Bloated And Biased

 

Bloated And Biased

>> MONDAY, JULY 05, 2010

In last week’s Telegraph Neil Midgley wrote a piece headed ‘BBC’s £12,000 for lawyers to help keep pay secret.’ 

The BBC Trust used Baker and McKenzie, an international law firm, to stop the National Audit Office disclosing figures that would allow ‘those in the know’ to make an approximate calculation of individual BBC staff’s paypackets. We’re going to know this soon anyway aren’t we?

I wonder how much more of the licence fee the BBC spends on suppressing things in addition to the hundreds of thousands forked out so far to bury the Balen report?

Another article by Neil Midgley in the Telegraph online concerns Jeremy Hunt and Sir Michael Lyons of the BBC Trust.

Before he became culture secretary and had the power to do so, Jeremy Hunt wanted to abolish the BBC Trust. Now that he has, he’s gone all soft and settled for changing the name a bit, from “The BBC Trust,” to the “Licence Fee Payers’ Trust”. He hopes that, and inserting a non-executive chairman onto Mark Thompson’s executive board, should be enough to address the troubles at the BBC.
Nobody has explained what specific changes Jeremy Hunt is after, apart from that the BBC Trust, or the Licence Fee Payers’ Trust, should be seen to be at arms length from the BBC.

However, as Sir Michael Lyons has secured a promise that the members of the new Licence Fee Payers’ Trust will still be the same old ex BBC members of the BBC Trust, the only way much change is going to happen is when, next year, Sir Michael’s term of Office comes up for renewal, and whether Jeremy Hunt replaces him with someone with very much longer arms.

It looks as though we’ll end up with the same ex BBC staff virtually investigating themselves, and at best giving themselves a token slap on the wrist once in a while.
Everyone agrees that the BBC is bloated, and needs to shrink. But it’s the bias, I’m afraid, that needs to be recognised and sorted out.

Godzilla is back...

Richard Black, the esteemed BBC environment reporter, reminds me of Godzilla; no matter what is thrown at him, he rampages on, extolling the perils of global warming. 

For days, the blogsphere has been alive with further evidence that seriously undermines the credibility of the IPCC's AR4 assessment, not least of which was its claim that 40% of the Amazon rainforest was at risk from minor changes in rainfall.

The back ground (for those who don't know it) is that earlier in the year, in a story that become known as Amazongate, the Sunday Times revealed that this scary claim was based on propaganda from the World Wildlife Fund rather than any scientific investigation. Afterwards, the warmist bullies (as they do) squealed with anger, issued various threats, and shamefully, the Sunday Times backed down,publishing a retraction a couple of weeks back. 

But Richard North, over on EU Referendum, who broke the original story, has continued his brilliant sleuthing on this subject - and has established that, despite a miasma of misinformation from WWF and warmists fanatics such as George Monbiot, the whole scare story was based on nothing more than cod science on a dodgy website that was taken down years ago. (I've linked to only one story on EU Referendum - there are dozens more.) 

But that doesn't bother our Richard. In true Godzilla fashion, here he is today, raving on:

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times was recently forced to apologise for claiming that IPCC projections on die-back of the Amazon rainforest were unsubstantiated. 

Unsubstantiated? What would it take for Mr Black to acknowledge that he is wrong? Or to accept that the real facts of these matters are being established not by the so-called scientists (who are cynically being paid by governments to prove that AGW warming exists so that they can raise taxes), but by the blogsphere - by honourable people who have no axe to grind but to establish the truth.

Boothing the Ratings

We may not like it, but we have to accept that the BBC regularly employs controversial characters, the flakier the better, to boost the ratings.
The risk they’ll say or do something outrageous live on air adds a certain frisson. Will Self and Tracey Emin are popular for that, and Frankie Boyle. So is George Galloway. A number of viewers surely tune in to Question Time when he’s on the panel hoping for some excitement. Think how disappointed we all are when Gorgeous temporarily impersonates mister sensible, surreptitiously reverting back to bonkers as the final credits roll.

One person who gets to be on the BBC a lot is Lauren Booth. Being Tony Blair’sbête noire is probably one reason, and sharing the Scouse Git as a parent with half sister Cherie is another.
These credentials have procured for her many an opportunity to be mad as a hatter on air. She’s been on Question Time, Women’s Hour and Today, where she is inexplicably referred to as a journalist.

She has done some notable things in her own right. One of them is inciting people to attack Israel, another is training her children to perform Palestinian propaganda in rap form and uploading the embarrassing production onto YouTube, and the most notable of all is the ruthless exploitation of her family in a series of second rate misery memoir revelations in the Daily Mail.

My terrible childhood; My mother doesn’t like me; I had a row with my husband and now he’s in a coma; I dumped my husband on Facebook; My husband is an alcoholic; and the latest: My French dream is over.

She is also known for being photographed with Ismail Haniyeh, shopping inGaza, and addressing rallies against Jews.

Don’t forget, we pay.

Now for something completely similar. Moving on from attention-seeking bigots we see too much of on the BBC, to an article expressing the kind of sanity we see far too little of, or not at all, on our state broadcaster.

“A Hamas that cares not to fill the bellies of those starving in Gaza is also the same agency spending millions of dollars on televised indoctrination designed to manipulate young, plastic minds. See for yourself: go to Palestinian Media Watch. Children, in the prime ages of 5-7 are critically vulnerable to developing attachment figure-like relationships to God. At precisely these ages, they are bombarded with "Hamas Box Office" productions: aspirational propaganda extolling the virtues of suicide bombing as vengeance. Through his work at Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus has revealed just how institutionalized terror has become in the territories. Work by Dr. Pehr Granqvist and colleagues at the University of Stockholm in Sweden has shown it is precisely at this time and stage of child development at which belief systems are most influenced, and concrete immutable beliefs can be established. Useful, therefore to introduce young minds to the concepts of self-destruction which are quickly embedded, and absorbed and nurtured. Who is decrying the morality of this manipulation? Who is the war criminal now?”

From a must-read article by Qanta Ahmed MD
Must-read is addressed to everybody including Ms. Booth and the BBC.
H/T Elder of Ziyon; CiFWatch.