Britannia Radio

 

BIASED AND ARROGANT!

Excellent article here by George Pitcher on the arrogance that defines the leadership of the BBC.

"There is now a Versailles mentality among the BBC aristocracy. On being told in their plush parlours that we peasants are being starved of decent broadcasting, the response is less "let them eat cake" as "let them watch cack". But we peasants are revolting. I'm sure BBC execs would smirk in ironic agreement at that observation, but they would do well to mark that the public mood has turned ugly towards those who line their pockets at our expense.

There has been an assumption among the political and banking classes that all this will blow over and that they will return to business as normal, as they see it; that's why parliamentary reform has been dilatory and the shameless "bonuses are back" slogan is heard in banks, even after their semi-nationalisation.

The third pillar of our public-sector greed culture is the BBC. The signs are that the public stick will eventually discipline Parliament and the City into behaving in a better manner than sponging off the state, which means us. So it must and will be for the BBC."

IS IT COS I IS BLACK?

Familiar BBC meme - the Police are racist. This morning the BBC has covered concerns raised over routine DNA tests which seem to suggest that some groups featured disproportionately on the database - with young black men "very highly over-represented." I guess that means one of two things - either our Police are indeed racist or young black men commit more crime than the population average. I notice that the BBC don't pursue the latter possibility. Why?

SYNCHRONICITY...

And just when it seemed like the BBC might be having second thoughts on the validity of the AGW agenda is has pursued with such vigour! 

"Three UK groups studying climate change have issued an unprecedented statement about the dangers of failing to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. The Royal Society, Met Office, and Natural Environment Research Council say the science underpinning climate change is more alarming than ever. They say the 2007 UK floods, 2003 heatwave in Europe and recent droughts were consistent with emerging patterns. Their comments came ahead of crunch UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month."

The tone and content of the debate this morning could not be clearer - the world is going to suffer unprecedented global warming unless our leaders at Copenhagen gain agreement on how to tax the hell out of us and cripple our economies. Talk about hot air...

BBC "SAT ON CRU FILES FOR A MONTH"

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 excellentBishop 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.

Same Old Same Old ...

>> MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The BBC's Matt Frei is surely a worthy successor to Justin Webb. Take a listen toSunday's "Americana" on Radio Four - although I must warn you that you will never get those 30 minutes of your life back (fortunately I had a long drive to do on Sunday).

"As Sarah Palin kicks off her book tour around the nation this week, Americana takes time to learn more about the women that represent America as well as the women who work each day to make it run."

Otherwise known as 'let's find a succession of women to take a pop at Sarah Palin'.

I particularly liked the woman chosen to give us the more sympathetic take on Palin, the BBC's idea of a 'devil's advocate', one Amy Alexander, whose websiteshows, er, an interesting sensibility.

"Demonising Sarah Palin solidifies Sarah Palin's base - the same crowd that calls President Barack Obama a socialist, a totalitarian sleeper and worse. The Left's relentless demeaning of Palin gives more fuel to this crowd's perverse, puritanical sense of victimisation. Palin, after all, is a human being - she is therefore worthy of respect. And for the liberal feminists out there of any gender, it is foolish not to admit that Sarah Palin posesses a high degree of ambition, self-confidence, and what we Americans call moxie - gumption to everyone else. Those are qualities we say we want to cultivate in women. I think it's time we stopped fretting about Palin's hypocrisy, contradictions, mangled syntax and stagey flag-waving, and acknowledged the postive parts of her persona. They do exist, and recognising them does not require you to dismiss her obvious shortcomings".

She really came out fighting for Palin, didn't she ... the main guest, one 'Cokey' Roberts (I won't hazard a guess how she got that name) turned out not to have actually read Palin's book - but she apparently knew what was in it without reading it !

(One Republican representative was interviewed - and Frei opened by opining that Palin was a wake-up call to the 'white old men' of the party. And so it goes ...).

One to watch?

BBC2, 7pm Wed 25 Nov: Can Obama Save the Planet? presented by Justin "Ethical Man" Rowlatt.

Not in a bad way...

We finally got a discussion about the CRU emails on the BBC with Lord Lawson and UEA Professor Robert Watson appearing on the Today programme this morning. Listen here.

I, like Cassandra in the comments, was struck by the little qualifying statements made by Professor Watson:

"These scientists at the University of East Anglia are both honourable and world class. Their data is not being manipulated in any bad waywhatsoever… these scientists are not manipulating or hiding anything… UEA work with the British Met Office and they're absolutely beyond doubt that they have not manipulated the data in any negative sense…"

Depends what you mean by "bad" and "negative", I guess. Fiddling the code, changing results, deleting emails, claiming to have lost data and threatening to destroy it rather than release it through FOI requests, getting those who disagree removed from prominent positions, refusing to include contradictory research in the IPCC report - just a brief list of the things done by these "honourable and world class" scientists. But not in a bad way.

Here's a neat little quiz highlighting some of the honourable activities revealed by the emails.

I'm reminded of the words of comedian Dom Irrera:

"When people say to me, "Can I be honest with you?" No, please be as misleading and deceitful as possible, that's all I'd expect from a lowlife scumbag like you. And I don't mean that in a bad way."

(Update - sorry, didn't notice that David had already posted on this.)

Update 13.15. Tonight's edition of Newsnight:

Susan Watts will be bringing us the latest on the story that the e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.

Watts, you may recall, is no stranger to the manipulation of information where climate change is concerned.

[Newsnight also has a film on "controversial" Polish MEP Michal Kaminski. How many BBC reports have there been on this one man? Where are the equivalent investigations into senior European politicians with "controversial" left-wing backgrounds (the new unelected European foreign minister, for example)?]

Update 16.15. Compare and contrast.

From Richard Black's blog:

Update 2 - 0930 GMT Monday 23 November: We have now re-opened comments on this post. However, legal considerations mean that we will not publish comments quoting from e-mails purporting to be those stolen from the University of East Anglia, nor comments linking to other sites quoting from that material.

From this morning's Today programme (emphasis added):

When the Sultan of the Gulf state of Oman was overthrown by his son in July 1970, the coup was painted as a family affair. But secret documents obtained by the BBC prove that the British government helped plan the revolt, partly to safeguard its interests there. The papers, which were released by mistake and have now been closed again to the public, are the subject of Radio 4's Document programme. Mike Thomson reports on how the documents show that ministers ordered British officers seconded to the Sultan's army to help oust him by force if the coup appeared to be failing.

CRU emails? No way!
State secrets? Meh.

Update 16.30. BBC weatherman Paul Hudson (whose article "What happened to global warming?" caused such a stir) is quite happy to link to the emails on his blog.

Update 18.20. Thanks to Guest in the comments for spotting once again that the BBC WHYS blog has bumped its post on climate change, making myupdated link redundant as the earlier one. In its latest version the blog now asks:

So, is it hard to engage people in a debate over what to do about climate change simply because they believe that climate change is a conspiracy?

As anybody who has given more than cursory glance to the emails will know, it's the people behind climate change alarmism who have been refusing "to engage people in debate", preferring instead to hide and manipulate data while smearing those with opposing views.

Update 18.40. One more thing - the WHYS blog, like Paul Hudson but not Richard Black, does link to the emails. Rumours that the online editors are all away on a BBC course called "Arse and elbow - how to tell the difference" are unconfirmed at this point.

ON THAT SPANISH FLAG INCIDENT

The BBC has been anxious to make us aware how put out the ppor Spanish are over the alleged firing by the Royal Navy on a Spanish flag on a buoy in the straits of Gibraltar. Jeremy Paxman's brother, Giles, who is British Ambassador to Spain (natch) has apologised for any misunderstandings (shamefully, in my view but this is not enough and the Spanish opposition is now calling for a "tougher line" on Gibraltar. The BBC allows a Spanish analyst to offer his insight on the issue which is fair enough but where is the effort to allow a Gibraltarian perspective? I suggest the BBC should contact B-BBC contributor the All Seeing Eye if they want to try and introduce a little balance here.

GAIA WORSHIP

I'm sure Biased BBC readers will be familiar with the shocking news concerning the fiddling and misrepresentation of statistics at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Naturally this represents a problem for the BBC which has been to the fore in promoting AGW. So this morning we had an item@ 7.35am on this issue debated by Lord Lawson and Prof Robert Watson and I felt that Watson was given much more time than was Lawson and his strident assertions contrasted with Lawson's moderation. Given the last word, Watson asserted that there is "no uncertainty whatsoever" that humans have been responsible for climate change over the past fifty years! In what sense is fifty years an appropriate time period to come to such a conclusion and in what sense is there incontrovertible evidence for such an AGW claim. We'll never know - the BBC did not pursue it!

BACKING THE IRA...

For decades, the IRA has had a very sympathetic hearing from the BBC. I do not suggest that the BBC supported the killings, the bombings, the maimings carried out by Irish Republicans but it did seem to have a visceral sympathy with the IRA ideal that "Britain" needs to get out of Northern Ireland.

This morning, the BBC was coming to terms with an attempted massive car bombing of the Policing Board offices in Belfast by Irish republican "dissidents." The BBC is forced to report that these "dissidents" are in fact IRA terrorists who simply seek to further advance their cause by violence but it spins it in a way that suggests that Adams and McGuinness are the "good" IRA whereas these weekend bombers are the "bad" IRA. In this way, all the atrocities of the past decades are sanitised.

The BBC had convicted Old Bailey bomber Gerry Kelly on - a man who subsequently put a bullet in a prison officer's head - and let him spout about how dreadful this attempted bombing was and how those who have any information should tell the police all they know. Fine words, but why did the BBC not ask why Kelly and his kin do not tell the police all they know about bombings that DID take innocent life? The hypocrisy is staggering but the BBC do not pursue it. Might it be that the BBC still sees itself as a participant rather than a reporter in what passes for "peace"?

REPEATS TRUMP RESPONSIBILITY

>> SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009

So what do you make of the news that Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, has vetoed a review of executive pay because the corporation’s private polling shows that viewers care more about repeats? The Telegraph has the details here. I cannot see how the BBC can adopt such an arrogant approach although listening to David Cameron on Marr this morning did not inspire me into thinking that the day of reckoning is coming anytime soon. DC seemed very pally when he talking to some actress luvvies on the Marr couch.

Open Season

Via Clive Davis, a quote from Richard Black taken from the BBC's staff magazine Ariel:

In case you ever want to meet up in the blogosphere, I’m the guy with the target on his back. It’s big, it’s green and it flashes up a message saying "climate sceptics – shoot here".

Yeah, but the target's so big now that it's not much of a sport any more.

It's about time Black and his fellow BBC environment and science correspondents began asking some challenging questions concerning the machinations and motivations of their dissent-crushing friends within the climate science community. Of course that will be difficult given that all their reputations are collectively staked on the shaky MMGW house of cards staying up.

Our Man in the West Bank

Deegee highlights numerous signs in Jeremy Bowen’s article that indicate he’s not really BBC Middle East editor at all, but a correspondent representing the Palestinians. Like Alan Johnston, Bowen obviously wants to assure his friends that “I’m telling your story.”
The article is riddled with clues as to Bowen’s personal feelings, and is dumbed down by lazy over-simplifications of the sort that invariably get repeated over and over till they become set in stone.
"President Mahmoud Abbas, America's current Palestinian partner, is so fed up with the lack of progress towards independence that he has threatened to leave his job."

“Is so fed up!” Is that Bowen’s summing up of Abbas’s political strategy?

Deegee says: “Abbas’s period as president has expired. He would be resigning from a position he no longer legally holds.” 
The BBC’s own website publishes a variety of interpretations, which show that Abbas’s threat to stand down is a little more complex than Bowen’s misleading brief - that he is “Fed up”

Having established that Jewish settlements are the obstacle to peace, and that they are illegal, Bowen somehow manages to erase the Palestinians’ refusal to recognise Israel or renounce violence from the equation altogether as though it isn’t an impediment of any significance whatsoever.
Melanie Phillips says, “Let us not forget that it is the ‘moderate’ Abbas and the forces he leads whom America and the west say are ‘entitled’ to a state of their own, to which Israel is unreasonably providing obstacles"

That has now become received wisdom. Bowen ups the ante by calling them "little fortresses.” He then rearranges history by reiterating another myth that has established itself in the narrative. He implies that Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish extremist was responsible for ending the peace process.
In a critique of one of Seth freedman’s Guardian articles, which is similarly economical with the actuality, Israelinurse dispels this myth.

"Freedman descends into the realms of fantasy, stating that “with three bullets, assassin Yigal Amir managed to irreversibly derail the peace process” and claims that the entire region’s political journey abruptly changed course as a result of that tragic event.
In actual fact, the Oslo Accords continued to be implemented. On January 20th 1996 agreements were made regarding the IDF redeployment from areas to be passed over to PA control, the election of the Palestinian Council and the head of the Palestinian Authority. The 23rd October 1998 saw the signing of the Wye River Memorandum and on September 4th 1999 the Sharm El Sheikh Memorandum was agreed.
Just as the peace treaty with Jordan, signed just over a year before Rabin’s murder, did not fall apart, so the agreements with the Palestinians went ahead. But on July 11th 2000, the Camp David negotiations fell through and just over two months later the second Intifada began, shaking Israel to its core.” 

Deegee says; “It could easily be said the peace agreement had already failed by the time of Rabin's death and it was far from certain he would have been re-elected.” 

So however sad it is that there is as yet no peace agreement, the Jewish extremist’s act of murder was not the reason.
Bowen even refers to the notorious handshake on the lawn as a kind of 'finest hour'. Anyone who has read about Arafat’s scurrilous behaviour during and after that and the Camp David fiasco would have to laugh.

Bowen makes no attempt to conceal his contempt for Binyamin Netanyahu, who he depicts as an arrogant bully causing poor Bill Clinton to use the F word No mention of what poor Bill thought of evil old Yassir after he effectively scuppered Clinton’s last attempts at peacemaking by instigating another Palestinian intefada.

In "My Life" written by president Clinton, he wrote that Arafat once complimented Clinton by telling him, "You are a great man." Clinton responded; "I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one."


Throughout the article Bowen continually refers to what “the Palestinians want” for their state. He completely ignores one thing. They do not just want a small amount of territory in Jerusalem, because they do not want Israel to have any territory at all. For the Palestinians, one inch would be too much, because there is an inherent and virulent hatred for Jews at the heart of their religion. Bowen and his ilk will never tackle that, maybe because it’s unpalatable, or perhaps it’s because they feel the same.

Gathering Storm

>> SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2009

I am well aware that Peter Oborne’s C4 anti-Jew documentary was not a BBC programme. However, years of biased reporting on the Israeli/Palesinian situation well and truly prepared the ground for Peter Oborne to score his illegitimate goal.
Meanwhile, if anyone was acting as referee, they must have steadfastly withstood the pressure from the mighty Jewish lobby and looked the other way.

The inferior quality of the programme was no secret, and many of the supportive comments that popped up in response seem to be of a similar standard. But the obvious flaws in both provide little reassurance that the groundswell of anti Israel feeling can be disregarded as an aberration of the ignorant; like tattoos.

The insinuations littering the programme were designed to implant the idea that everything ever said in support of Israel was sponsored by wealthy Jews with an ulterior motive, while if any denunciation of Israel remained unsaid, that was only because wealthy Jews with an ulterior motive have suppressed it.

Peter Oborne says anti-Semitism is no longer a racist abomination against Jews, but a weapon used by them to quash protests from victims of the sinister Jewish lobby. The suggestion that Jews cynically use accusations of anti-Semitism as a silencing tool is itself a silencing tool of the first order.

What really is sinister is the media’s suspicion and dislike of Jews and the BBC’s affection for Muslims. Is nobody aware of the gathering storms of 30s Germany? How long before they drop their guard and blurt out that Hitler was right.

See Robin Shepherd’s article in the Wall Street Journal, read his blog. Check outCiFWatch.

Open Thread

Thread open. (Bumped)

CRU Update

Tim Blair:

"BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin wants us to feel sorry for his warmy friends"

My contacts at the CRU tell me the e-mails are being taken out of context and insist they are part of the normal hurly-burly of conversations between scientists working on some of the most complicated questions of our times.
They ask how many of us would feel completely comfortable if our own inboxes were emptied out for the world to see.

One small issue with that: most peoples’ inboxes don’t concern the multi-billion dollar restructuring of international economies to counter predicted climate change. Harrabin’s contacts at the CRU are quite literally seeking to change our world, yet they whine about us looking through mere email.

Or as the The Devil's Kitchen puts it "Ah, diddums…"

From Richard Black's blog:

Because comments were posted quoting excerpts apparently from the hacked Climate Research Unit e-mails, and because there are potential legal issues connected with publishing this material, we have temporarily removed all comments until we can ensure that watertight oversight is in place.

As I pointed out in the previous post, in one of the leaked emails Michael Mann states that Richard Black "does a great job" and indicates his intent to contact the BBC correspondent to find out how an article titled "What happened to global warming?" by Paul Hudson was allowed to appear on the BBC website. Opposing views must be not be heard!

Bishop Hill has more goodies from the emails, or search them youself here.

Thanks to all in the comments for the tips.

Update 12.30. BBC to send 35 staff to cover Copenhagen. Nice quote from Conservative MP Philip Davies:

'On the subject of climate change, the BBC seems to lose all its critical faculties and it will probably be just a fawning exercise over these environmentalists anyway.

'It would be nice if one of these 35 people asked some pertinent and critical questions about climate change. But I suspect they will all be subscribers to the extreme environmental agenda.'

I suspect so too. They wouldn't want to upset their friends on the CRU mailing list.

Hadley CRU Hacked

>> FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2009

(Update - the Examiner article linked to below stated that this was the UEA Hadley Climate Research Centre. Hadley is not in the title. The leaked documents are from the UEA's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Hadley is a separate Met Office organisation. Thanks to a very agitated Pete Pisspoor in the comments for pointing that out.
Further update - CRU has provided a lot of the "climate simulations data" for Hadley's LINK project. It has also " developed datasets in conjunction with Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office". Search HadCRU and HadCRUT on Google.)

And now, back to our original programming...

This could get very interesting:

The University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

CRU has confirmed that it has been hacked and it has cancelled all existing passwords. If you see or hear any mention of this on the BBC please point it out in the comments so we can monitor how this story is spun, both by CRU and the BBC.

Update 13.45. Andrew Bolt has been picking through the emails and documents and, if they are all genuine, the information in them is simply astonishing.

There's a document by CRU's Professor Phil Jones which shows that he was so concerned by Freedom Of Information requests for raw data that he was contemplating ways to remove key information and reconstruct the data to make it fit the preferred conclusions.
There's an email from American climate scientist Tom Wigley advising Professor Jones how to manipulate some data to emphasise warming trends.
There's an email from Jones telling his colleagues to delete incriminatory emails.
There's another from Jones in which he tells a colleague that he's used the same "trick" as Michael Mann (Mr Hockey Stick) "to hide the decline", and in yet another he calls the reported death of a climate sceptic "cheering news".
There's an email from Mann himself promising senior CRU staff that they can use the RealClimate website to post articles and he will ensure the censorship of any comments from sceptics challenging what they've written.
There's an email from senior IPCC scientist Kevin Trenberth in which he asks, "Where the heck is global warming?…The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t."
There's an email in which CRU staff promise to blackball scientists from the IPCC report whose work doesn't conform to their alarmist predictions: "keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !"

If the BBC's environment correspondents are too upset to touch the story, perhaps the BBC's Open Secrets blogger Martin Rosenbaum will do something about it. Deleting data and emails demanded by FOI requests is, after all, illegal.

Update 17.00. The BBC has reported it here. Hat tip to 1327 in the comments who points out, as does Mr Eugenides, that the potentially explosive contents of the emails and documents are not mentioned.

Update 17.30. The Guardian's report does mention the email contents. There's also a quote from a very angry sounding Michael Mann: "I'm hoping that the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."

Update 17.40. Our old friend Jo Abbess responds: "I've read a number of them, and there's nothing untoward in anything. It's all a hoax to make you think that the Science is unravelling or that the Scientists are misbehaving (aka "lying")." She adds: "I await put-downs from the Climate Science community after the weekend." I'm not sure they'll wait that long to start the "put-downs", Jo.

Update 18.30. (With a reminder of the health warning until it's all proved to be kosher) One of the leaked emails from Michael Mann addressing the recent "What happened to global warming? article by the BBC's Paul Hudson which caused such outrage among the econuts (emphasis added) :

From: Michael Mann 
To: Stephen H Schneider 
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:00:44 -0400
Cc: Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , trenbert , Michael Oppenheimer 

extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd, since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.

We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?

mike

Looks like Richard Black is considered a reliable sort by this bunch. I wonder if they're in contact with him now, coordinating their response. (Hat tip to a guest in the comments.)

Update 19.00. The email from the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth (mentioned above @13.45 update - follow link to Andrew Bolt to view) in which he says, "where the heck is global warming?... The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we cant" comes from the same email exchange relating to Paul Hudson's article. Trenberth seems to be backing Hudson.

Update 19.30. Reminder: "Climate 'hockey stick' is revived" by Richard Black.

Update 20.00. Richard Black has a round-up of Copenhagen-related news on his blog, time stamped 18.16 UK time today. No mention of the CRU documents. (Last update this evening from me.)