Britannia Radio

HORROR HARRABIN

>> FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2010

Yesterday Richard North, of the blog EU Referendum, appeared on the Gaby Logan show on Radio 5 to discuss the setting up of the UEA panel to investigate Climategate. That's pretty amazing in its own right, although one swallow does not make a summer. Richard, as would be expected, was pretty formidable, but what was fascinating about the exchanges was the contribution of Roger Harrabin. I'm including the relevant section in full because it has to be seen to be believed. Note especially his pathetic attempts at obfuscation and his rapid descent into claims of insults. What insults?

Mr Harrabin opened his contribution by stating that the CRU emails had been "stolen". Richard rightly took exception to this, and pointed out that the latest evidence suggested an internal leak:

. . . we’ve had wonderful theories about intelligence agencies and hackers and this and that and the other – this is prejudicing the inquiry, against the reality is that it is probably an internal job and to talk about stolen emails and hackers and all the rest is, I think, distorting the debate and not helping the listener and the general public understand what has been going on.

Gaby Logan: Roger, do you take that.

Roger Harrabin: I would like to know what the better term would be? They’ve been referred to consistently as stolen emails, I know there are other theories about, that there was an inside job. The fact is that they were private emails not for publication, and the people who had them published on the internet considered them to have been stolen, they’d been referred to as being stolen. I’m not sure what else we would call them . . . This is another one of these things where you probably need a sentence rather than a word . . .

RN: Roger, sorry . . .

RH: I think this is not a helpful . . . honestly, this is not a helpful debate at the moment to talk about whether they’ve been stolen or not. A review has been set up . . . .

RN: (interjects) Well, then don’t refer to it as being stolen.

RH: Can we . . . I think we should be thinking today, and this is how this gets bogged down in arguments, please, please, it would be a change as well if we could get into a debate without having insults as well, that would be a nice change.

RN: Well, all the . . .

GL: Sorry, sorry, could we just let Roger . . .

RN: Well all the point I’m making, Roger, is stop prejudicing the debate. You are making an assumption in your terminology.

I simply love that Roger seems to think that because the emails have been called "stolen"(by him, mainly!)that this is the best way to describe them. And the point of balanced journalism is, Mr Harrabin?

OPEN THREAD...

OK, it's dress down Friday so time to give the BBC a good dressing down! What has been bothering YOU about the State Broadcaster today...???

EU BETTER BELIEVE IT..

Had to laugh at the BBC reporting the news that the German economy has racked up an impressive....0% growth in quarter four 2009. Whoops. This seems to surprise the BBC experts. Just yesterday, the BBC was reporting that Merkel and co were lecturing the Greeks on financial probity and now today one has to enquire as to whether the Germans need to look closer to their own economy before lecturing others. Still, the BBC finds solace in the fact that the French managed 0.6% growth! Way to go. The Eurozone is in serious trouble with the money markets making more informed decisions on it than any simpering pro EU BBC journalist!

BINYAN MOHAMMED TO GET HIS OWN BBC TV SHOW?

Not impossible given the love-in between the State Broadcaster and the Ethiopian Jihad poster-boy Binyam Mohammed. I am heartily sick of the way in which the BBC pushes Mr Mohammed, and before him Moazzam Begg, as some sort of doe eyed innocent victims of our bad and evil security services. It seems to me that the BBC avoids asking hard questions of Mohammed and Begg and instead simply uses their grievance as grist to its own mill, always aiming to undermine the moral of our military and our intelligence services. It is maddening the way in which OUR cash is taken and then used by the BBC to promote the notion that all these Jihadists are innocent. Perhaps Binyam will get his own talent show "Simply Come Jihad" in which celebrities travel to distant countries to "find themselves", then get captured by the evil spawn of the Great Satan, and compete to see who can illicit the most sympathy from a panel of judges.

HOW BBC BIAS WORKS...

Last evening's Question Time, liveblogged in this parish, is a great example of the toxic working of the State Broadcaster. You see it had a clear propaganda job to do last night on behalf of the Government, a task it facilitated with practised ease. You see Question Time came from Belfast last night and just last week the major political event here was the Democratic Unionist Party rolling over on their pledges and conceding IRA/Sinn Fein - the organisation that murdered police officers and judges - the right to now have a veto over every decision affecting police officers and judges. The Government warmly approves of this naked appeasement, of course, and so QT trundled into Belfast. And the audience - that alleged random selection of the public - was all set up to ensure that each time the IRA convict, Old Bailey bomber and Sinn Fein delegate Gerry Kelly spoke, there was rapturous applause for him. Each time the DUP delegate on the panel spoke, there was applause. And when the ONLY person on the panel who opposes this shameful surrender - my political colleage Jim Allister even tried to speak - David Dimbleby interrupted him and the audience met his comments in frosty silence. The media message was simple - EVERYONE supports what has been done here last week. Nothing could be further than the truth but then again the BBC is very far from the truth. The bias lies in the structure of the audience and the willingness of the BBC to act as whores to perpetuate government policy. Just saying....