Britannia Radio

I Used to be Indecisive… but Now I’m Not so Sure….

>> SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2010

Nick Clegg has finally done the right thing. He’s sacked Jenny Tonge!

The BBC reports this as though it was a quick decisive move by the Lib Dem leader. But this was done after considerable equivocation and hesitation,and protestations that she is not anti-Semitic, and is still worth listening to. Something must have got to him. Maybe Jenny Tonge was right all along about the Jewish Lobby getting its evil grip on ‘our party.”

Unfortunately, it can’t be much of a grip because Nick Clegg wants to halt Britain’s arms sales to Israel and persuade our EU counterparts to do the same, and suspend the proposed new cooperation agreement with Israel till ‘things change in Gaza.’ etc etc etc.

From what I’ve read about Nick Clegg’s policies on the Middle East, some lobby or other might have had a hand in forming his ideas, but it certainly wasn’t the ‘Israel’ one.

Unmentionable Matters

A BBC world service programme, Politics UK discussed Neathergate with Sir Andrew Green and Denis MacShane.

Presenter Dennis Sewell’s admirable introduction promised a frank and open discussion, but it quickly reverted to type as the participants carefully avoided mentioning the detrimental effect Muslim immigration in particular has had on western society, and the obvious vote-conscious stranglehold it has on politicians with Muslim-heavy constituencies.

The next item tackled Ali Dezaei’s exploitation of the PC-driven taboo that prevented criticism of Black’nAsian police. The whole saga seems like a microcosm of the UK.

When the institutional racism in the police force was recognized after the Stephen Lawrence affair, the pendulum swung so far in the other direction that political correctness rendered objectivity nigh on impossible.

The considerable effort expended by politicians and the BBC in persuading the population to accept and embrace all cultures, even ones that abhor the very tolerance that facilitates their good fortune in being unconditionally and paradoxically welcomed here, echoes the collective blind eyes that refused to see a “black’ policeman as a crook.

Desperate bluster by politicians in order not to appear racist, and the media’s frantic attempts to normalise Islam parallel police anti racist measures like promoting ethnic minority individuals above their ability or setting up a Black Police Association.

If the police scenario does parallel that of the UK as a whole, the eventual conviction of a corrupt ethnic-minority policeman offers hope that this country might one day come to its senses.

Before that can happen the BBC must somehow become unbiased, and allow a wider spectrum of opinion to share the platform enjoyed by the cosy consensus that currently dominates the airwaves.

MORE HORROR...

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.

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?