Britannia Radio

 

PINK IONA

Thought for the Day is usually a political exercise, not a moral or religious one. The other morning the BBC gave Anne Atkins the chance to argue for the Burqa in the UK (yes, no kidding) and today we had John Bell of the Iona community on to advance the latest Stonewall agenda item that the media is too harsh on how it portrays gays. TFTD is simply politics by other means and it is remarkable how few real voices of dissent get the chance to ever express an opinion on it. Why not replace with with a 3 minute silence, it would be more constructive?

LORD HAMAS...

And so the week draws to an end on Today and what better way to conclude things by providing Lord Patten with a soapbox from which he can advance his endless attacks on Israel - this time without any pesky dissenting voices...via technical breakdown, natch.

His Lordship has been off to Gaza again to see his pals there and naturally is back to ensure Israel gets the blame for the self inflicted problems of Hamastan. At one point Patten, to his monumental shame, chooses to equivocate between the credentials of Hamas and Israel. If pushed, I reckon Patten believes Israel to be a terrorist state. He also side steps the issue that Hamas seeks the utter destruction of Israel whilst claiming that Fatah are the good guys when in fact they continues to deny the reality of the existence of Israel.I find Patten absolutely repellent and yet the BBC cannot get enough of him. I wonder why?

STORMFRONT?

Richard Black, in his weekly BBC propaganda column, disgracefully suggests that those who won't swallow climate change lies are linked to the white supremacists Stormfront. He argues that those who have advocated massive global warming taxes such as Stephen Schneider - who died this week - have been subjected to unwarranted abuse and are working under a constant barrage of nasty threats from sceptics. He doesn't spell it out, but the implication is very clear; those who deny climate change are immoderate, right-wing thugs. 

I challenge Richard, therefore, to write something equally as trenchant about warmists in the context of the tale of obfuscation, brick-walling and sheer bloody minded obstruction that met Australian scientists Jennifer Marohasy and John Abbot when Mr Abbot approached the Met Office in the UK under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the data that underpinned the notorious hockey-stick. This is their conclusion:

This case study provides evidence that there is a culture of antagonism towards anyone who may wish to make independent appraisals of information relating to climate change and particularly if it relates to variations in global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions. This is shown through both the CRU emails and the approach to Mr Holland's request to the Met Office. The reluctance to comply with the Fol legislation does not result from bureaucratic misunderstanding of relatively recently enacted legislation. Instead it stems from an antagonism by institutional climate scientists towards those who may wish to independently examine evidence for climate change and its causes. The dangers revealed lie both in operating an effective Fol system, and openness and transparency in an area of immense scientific importance.

It's a long read, but I urge you to persevere; it illustrates that to warmists, there is nothing they will not do to cover up shortcomings in their data. Chances of Mr Black covering this to balance his outpouring against sceptics? Don't hold your breath. After all, to him, the likes of Marohasy and Abbot are something you find under your shoe. 

PS. Richard, the paper containing the information is not published on the sceptic blogs you often sneer about (and occasionally threaten to sue)from your BBC ivory tower. It's in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Law and Management.

Question Time LiveBlog 22nd July 2010

>> THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010

Question Time tonight comes fromHartlepool; famous for hanging a monkey for being French, providing aguitarist for Iron Maiden and having an unwanted terrace house once owned by Peter Mandelson.

On the panel we have Immigration Minister Damian Green MP, Sadiq Khan MP (Lab, Tootingstan), Nigel Farage MEP, Bob Crow (self described Communist; salary £105,679) and Ruth Lea.

For those playing the Buzzword Bingo, we will be using the Either Banned Or Compulsory Rules - so 'burqua', 'death tax' and 'national citizen service' are worth double BiasPoints. Any references to the Big Society win a BBC poster of David Cameron eating a kitten. Because of weekday maintenance on the Circle Line, this week Thatcher's are only valid with a Recession undercard, andObama's are wild unless your BP joker has lapsed.

As usual the LiveBlog will also cover the entertainingly awful This Week, which continues its trawl through the Labour leadership candidates on the Sofa Of Despair. Tonight it's Ed Miliband (no, not the banana one, the other one - think polyester suits).

David Vance, TheEye and David Mosque will have fingers on the moderators' kill-switch here from 10:30pm.

CARBON MADNESS...

I cheered today when the government announced that it was closing the useless and highly wasteful quango, John Prescott's Orwellian-sounding Sustainable Development Commission. I hissed when I read that burqa-loving Caroline Spellman, the Cleggeron environment secretary, said that the government remained as green as ever in its aims, and clearly believes that the Commission's work will continue through Defra. 

To the BBC, of course, it's an unmitigated disaster. Their environment fanaticMark Kinver reports on the closure, turning mainly to his chums at the Friends of the Earth for comment. Like him, they are in mourning, and take any chance they can to kick the Tories. But as James Delingpole notes in his Telegraph blog,the real story is the terrifying news that the Carbon Trust - a quango that gobbles an astonishing £86m a year - has not been axed.

Private Eye:Why The BBCs "Democracy Live" Is Liked By MPs...

Private Eye – always a useful source of behind the scenes chatter about the BBC – has an interesting little titbit in the current issue about Democracy Live, the BBC’s answer to TheyWorkForYou.com.

For the last few years TWFY has become the place to visit for information about MPs and members of the House of Lords. This has not always been popular with our parliamentary representatives because it also reveals their attendance and voting record. Nevertheless the not for profit website, created and overseen by registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy, has proved a useful tool for opening up the political process to public scrutiny.

Ever willing to muscle in where others have already beaten a pioneering path the BBC, fat with our money, launched DL a few months ago. At it’s core it provides live video feed from parliament and national assemblies plus a search function linking video with Hansard.

At its launch DL received the blessing of Speaker Bercow and sundry MPs and appears to be the flavour of the month with the political class, an accolade that has always eluded the grasp of TWFY – and Private eye thinks it know why....

DL, despite being developed by Autonomy and Blinkx (both closely associatedwith the iconic IT guru Mike Lynch) somehow appears unable to deliver data on MPs attendance and voting records – how convenient....

The Eye also notes that details about the commissioning of DL remain a “closely guarded secret” and the fact that Mike Lynch also happens to be a member of the BBC Board is, of course, a “mere coincidence”

Any suggestion that the fearless BBC, by not including information about voting and attendance, is cosying up to MPs, can clearly be dismissed as totally without foundation.....

COAL HOLE...

The greenies at the BBC hate coal as a central tenet of their religion. Despite the fact that it was the bedrock of the industrial revolution, despite the fact that it brought - and continues to bring - heat and light and comfort to billions round the world, it's a nasty, noxious substance, because when it burns, it emits that "poison", CO2. The leader of those trying to stop its use, and force us back to fuel poverty, is, of course, the EU. Aided and abetted by fanatical green lobbyists such as Greenpeace, they have a declared suicidal agenda of shutting down as many coal mines and coal-fired power stations as possible, even though this will seriously harm the economies of almost every member country. Today, they have announced in true, jack-booted EU Commission style that they are stopping subsidies to "uneconomic" coal mines, forcing 100,000 miners out of work, and further precipitating the decline of European competitiveness. 

The BBC have reported the story here. But guess what's missing from their finely-honed propaganda? There's not a mention of the real story, that it's the green fanatics inside and outside the Commission that have forced the loss of 100,00 jobs. To the BBC, it's been sanitised so that the closures are necessary only because the mines are "uneconomic" and "loss-making". Astonishing, even by BBC standards.

HOBBLE GOBBLE...

>> WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2010

Checking the BBC website today, it's clear that there's a relentless, systematic torrent of climate change propaganda, without a breath of a dissenting voice. Yet all of the measures described are gobbling vast amounts of our cash, most of which is being poured down the drain. Richard Black fawningly reports Tim Yeo's suicidal call from his parliamentary select committee to "de-carbonise" the UK economy, and introduce obscene new taxes on cars, energy and the air that we breathe (via carbon credits). Then there's a report about David Willetts launching a new multi-million pounds "earth observation hub", the main purpose of which seems to be to reinforce lies and prejudice about climate change. And last, but certainly not least, is the EU's sickening 12% increase in its science research budget with the prime intention of hobbling EU economies still further by introducing yet more green taxes and climate change idiocy. That's another 5.4bn euros wasted. 

Meanwhile, China powers ahead. The importance of this is totally lost on the morons who call themselves BBC journalists.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH....

Did you hear the simpering interview with BBC poster boy Alex Salmond at 8.10am this morning. With the BBC doing all it can to somehow blame David Cameron for the decision taken by Salmond/ Brown to realease the convicted mass murderer Al Megrahi - the Lockerbie bomber? I contrast the tone used in this interview with the vile Salmond - passive and largely agreeable - to the hectoring of Michael Gove on Monday and the assault on William Hague yesterday. Yes, I know Salmond is a slippery creature but the sheer mendacity of the Scottish Government on this deserved much more detailed focus and it was largely absent from the interview. Even the headline for the story "Taken in Good Faith" tells us where the BBC is coming from! I noted the "thank you very much Mr Salmond" that concludes the "interview".