leveson.

Read it though and something else springs to mind..… ‘masters of spin……using all the arts.…distortion by headline, bias in their selection and omission of material, partiality in presentation.’

You’re ahead of me already I’m guessing……swap out ‘The Press’ for  ‘The BBC’ and you don’t really have to change anything else….　

‘It was fascinating, if disheartening, to watch the masters of spin – national newspaper editors – exhibiting their skills in the reportage of the Hutton inquiry. All the arts were on display: distortion by headline, bias in the selection and omission of material, partiality in the presentation. The aim, of course, was to ensure that the angle of every report, quite apart from the editorials and commentaries, should reinforce the papers’ political agendas. Editors didn’t have to think twice about what they were doing, because partisanship comes naturally.

Lord Hutton can collect all the evidence he wants, just so long as it fits in with the press’s prejudices. So, inevitably, we were treated to a sort of merry-go-round of accusations rather than an impartial presentation of what Hutton’s inquiry was being told. In the place of sober analysis and interpretation came knee-jerk insults. Papers happily indulged in their favourite game – trial by media – and enjoyed their twin roles of judge and jury.

Though several papers want this to be a tribunal which finds either the government or the BBC guilty of causing Kelly’s death, editors should reflect on their own part in the tragedy. They have helped to build a media culture in which feeding frenzies have become the norm, making life intolerable for innocents caught in the glare of their spotlights. Though the press spinners are not on trial in Court 73, there are plenty who think they should be.’

That last line really catches the eye…‘They have helped to build a media culture in which feeding frenzies have become the norm, making life intolerable for innocents caught in the glare of their spotlights.’

It was the BBC’s reporting and subsequent actions that led to the ‘media frenzy’ and ultimate death of the ‘innocent’ David Kelly caught in the BBC mincing machine and used as a disposable pawn in its attack on Blair…it was the BBC that made the shocking claim that the Prime Minister had lied to the Public in order to start a war…….a claim that was a lie in itself and one that had enormous and damaging effect upon the course and conduct of the war.

So who is it that should be in court?

Well, it may have been budget day for you running jackals of the capitalist oppressors of the workers BUT back in the Narnia of the BBC, we were treated to an programme called “Lenin in Letchworth” …

In 1907 Lenin attended a congress of exiled communists in London that helped plan the overthrow of the Russian tsar a decade later. It was during this momentous event that the Soviet Union’s future leader is said to have visited the English garden city of Letchworth.

I listened to most of this programme and it may have had some tenuous historical merit BUT it was quite remarkable to hear the endless positive spin afforded socialism!

Hi folks! Been away for a short while but am b-b-back! Now then, I know today was Budget Day and wondered what you reckoned to BBC coverage. Personally, I found it hard to distinguish between the line taken by Ed Miliband and that retailed by Stephanie Flanders! I feel sorry for Osborne – the ONLY way the BBC was going to give him good coverage was it it started adopting the fiscal recklessness of Brown and Balls!

Oh and the BBC non biased headline? “Osborne – stick with us despite the gloom!”

It seems the BBC really are entirely unaccountable…even when caught red handed they scheme to rewrite the history books and portray themselves as the wronged innocents.

The BBC has taken the opportunity of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq to settle old scores.

Con Coughlin in the Telegraph spells out the BBC’s problem with the truth:

The BBC just cannot accept that Iraq is a better place without Saddam Hussein

As is the case with the BBC’s institutional support for the global warming lobby, don’t expect it to provide anything approaching balanced coverage of the Iraq issue.

The organisation simply cannot accept the inconvenient truths about the real causes of the Iraq war.

The BBC lied about the 45 minute claim in the Iraq Dossier and was caught out and paid the price.

Ever since it has worked relentlessly to discredit as much as possible the intelligence that led to the war and the politicians who made the decisions.

This latest effort by Peter Taylor, the man who would like to negotiate with the Taliban, is more of the same…self serving ancient history rehashed and served up overheated and over excited:

Panorama: The Spies Who Fooled The World

Taylor says the Panorama team carried out a six month forensic investigation into the intelligence…..well there’s nothing new…..most was known by 2004 if not before.

The language Taylor uses is carefully chosen to ‘interpret’ the information in a way that is designed to portray events in a particulary bad light.

Look at this little gem:

Six months before the invasion, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the country about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

“The programme is not shut down,” he said. “It is up and running now.” Mr Blair used the intelligence on WMD to justify the war.

 Taylor tells us that intelligence was all based on lies and fabrications by Iraqi defectors…however he is quite happy to accept the word of two of Saddam’s closest henchmen:

But not all the intelligence was wrong. Information from two highly-placed sources close to Saddam Hussein was correct.….oth said Iraq did not have any active WMD.

A BBC report liberally sprinkled with wishful thinking dust…what a surprise.

The premise for the war was always that Saddam had small stocks of WMD of some kind…and that given the chance he would definitely try to obtain more…and it was highly likely he would carry on as before attacking his own people or invading neighbouring countries….this is what the intelligence said and what the experts believed…and what they told the politicians.

The BBC can’t accept that firstly the intelligence community were actually right and that Saddam would be a major threat given a free hand.

The war was never about large scale stocks of WMD parked under a tarpaulin in the Iraqi desert somewhere…it was about future intentions, active programmes of research and development, and regime change.

This article from the Guardian in 2004 illustrates why Taylor and Co have wasted 6 months and a large amount of license fee money in a self indulgent attempt to blacken everyone else’s name and proclaim the BBC innocent:

 ‘….the government and intelligence services had essentially the same mindset on Iraq. That mindset was exemplified by Dr David Kelly himself, as the former UN inspector Scott Ritter wrote in these pages yesterday. Dr Kelly was a veteran, and indeed a hero, of the intelligence war against Saddam, and his view seems to have been the same as that of most such veterans: that Saddam almost certainly had some limited stocks of chemical and biological weapons, some capacity to restart production, some very limited means of delivery, and some hidden but very scaled down research programmes. The importance of these supposed stocks and programmes was not that they were that dangerous in themselves but that they were evidence of Saddam’s long term intentions. What most worried Dr Kelly was what Saddam might develop in the future.

This is the critical point: the intelligence assessment of Iraq was fundamentally on an assessment of Saddam’s character. In a sense he himself was the weapon of mass destruction, so obdurate was his will to possess such weapons assumed to be.

Much that Saddam did could have been expressly designed to produce the impression that he wished to preserve his programmes so that he could restart them on a full-scale basis as soon as he had the resources to do so.

We knew then and we know now that they believed he had some minor WMD holdings and expected to find them, or encounter them in battle. They were not lying when they said this, yet it was not the reason they went to war. If that reason was principally to do with weapons, it was to do with weapons not yet made, whose connection with the present was established only on the basis of an assumption about what was in Saddam’s mind.’

John Cleese: ‘The BBC management have never written and never directed programmes’

Monty Python star John Cleese complains that BBC execs are out of touch with the creative process.

The truth is the BBC management are out of touch with just about every aspect of British life….not reflecting the real thoughts and opinions of the majority of people.

The BBC are only interested in themselves and their own opinions…or rather think that it is only their opinions that are actually of any value.

John Humphrys this morning presented a programme examining the state of the Christian religion:

For the faithful it’s a time of celebration and anticipation, a welcome relief from the problems of recent times. Recent decades have seen both churches beset by a series of issues and scandals: child sex abuse and ecclesiastical cover-ups; the place and role of women within the church; falling congregations; tensions arising from human rights and equality legislation

Are these crises too serious to overcome or too good to waste? Can the new pope and archbishop not only heal the rifts within their own churches but also find ways to speak meaningfully to societies that no longer automatically see them as moral authorities? Have these churches got anything to say to a culture that is unprecedentedly diverse and more secular than before? And is anyone still listening?

No problem with that, except of course it is yet another dig at the Christian Church whilst the BBC steadfastly refuses to do anything similar with Islam.

Christianity has suffered its problems with controversy on women in the Church, gays and sex abuse scandals.  All serious enough to merit a look.

At the same time we have people being killed , burnt out of their homes and churches, suffering massive discrimination all because they are Christian…or rather not Muslim.

We have critics of Islam hunted down and killed or numerous atempts made to kill  them, we have bombs going off in European cities because ‘non Muslim’ troops are liberating Muslims from dictators….a job apparently only suitable for other Muslims, we have Sunnis killing Shias in Iraq and Syria, we have Muslims intent on wiping out the Jews in Palestine.

And yet the BBC doesn’t like to admit Islam is in crisis or examine its problems and the consequences of those problems too closely….but even Muslims recognise there is a huge problem:

Violent fatwas worry Muslim governments
Rulers in Muslim countries are coming to terms with the fact that their religion is in a deep crisis. One sign is the growing number of fatwas or legal pronouncement ordering the murder of atheists, apostates, Israeli civilians ..
Training European imams is Islam’s toughest challenge
Most imams in Europe are foreign-born and incapable of reconciling their own Islamic background with that of the West. When this is the case as in Great Britain some young Muslims can be tempted by terrorism.

When Christianity is on the wane its problems become less important and yet the BBC still examines them…..but Islam has all the same problems and a few more of its own to add to the mix….. and Islam is on a surge in the UK ,  it might be wise to investigate the consequences but the BBC will not do so.

As I said no problem with criticism of Christianity or any other religion…as long as they are treated equally in this respect.

And the exact same criticisms might apply to the secular priesthood of the BBC…who gave them the moral authority to set the agenda….and is anyone still listening?

This morning on the Today programme John Simpson gave us an almost upbeat report on Iraq’s prospects:

‘Iraq’s future is starting to look brighter – if only its people were allowed a little peace.

So does this mean the invasion was justified? Iraqis are divided about it. Shias and Kurds, the big beneficiaries from Saddam’s overthrow, tend to agree. Most Sunnis, the big losers from it, do not.’

Sunnis of course being the beneficiaries of Saddam’s generosity…and the minority which ruled with a fist of iron. 

Simpson finished by saying that Iraq could have a bright future if only people realised that that the glass was half full….it might be time to ‘turn the page’.

Curiously the BBC website on their frontpage has chosen to miss out most of the optimistic stuff in this selection of edits from John Simpson which paints an altogether bleaker picture of Iraq….Iraq is no better…there is no future in this country  etc.

When the Iraqis have people at the BBC who do everything they can to make out Iraq is a basket case beset by violence then the country and its people will continue to struggle to pull themselves out of the mire as people who might be willing to help are put off and confidence in the country ebbs away.

BBC minions playing politics with Iraqi lives should perhaps listen to John Simpson and keep their noses out….or at least tell the truth…hard to do I know, give it a go, some Iraqi child might live to tell the tale.

Time for another one of these…a bit late but here we go ….

The BBC have, in their wisdom, decreed that climate change is occurring, it is man-made and that it is resulting in ever more extreme, or weird, weather.

They have established between themselves that because the science is settled there need be no debate about that science…all that is left to do is to convince us, the Public, that the measures that are being taken to lessen the impact of climate change, or rather to reduce climate change itself, are urgently needed.

They no longer debate the science but now indulge in promoting doomsday scenarios dramatising the effects of that supposed extremely weird weather in order to scare us into accepting highly expensive and inconvenient measures whilst also producing programmes and articles reporting the inordinate success of the green technology in producing electricity and reducing carbon emissions.

One latest example could be this as highlighted by Bishop Hill in which the BBC lazily, or all too readily, accepted a press release from the Scottish government and from the WWF, both of course highly pleased with the closure of a coal power station….whilst no other voice, for instance asking where was all the power going to come from if they keep closing down reliable and cheap methods of power generation, was heard.

All that is left is to decide how many wind turbines we need.

To help us the BBC, whilst no longer allowing debate about the actual science, promotes the success of wind farms and the urgency that the reduction in fossil fuel use requires to save the planet….never mind the Chinese et al building hundreds of coal fired power stations as we close down our own very cheap and reliable ones.

However it seems possible that the BBC are back pedalling on the ‘science is settled’ dogma.

Recent events have highlighted the uncertainties about the science….even the IPCC has admitted that there has been no warming for 17 years…not only that but many reports are surfacing that say the planet is not as sensitive to temperature change as they predicted. Along with that numerous climate change lobby claims about the ‘science’ have proven to be wrong….as well as much of the propaganda such as Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’, which indicated there was no Medieval Warm Period, was proven to be wrong, the IPCC models have proven to be wrong.

And recently we had a similar ‘Hockey Stick’ graph released which they claimed backed up Mann.

This latest effort has been thoroughly examined and found wanting…there are numerous, large discrepancies that indicate that the graph does not correspond with the actual data it was supposedly based upon…some suggest the figures have been deliberately manipulated to give the ‘right’ result.

What is interesting is that the BBC seem to have completely ignored this new report despite it being in Science magazine and headlined across numerous journals and newspapers. I haven’t been able to find any sign of it on their website nor on their twitter accounts.

There might be numerous reasons for that…one being that as the science is settled they no longer want to stir up debate again….or that because of the controversy over Mann’s Hockey Stick they decided to wait it out and see what was said about this new one by other scientists or indeed bloggers.

Or…possibly, just possibly, it could be that the BBC have seen the light….that at the moment nature and the science seem to be pointing to a far less intense warming than predicted…and the BBC are sitting on the fence whilst not admitting both their own science and their ‘no sceptics allowed’ policies are wrong.

The new, dodgy, hockey stick graph shows precisely why Sceptics are vital for the health of science… without them and the questions they raise just how much dodgy science would get approved upon which disastrous political decisions would be based with enormous economic and social consequences?

The BBC has done this country a huge disservice by banning the sceptical voice….we have only had the pleasure of hearing the sound of one hand clapping as some scientists applaud their own genius.

But as I said it seems that the BBC have had second thoughts, at least to a certain degree…..not leaping on ‘research’ that says the 20^th century is the hottest for 11,000 years, Richard Black would have been all over it, and Roger Harrabin has linked to a report about the failure of electric cars in Norway….

roger harrabin ‏@RHarrabin Electric cars are wobbling – even on Norway’s roads via Reuters http://planetark.org/wen/68152

and this morning on ‘What the papers say’ we were informed of the Daly Mail’s story about the complete failure of the global warming narrative….and of course Harrabin actually reporting the slow down much to the annoyance of the Met. Office.

It looks as if the BBC may be hedging its bets and sitting tight until something conclusive turns up…or at least until there is an upturn in the temperature trend….one year of warm weather and we will be off again, the sceptics proven wrong and an ever more urgent demands for more wind farms.

The question is just how long will they wait? If the standstill in global warming continues when will the BBC start to a question the ‘science’? When will they allow sceptics to have their say…whether it is to question the science…is global warming even happening, if so is it CO2 that causes it, is it beneficial or not for the planet, or to ask are the measures taken either way the correct ones to deal with the situation?

The two websites below provide information that will help you judge the truth, not about climate change, but about the value of wind farms and similar remedies and just how much power they generate…and thereby also judge the BBC’s reporting…is it a true picture or an exaggeration of the benefits of wind turbines for example.

 bmreports……gives real time data on the generation of power by different means.

And the National Grid ‘Future Energy Scenario’  which gives various scenarios for the generation of power.

 There is also Gridwatch which gives data for power generation.

Facts and Figures

The current capacity of wind power connected to the transmission system that we forecast for is 5.5GW (Jan 2013). This capacity is expected to continue to increase during 2013/14 and could reach 32GW of wind generation capacity by 2020.

The Climate Change Act 2008 and the Renewable Energy Directive 2009, introduced by the brothers Miliband demand that we generate 15% of our power by renewables by 2020,  80% by 2050 using 1990 as a baseline.

Air/water heat pumps are the answer to heating our homes and reducing power use…installed in 1.5million homes by 2015,  2.5m homes by 2020 and 9m homes by 2030.

Loft and cavity wall insulation is also of great benefit…paying for itself within 5 years.

All new build homes will be zero carbon by 2016.

Lighting is 10% of domestic demand….low energy bulbs have reduced demand by 25% since 2005.

All electrical appliances are now more efficient and reduce power use.

Smart meters with time use tariffs will be introduced to all homes by 2019…..only useful if they are based on price tariffs and have appliances which automatically switch off on peak power say….may mean a 4% reduction in demand.

Electric vehicles are a key component of the carbon reduction plan…judging by Norway’s experience that isn’t going to work.

Much of the coal power generation capacity will be closed by 2023, nuclear will not be built until a similar time whilst gas will be providing 39Gw by 2030.

Wind will provide 32Gw by 2020 and 55 by 2030…..2009 we had 2GW installed, 280Mw built in 2012 and 2Gw looking for consent and 2.9Gw in planning.

Other renewables are of negligible value.

Here are some actual generation figures for wind:

Peak power delivered by wind at 0300 am and 1100 pm, very useful…wind provides 5% of our electricity, coal 44%, nuclear 22% and gas 24%….so just how many more wind turbines do we need to replace coal?

This graph is from the National Grid’s ‘Future Energy Scenario’ (page 55), sorry about the quality…it is the middle ‘gone green’ scenario and shows that demand could be met by conventional means even in 2030….so presumably we will be paying not only for the same conventional generating sources as now plus all the renewables as well…no wonder our bills are soaring ever upwards….

This is of interest from the head of the IPCC:

‘I would like to start by saying that I am not deaf to those who do not agree with the scientific consensus on man-made climate change.

Nor, indeed, to those who do not agree with the findings – or, in some cases, the existence – of the IPCC.

Such scepticism is inevitable, and has been the case with every area of new knowledge that has burst into human consciousness.

We who are on the side of the consensus must remind ourselves that the evolution of knowledge thrives on debate.’

 The BBC hasn’t reported this yet…it seems to have greatly disturbed the green lobbyists as their capturing of young and impressionable minds is put at risk……..

Climate debate cut from national curriculum for children up to 14 

Exclusive: New draft guidelines for key stages 1 to 3 criticised by scientists for ‘abdicating duty to future generations’

The move has caused alarm among climate campaigners and scientists who say teaching about climate change in schools has helped mobilise young people to be the most vociferous advocates of action by governments, business and society to tackle the issue.

Roger Harrabin’s mate, Dr Joe Smith is also less than impressed.