Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be

Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be

>> TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2011

The BBC is fond of the familiar. It favours the tried and tested, nay, the formulaic, all year round.

But tradition and ritual are an extra special feature at Christmas.

It’s what the audience wants, is it not? , “Give them more of what they liked last time round!” those innovative creative commissioning editors must have squealed as they sat round the table in the BBC’s department of inspiration and left of centre thinking. “Eureka!”

They might have cried, “Here’s what we’ll do for Christmas!” “Morecambe and Wise!” “Shrek!” “And don’t forget to go up to the attic and see if you can find the one about the shepherds. I know we put it somewhere. They love that one. What we need is another good old ‘fings aint wot they used to be’ special.”

Israel-bashers unite, far and wide, and the BBC is not averse to a bit of sentimentality at Christmas time, even if it means following the herd. Literally.

“Ring up Carlos Sarras, our go-to Palestinian shepherd, and if he’s available again get Jon Donnison on the case.

Yolande Knell can find another old geezer wistfully reminiscing about his goat, his olive tree and his donkey and she can finish with an interview with George Saadah, deputy mayor of Bethlehem, whose message of peace and goodwill to all men we’ll put under the heading “The Wise Man.”

Jon Donnison gave him a lengthy spot on BBC News 24 the other day, so the audience will be liking him already.”

Read more »

Harrabin the denier

How wonderful it is that my debut post here on Biased BBC times perfectly with a nugget of a post over at Bishop Hill, which underlines the BBC's reputation for telling half the story all the time.

The subject is climate change, so once again our eyes turn towards the Socratic wonder that is the BBC Environment Analyst, Roger Harrabin. Speaking as a member of what appears to have been a panel of prestige-laden experts in front of an invited audience a few months ago, Harrabin had this to say:

What we appear to have constructed in climate change is a bunch of people who say, ‘I’m really worried about the future. I’m really worried about climate change’; a small group of people who say, ‘I don’t give a damn. It’s not going to happen. Humans can’t change the planet’; and quite a lot of people in the middle who say, ‘Well actually, I don’t know. I hear these competing voices and I don’t know’.

Biased to his rent seeking, vested interest heavy core, one notices how Harrabin is yet again distorting reality.

Where in his analysis is any mention of the overwhelming of climate change sceptics who say,

'The climate is changing and always has; and scientific evidence shows it has been both warmer and cooler in the past as a result of natural factors we aren't even close to understanding, therefore mankind's influence could very well be grossly overstated'?

Harrabin has deliberately set out yet again to paint what passes for debate about climate change as warmists on one side and 'deniers' on the other, while airbrushing mainstream scepticism out of the story.

This is another example of the bias at the heart of our public sector broadcaster, which consistently abuses its monopoly on 'news' reporting to condition the mindset of those compelled to pay for such output.

Far from climate change sceptics being deniers, the real deniers are the likes of Roger Harrabin, who load their reportage with bias and distortions and 'educate' fellow Beeboids to adopt the same narrative.

The BBC, it's what they do.

MELTING ICE - AGAIN...

>> MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2011

Since the IPCC admitted last year telling huge porkies about the dangers from Himalayan glaciers, dozens of greenies have clearly been sent there to prove that they were right after all.

Last month, for example, Richard Black faithfully reported, on a sample size of 10 out of 54,000 glaciers, that 'ice loss was accelerating', underlining the need for massive new taxes at the Durban climate talks.

It was rubbish, of course. Now Mr Black's colleague-in-arms, Jonathan Amos, has filed a Boxing Day tale of woe as part of the IPCC's continuing campaign. His worry is that near the Cho Oyo peak, a new 'enormous' meltwater lake called Spillway (who called it that, I wonder?) could - because of undoubted warming - bring menace:

The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path. The threat is not immediate, but it's a situation that needs monitoring, say scientists.

As usual, despite the uncertainty that he clearly acknowledges, it's a onesided rant about impending peril.

The source of it appears to be mainly Ulyana Horodyskyj, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US. And her qualifications? She's reading for her doctorate in geological sciences. Well golly gosh, our future is in safe hands.

The rest of the piece is larded with claims such as that that the region is like Swiss cheese and that this is an 'exponential (meltwater) growth area'.

Put alarmist greenies guzzling on fat research grants into an area, and they will find a problem.

And the BBC will be faithfully there to report it.