Stitched up in spades - by Richard... Monday, January 31, 2011

Stitched up in spades - by Richard... Monday, January 31, 2011

Dellers on his last but one post kindly put up a generic link to this blog, so I pointed readers to thespecific post to which he was referring. However, events have overtaken me, and he has now put up a further post, which does link directly to my original piece. The circle is now complete.

The latest effort by Dellers is to draw attention to another BBC stitch-up, which purportedly has filmmaker Rupert Murray "taking us on a journey into the heart of climate scepticism to examine the key arguments against man-made global warming" where he tries "to understand the people who are making them".

That comes from the promotional spiel and is patronising tosh. It goes, purportedly to ask: "Do they have the evidence that we are heating up the atmosphere or are they taking a grave risk with our future by dabbling in highly complicated science they don't fully understand? Where does the truth lie and how are we, the people, supposed to decide? "

It is patronising tosh, of course, because – as I explain in my own post – the tone and conclusion of every TV documentary is decided well in advance of its making, long before a camera team captures the first footage. No commissioning editor on this earth – and certainly not the BBC – is going to commit the £300,000 or so budget to an open-ended "journey of discovery". Before any contract is signed with the film-makers, the exact "line to take" has been spelled out and agreed. The job of the film-maker is to deliver it – no matter what it takes.

However, not only is the spiel tosh, it is patronising tosh, for it assumes we are gulled into believing this is an honest journeyman at work. The film features, we are told, Britain's pre-eminent sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton as he tours the world broadcasting his message to the public and politicians alike. "Can he convince them and Murray that there is nothing to worry about?"

The answer to that, inevitably, is "no". We know this without even seeing the programme, which is on tonight at 10 pm on the TV channel BBC Four. And how do we know this? Because many months ago, Rupert Murray was commissioned to make a film to deliver that answer. It is as simple as that.

With all the things going on in this world, and all the important events that assail us daily, one wonders why the BBC bothers - why it is so important to it that the "right" message on climate change is given and maintained.  And the answer here is that, currently,  the issue climate change underpins a world view to which the BBC subscribes, one which, in its terms, legitimises social intervention on a huge scale.

This is then, less about a low-grade, compliant little programme-maker, and more about power - the imposition of a particular world view, and the suppression by whatever means, of any alternative messages. This is serious stuff.

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Record breakers - by Richard...

The Guardian, which occasionally has its uses, is telling us that Belgium could soon lay claim to being the holder of an award with the unwieldy name of "World Champion in Not Forming a Government". 

Actually, the story was run on 26 January by Euronews, the same day as Deutsche Welle, but five days behind the curve on European matters is not bad for a British newspaper, and the rest don't seem to have done the story, except the Economist which doesn't really matter.

The Guardian treats the issue in a light-hearted manner, noting that Belgium has been in limbo since June, with coalition talks between the seven parties constantly breaking down. It tells us that the latest mediator, Johan Vande Lanotte, who was appointed by King Albert II, resigned last week, complaining that he couldn't even get all the parties around one table. 

Then we get the punch line: if the politicians haven't sorted out their differences by 17 February, the paralysis will have lasted for 250 days, and the record will be in the bag.

Parties representing Belgium's two communities, the 6 million Dutch-speaking Flemings and 4.5 million French-speaking Walloons, have struggled to cooperate before. But Belgium surpassed its own national record when it hit 194 days in December and is well on its way to beating Iraq, which dithered for 249 days after the 2010 elections. 

However, people – and particularly Belgians - are beginning to realise that the absence of a government isn't funny at all. Ratings agencies have warned they could downgrade Belgium's credit rating if it continues is this state and, conscious of the danger, and exasperated with their politicians, last week, more than 30,000 people marched through Brussels to demand that a government be formed.

So far, though, there seems to be absolutely no sign of the stalemate being broken, which means that the Belgians are soon going to be proud holders of a record that none of them actually want.

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She is out at last - by Richard... Sunday, January 30, 2011

She is out of the ice, we are told, ending the month-long operation in the Sea of Okhotsk. "The operation to rescue the Sodruzhestvo mother ship out of ice trap has been completed," Russia's Ministry of Transport said in a statement today.

A month after the ships were first reported as trapped in the ice – and after a day with no news on the Okhotsk Sea crisis - we earlier received a cautiously optimistic report from Voice of Russia that suggested that the last vessel, the factory ship Sodruzhestvo, was on its way out of the ice.

The report spoke of the icebreakers Admiral Makarov and the Krasin having led the 32,000-ton giant through "another ten miles of thick ice" and of the convoy "moving to clear waters". Only theVoice of Russia seemed to be reporting this, however, and even it was hedging its bets by saying that "experts" are predicting that the ships will break clear, rather than making direct assertions.

Interestingly, we are beginning to learn quite how exceptional this incident has been. The most recent episode that is anything like it happened last year when two identical 104-ton fishing vessels were trapped in the ice. This was in the Terpeniya bay off the southeastern coast of Sakhalin, though, and the stranding happened later in the season, on 11 January. On 19 January, a Mi-8 rescue helicopter evacuated 14 sailors and the boats were temporarily abandoned.

This was at a time when exceptionally cold conditions were being reported, and temperatures were dropping as low as minus -38°C during the nights. Later, an icebreaker was called in, which towed the vessels to Korsakov in southern Sakhalin, normally an ice-free port and a centre of the sea fishery.

There was also an incident reported on 22 January 2008, when emergency crews evacuated nine of the 14 sailors on board four ships which got trapped in ice in the Sea of Okhotsk on 18 January. 

The four ships – a survey cutter, a fishing seiner and two barges attached to the vessels – had been heading for winter anchorage at the settlement of Adzhan, Khabarovsk region, but became stuck in the ice. The vessels were found 100 kilometers off the region’s coast the next day by an AN-74 aircraft and the rescued people were taken by Mi-8 helicopter to the town of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. 

Before that, it seems we must go back to 1965 when, according to one report, five Soviet ships were trapped by ice in the same region. Without icebreakers available, this report says, boats with their crews had to wait until June to be released. However, a contemporary report seems to suggest that the ships were accompanied by the icebreaker Lavarev (pictured - the name could be incorrect - it might be Lazarev), yet were still unable to break free.

There is also a report of 26 March 1952 in the New York Times (paywall) of a giant ice floe trapping a large Japanese fishing vessel and a rescue ship off northern Hokkaido within sight of Russian held Sakhalin Island. 

To find another comparable incident, we have to go back to 27 December 1935 when the 2,000-ton freight and passenger vessel Lozovski was trapped in ice en route to Vladivostok, with ice pressure threatening to crush the hull.

Some passengers made the hazardous eight-mile trek to shore – although one passenger and a crewman disappeared - while others set up tents on the ice to await rescue. In a neat bit of historical symmetry, the icebreaker Krasin – the predecessor to the current ship – was sent to the rescue and itself was trapped 30 miles from the Lozovski. Both ships had run out of coal and were reported to be relying on oil stoves for heating.

At the time of the report, the rescue ship Uritski had been despatched from Valdivostok with fresh supplies, and was planning to use dynamite to make a breach through the ice to rescue the trapped ships. Now, more than 75 years later, the second icebreaker bearing the name Krasin has finally pulled off a feat, the like of which its predecessor had failed to do.

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Simply reckless - by Richard...

An extremely good piece on energy policy in The Mail on Sunday: "The government is betting the farm on the throw of a die. What's happening now is simply reckless," it says.

There really is no point in me re-inventing the wheel and reviewing the piece in detail. Much of what is written has appeared on this blog in the past anyway. The real issue, I suppose, is to try and understand the mindset of the politicians – such as Cameron and Huhne – who keep this dangerous and corrupt system in place.

There is also a halfway decent article here from the Daily Failygraph. They are late to the table, but one needs to be charitable ... better late than never. 

On the broader front, I am being increasing attracted to the idea of "psychic disease" – not mental disease, as such, but a corruption of the intellect which allows otherwise sane people to do dangerously stupid things. It seems to me that if we understand more of the pathology of this type of disease – especially in its epidemic form – then we might be better equipped to deal with it.

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