The BBC’s job is to report impartially what goes on in the world. To pursue that task, it receives at least £750m of your money every year, and it has almost 5,000 staff who are directly involved in journalism. So when steel-making on Teeside, one of our oldest manufacturing industries, faces closure, with the loss of 300 years of tradition and 10,000 jobs, you would expect the corporation to be in the forefront of explaining why.
You would be wrong. Richard North, writing on his excellent EU Referendum blog, brings us today in glowing technicolour the real reasons why Tata steel have mothballed the Redcar steelworks (losing immediately 1,700 jobs, but in the longer term almost 9,000 more who support or whom are dependent on the plant). In an nutshell, it is being “mothballed” (but more likely permanently closed)not because of “falling demand“, but as a direct casualty of the pernicious gravy train that is the EU emissions trading scheme. This makes it more lucrative for the host company to suspend production at the plant and use it instead to accumulate ‘carbon credits’ on its balance sheet. The cumulative worth of this sleight-of-hand juggling is, according to Richard, a staggering £1bn+. Against such forces, the poor saps in Middlesbrough did not stand a chance.
I searched the BBC website for more than half an hour looking for any mention of this. There are dozens of stories and backgrounders about the closure, and lots of hot air from Mandelson and his henchmen, but not a whisper of this crucial angle. It seems also that BBC reporters were present at the press conference where Kirby Adams, the Redcar divisional boss, told the Times that the EU rules were behind the closure. They ignored what he said. So when it comes to climate change issues, the BBC are not only not reporting the truth, they are in cahoots with government ministers in deliberately hiding it. Their passion for global warming zealotry is so great that they simply cannot bring us facts that do not support it. And one man and his blog are more effective in bringing us the truth than all the wind and puff of the BBC’s £750m news machine.
I am intuitively against any of these so called markets. They are not true markets, and nearly always manipulated so that they can be used for alternative purposes. Here is a classic example, devised by the corrupt EU. All carbon trading markets should be banned. The Australians saw through them, our corrupt Lab gov will therefore embrace them.
This carbon market was created out of thin air for just that purpose. No surprise there.
“So when it comes to climate change issues, the BBC are not only not reporting the truth, they are in cahoots with government ministers in deliberately hiding it.”
Climate change and anything EU. It’s a double whamwy.
It’s not what you say that makes it a lie: it’s what you stay silent about.
They’re all braindead socialist voters. Serves them right. Screw ’em.
Yes I have no sympathy for northern bastards either. They keep voting Labour into power, serves the wankers right.
Perhaps, but the same would have happened under David Cameron. And will happen.
I wouldn’t argue with that, only UKIP can save us from the corruption of the EU, but UKIP are not capable of running a Government which is a shame.
Martin
Not sure what you mean by “UKIP are not capable of running a Government” so I’ll try to answer the two interpretations I see:
UKIP are not capable of forming a government under the UK’s winner takes all electoral system; it will certainly be difficult for them to do so against the established parties and their supporters in the media (the BBC would prefer Brown to Cameron obviously, but they would prefer Cameron to anyone who actually represented British voters), but it is not impossible. Blair formed a government in 2005 with 38% of the votes cast in a 61% turnout (24% of the available votes). The 2010 turnout will be lower so it is likely the party forming a government will have attracted about 20% of the available votes. If UKIP mobilise half of those who stay at home because they don’t want to support a left of centre party, they could conceivably form a government, and would certainly have enough MPs to form a real opposition.
UKIP lack the necessary skills to run a government. This may be true, but we can see every day that it is true of Labour, and we have no reason to believe it is not also true of Cameron’s “Conservatives” so this should not disquaify them.
UKIP lack some serious hitter. If they could attract people like Daniel Hannan then they might have omre of a chance.
I can’t see UKIP ever being more than a fringe party in British politics unless as you say we change our voting system. That won’t happen so long as Liebour and the Tories see the FPTP as benefiting them.
British politics is dead, British democracy is dead, it’s all just a show now. We are moving towards ever larger totalitarian bureaucratic government and nothing will stop this least of all UKIP (not that I won’t vote for them). The Lib/Lab/Con have sealed our fate, nothing short of civil war will change the direction we are heading.
Perhaps if Nigel Farage didn’t look like a cartoon character they’d have more weight.
Sympathy or not, unless these guys are told the facts behind the loss of their livelihoods there’ll never be a chance to open their eyes to what’s really happening. I can understand why they would vote Labour – it’s become visceral and, of course, these guys have had the (dis)benefits of a crap education system and relentless propaganda from the state broadcaster and a compliant MSM: how would they know any better? However, within living memory Teeside had a Conservative MP. Harold Macmillan won Stockton-on-Tees in 1924, 1931 and 1935 for the Conservatives: a fact which I suspect Andrew Marr (“Making of Modern Britain”) and other BBC apparatchiks would probably whitewash from history. And look – no mention of climate change or the EU in this “analysis”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/tees/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8374000/8374944.stm
My whole family worked in the Steel Works, first at Clay Lane and then at Redcar including myself. All through that time it was a closed shop. So in a way everyone who worked there had to support Labour to be able to work. Most of my brothers lost their jobs when the steel works were privatised. Nearly all their working lives they were supported by Labour. It was Labour that kept the steel works going that employed thousands of people in Teeside. Regardless of the economics of the works they had a job. I have never blamed them for supporting Labour (I however, never did), they were only looking after their families. . The turning point came under Blair. Labour has changed from a working class movement to a totalitarian monster.
I can honestly say that if we were now living in the 60s or 70s there would be no way that the EU could have closed down the steel works, Labour would just not have done it. The Labour of today is not the Labour I knew. The Labour Party in the north was not the same as the champaign socialists in the south
This really is an appalling example of BBC bias – bias by omission.
This is what makes me laugh when it comes to this site: You have a story – BBC take perspective 1 on this story, someone else (usually a blogger) takes perspective 2. To the B-BBC masses, perspective 1 from the BBC is immediately wrong; its either a complete lie, bias or misrepresentation, purely because the beeb said it.
But perspective 2 must be right. Even if it’s written by a paranoid schizophrenic blogger in his garage, by a man with no insight or expertise. If it fits the standard patterns of B-BBC thinking (and most importantly, says something different to the BBC report – which is indentical to reports in all other papers/sky news etc) then perspective 2 is obviously correct.
When are you guys going to get it that the BBC is imperfect yes, but blogs written without expertise, knowledge and that are accountable to no one, are far far worse at reporting truth than media outlets. Blogs are about opinion first. It is virtually impossible to find an unbiased blog; a blog that reports the news first, and opinion second. Like the BBC does, like SKy does, like the telegraph or the independent or whoever does.
Blogs written without expertise? You don’t get better expertise on the EU than Richard North.
Just to humour us, could you critique Robin’s post pointing out exactly where the BBC delivered unbiased news in this case. As I read Robin’s post all he’s saying is that the press, including the BBC, were informed by the company’s boss that – in his view – EU rules were responsible for the closure. The BBC, apparently, chose not to report this although the Times did. Why wasn’t this “news”? Why would the BBC – which is short of neither space nor resources – choose not to mention that the person closest to the closure blames the EU? He may be wrong; he may be biased but what he says, in the context of the loss of 10,000 jobs, is worthy of being reported. Yet the BBC choses not to do so. IMHO this is crap reporting. Moreover, I would further consider that crap reporting which consistently omits to mention salient if inconvenient facts – or even possibly controversial allegations by those who should know about the facts alleged – is biased.
If what you say is true then why does the BBC and indeed the MSM in general get the facts and reality so wildly wrong so often when EUREFERENDUM gets the story and the analysis right so often?
The EUREF blog has been the first blog to break many stories about Iraq and Afghanistan, the strategic and tactical blunders made by government and the MSM has always followed on weeks later if at all.
Your post smacks of spite and jealousy, North&Co get the story often overlooked by the multibillion pound MSM and treads on a great many toes in so doing, they have no special lobby access like the BBC, they have no long list of inside contacts like the BBC, they are not awash with near unlimited funds like the BBC and yet EUREF consistently beats the BBC to stories and covers those stories with a depth woefully lacking at the BBC/MSM.
You state that the EUREF blog is written without expertise or insight, that one line shows us perfectly YOUR bias and even jealousy of a blog that can report the facts that others would prefer hidden.
The tragedy is that a tiny outfit like EUREF is able to report the facts and truth in depth when giant media empires like the BBC is unable or unwilling to use its massive reources to find the real story if it conflicts with the BBC political narrative.
A prime case is the scanda about the Pinzgauer vector and the viking armoured vehicles in Afghanistan, they were expensive disasters and the faults were killing troops and it was EUREF alone that broke the scandal, just one of many examples where the BBC were conveniently blind and EUREF was not.
BTW Richard North is well qualified to report and has made the BBC look like thick amatuers time and time again, perhaps thats why you dislike him? or perhaps you are an MOD(ministry of defeat)chair warming droid with good reason to hate EUREF?
Robin, you really are preaching to the converted here ! Manipulation of the news agenda by the bbc has been responsible for a great deal of the devastation visited on the country during the last twelve years.
You only have to think of the bbc’s commitment to multi culturalism, as being the single biggest factor in allowing unchecked immigration, with all of the disasters it has brought. Or their slavish refusal to question the climate change / wealth redistribution plans of the awg devotees.
A point on the irony of Mital benefiting from carbon trading by closing the Teeside plant. Are you aware that individual EU goverments actually allocated carbon permits to industry themselves . Thus our merry band of Whitehall jobsworths , as is usuall , applied the rules far more stringently than their counterparts elsewhere in the EU.
I find it astonishing that anyone could think that the BBC is anything other than fanatically biased in favour of the EU.
Interesting I heard this story the other night when I think it was the lead story on Radio 4s early evening news. The news reader said the reason for the closure was a consortium of foreign buyers had pulled out of a deal. No further info was given on the who and the why of the story which should be the meat of any jornalists report which I thought was odd but not unusual given the Beebs shoody journalist standards.
Do you suppose the Union know the real reason for the closure but just don’t want to tell the truth ?
I heard the same story and, later, it was on the BBC News on TV. At the time I wondered how – if, presumably, there was a contract under which the steel was being delivered – the buyers could just repudiate the contract and not face an action in court to have the contract enforced. What we weren’t told is that, apparently, the suppliers walked out of the contract and the buyers were glad to see the back of the contract since they had contracted to pay at a price higher than the current market price. Of course – and this is pure speculation on my part – if the supplier and the buyers were all part of the same group then why, given the bonus from the EU for doing nothing, should anyone expect the contract to be honoured?
The jocks in Glasgow have been voting Liebour for 50 years, look where it’s got them. No where.
Most of the seats that changed hands in 97 were Tory seats or marginals. I think middle of the road Tories are much more likely to vote for another party than Liebour generally, except of course for the BNP which as we know is voted for by some Labour voters.
The sooner we can float Scotland off into the Atlantic, the sooner England can banish the scourge of Labour, statism and socialism forever.
Not that I don’t have Scots friends and relatives. But without the country of Scotland, Labour would become a marginalized regional party and permanent minority.
Then we can start dismantling the BBC, not to be replaced by the EBC.
The BBC coverage of the climategate scandal is a prime example of how the BBC opperates, the BBC has failed to examine in depth the content of the leaked emails and documents prefering to concentrate on only the most general examination.
The ‘Harry read me’ file is perhaps the most damning evidence of data manipulation and the BBC has studiously ignored it. The actual emails are only a part of a bigger scandal which the BBC is unable or unwilling to examine.
The entire ground station temperature record by the CRU is suspect and the met office relies on that data to make its own models of past temperatures as do many other groups.
The three ground based global temperature reconsructions are CRU/GHCN/GISS, the BBC reports that because they are so similar it means they must be correct BUT does it not ring alarm bells that these records are so similar? All three have been fighting to keep their raw data secret and are fighting FOI requests tooth and nail and have been for years.
More and more evidence of the corrupt nature of the ground station data comes out daily yet the BBC sees fit to ignore the glaring links in the chain of the scandal, from NZ to Australia to the US to the UK we see ground stations badly sited/left out and even old stations no longer existing somehow delivering higher than normal temperatures! Then to cap it all off all three groups ‘homogonize’ and ‘manipulate’ the raw data running it through secret computer ‘AlGorerythms’ to arrive at a desired conclusion, the BBC seem unable or unwilling to investigate any of this, they seem fixated on the one CRU temperature series while ignoring the damning links to the other two.
The BBC has a direct and overwhelming interest in NOT opening the can of worms that is the climategate scandal, they tried to ignore the scandal and now are trying to skate over it without doing their job of investigating the whole story, their actions so far indicates that the BBC has much to hide and much to lose if the full picture is uncovered, mush of the BBCs alarmist predictions of doom are based on suspect data and models based on that suspect data, the scandal runs very deep indeed and the scandal reaches much further than just the CRU therefore you can expect the BBC to effectively run a coverup.
The real scandal is not the crooked practices, it is the attempted coverup by looking the other way that is the real scandal.
cassandra
The smoking gun is below:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
I expect it will be ignored by the BBC (as well as, to be fair, the Telegraph and the Times)
Thanks for the link my friend, it looks like a scandal of epic proportions doesnt it?
They can lie and cheat but the truth is seeping out and the more truth comes out the worse its looking for the BBC.
I reckon the local press in Redcar need to have the EURef story about the steel factory. If the local press print it, can you imagine the local uproar? It will cause a massive political fallout.
I seem to remember that Tata loaded itself up with expensive debt to buy Corus. Sorry I can’t give details but it was the sort of deal that was bound to come unstuck if a recession hit.
Jaguar was another bad buy by Tata.
The whole affair stinks and a good journalist should try to get to the truth.
Don’t hold your breath though.
It has been clear for some time that our remaining industry was to be sacrificed to ensure Franco German domination of the industrial sector.
You try buying a British made tool and particularly a machine tool.
Instead we relied on the RBS etc etc.
Now that has turned to dust how are we going to earn a living here?
Theme parks and shopping?
Without wishing to alarm those of a fragile nature it appears that the toxic debt of the RBS ( guaranteed by us) is some 281.9 billion. That is MORE than the combined toxic debt of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America ,Citigroup andv Wells Fargo. by some 121.9 billion.
We are completely screwed and there is going to be real day of reckoning.
No wonder the media is so reticent.
A correction. The figures are even worse. I failed to allow for the dollar pound rate. The total US toxic debt of the banks listed is $160 billion.
RBS must be the biggest zombie bank of all time