Monthly Archives: December 2010

CANCUN HORROR…

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So, an agreement has been reached by the 20,000 fanatics at Cancun. Billions of pounds are to be wasted in battling the biggest non-existent problem ever imagined, and millions of people worldwide are going to be condemned to needlessly intensfying fuel poverty; meanwhile the UN bureaucrats will get fatter and more powerful as they dream up endless Gormenghast laws. The BBC, of course, is crowing about how marvellous this is and still giving airtime only to those who think this criminal straitjacket on development is not enough. And providing ludicrous, lying graphics supposedly outlining the scale of the problem. Get ready for an outpouring of triumphalism…

Update: …as I predicted, here, from Richard Black, on the one hand saying how wonderful and surprising the Cancun accord is, on the other, worrying, as usual, that the meaasures aren’t enough. Scepticism? Not even on the page. For real reporting of the Cancun travesty, try Booker, spot on as usual.

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The Important Stuff

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I just heard Eddie Mair on PM conducting an admiring – to put it politely – interview with the agency photographer who was following a gang of ‘student protesters’ who were ‘trashing everything that wasn’t nailed down‘ (as the photographer put it), when the mob came upon Prince Charles and Camilla. Our hero was able to get off five ‘good’ shots of the attack on their car. I paraphrase :

Mair : “And not only that, at many public events there are many photographers – you were the only one to get these exclusive pictures“

Photographer : “Well, yes, they’ve gone all around the world“

Mair : “And how do you feel about that – it must be really special, a once in a lifetime scoop“

Photographer : “Would you please remove your tongue from my lower digestive tract ?“

(I may not have heard that last bit correctly).

You’d think, even were the couple in question not the heir to the throne and his consort, that the middle-aged couple who were victims of a mob attack might be the centre of the story. But no. It’s all about us. Media people reporting on what they really find interesting – media people.

UPDATE – Julia from Ambush Predator comments :

“Well, good grief! The BBC News just ran an interview with Charlie Gilmour (public school and Cambridge protester, stepson of Pink Floyd’s Dave, likes swinging from the flag on the Cenotaph – LT), made on the day, before they knew who he was, or what he’d done, and it’s pretty clear he’s either functionally retarded, or was drunk or stoned at the time. If you can catch it on iPlayer, I suggest you watch, and marvel at what passes for a Cambridge-educated student these days. ”

Anyone seen this interview and got a copy or a link ?

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AMERICANA GUEST HOST – RICHARD WOLFFE

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This week’s edition of Americana on Radio 4 will be presented by regular MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe. His political leanings are so obvious that earlier this week Craig Ferguson mocked him on his talk show (via Newsbusters) :

CRAIG FERGUSON: You’re a Democrat, aren’t you?

RICHARD WOLFFE: I am a journalist.

FERGUSON: A journalist? Much the same thing, isn’t it?

A Democratic Party supporter and a journalist – well, they’re certainly one and the same thing at BBC America.

Just yesterday Wolffe was on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews attacking Sarah Palin. He even once had a spell as leftie nutjob Keith Olbermann’s stand-in (until conflict of interest issues arose). And now he’s a guest host for the BBC. An effortless transition from one left-leaning news organisation to another. (You can be damn sure nobody at the Beeb ever considered asking a right-wing contributor from Fox News to present Americana.)

As if the choice of Wolffe isn’t bad enough, his main interviewee is foil-hatted fruitcake Gore Vidal. Ooh, I wonder if he’ll say something outrageous and controversial. Yawn.

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The War You Wish You Didn’t Have to See

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Oh the irony. John Pilger getting a spot on Today to promote his new film about distorted reporting. Justin venturing the suggestion that Pilger himself wasn’t exactly known for impartiality, Pilger retorting “I was waiting for that”, then citing, with a flourish, former £172,800 p.a. (+ £6,907 expenses) BBC news gatherer Fran Unsworth who “admits, for the first time”, the pressure put on the BBC by Israel. That would be the terrifying Israel lobby that controls the media, causing that sinister, abrupt ending to the interview.

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Question Time LiveBlog 9th December 2010

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Question Time tonight comes from London. On the panel we have Liam Fox MP, Norman Lamb MP, Sadiq Khan MP, Aaron Porter and Janet Daley.

For those playing the Buzzword Bingo we’ll be using the Broken Promises Rules. You should play your Clegg joker early as riot police, any excuse to miss lectures,  anarchy, fire extinguisher, and we’re all in it together are all in play. References to Aaron Porter’s emails suggesting cutting grants and loans aren’t on the cards tonight, nor Labour’s promise to implement the Browne Report because the BBC have airbrushed all of that from history. Usual points for spotting a Thatcher, but points this week also for references to Gordoom’s new book and any direct quotes from Wikileaks (only if made in the context of undermining somebody who is right-of-centre).

The LiveBlog will also cover the insane This Week, with Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo, a random lefty politician and a collection of X-Factor rejects.

TheEye, David Mosque and Ollie Cromwell from the Red Rag blog will be hitting demonstrators with batons here from 10:30pm.

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TEARS….

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Richard Black here chillingly relates – without an ounce of balancing comment – how our lunatic leaders in Cancun are hatching a plot to deprive us of £100bn a year (of which the UK’s share will be at least £1.5bn a year, enough to pay for legions of university students to avoid going into debt)by ludicrously jacking up “carbon” taxes. Christopher Monckton spells out here what Mr Black doesn’t – that the cash will actually be used by the UN to construct a massive new, unaccountable world government that will spend the billions on self-aggrandisement and delusion. As usual, the bilge is illustrated with alarmist pictures. I surmise in this case that the water is made up of not of melting glaciers but of the tears of the Statue of Liberty as she realises what crimes are being committed in her name. Shame on the BBC for reporting this outrage in such partisan terms.

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ADMIRING DIRECT ACTION…

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Did you catch this BBC interview with one of the guys that have been hacking into various websites such as Visa, Paypal, etc in an attempt to bring them down in order to show support for Julian Assange? The tone is one of ADMIRATION for these cyber criminals. I wonder if BBC servers were being targeted would we get the same swooning towards the hackers?

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COALITION WARS

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The BBC is salivating at the tension created by the vote on Tuition Fees that comes later today. Listen to Nick “Mr Impartial” Robinson fantasising about how there might yet be a revolution in the Commons to stop the vote going through. I find it entertaining that the BBC consistently ignores the fact that it was Labour that introduced Tuition Fees, that is was Labour that opened up the floodgates of students tumbling into University so creating an inevitable funding crisis, and that it is Labour that now preens as gross hypocrites. But no debate on that.

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NOT ON THE BBC

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This morning, the BBC focuses on a new government scam to insulate our homes , then there’s fawning coverage of heroic Chris Huhne the ecoloon’s mission to try get a binding treaty at Cancun, and oh, by the way, don’t worry because it’s getting warmer (even though the army has had to becalled in to deal with the heaviest snowfall in Scotland for 50 years after the coldest start to December since 1659). There is a wearisome and continuing common thread to all this BBC hot air in that the usual econuts are quoted throughout, warning us that the end of the world is nigh because of AGW; the message is that we must all support the government and the ruling class in their maniacal plans to impose more taxes to save us all.

However, in the real world, outside the BBC bubble, there are important developments that you will never see reported on the BBC. Around 1,000 scientists active in climate and climate-related fields (many of them formerly part of the UN IPCC process) have published a ground-breaking new report comprehensively debunking the AGW mythology and lies. Here is an extract:

“In essence, the jig is up. The whole thing is a fraud. And even the fraudsters that fudged data are admitting to temperature history that they used to say didn’t happen…Perhaps what has doomed the Climategate fraudsters the most was their brazenness in fudging the data” — Dr. Christopher J. Kobus, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, specializes in alternative energy, thermal transport phenomena, two-phase flow and fluid and thermal energy systems.

If you have time, I also recommend a reading of Donna Laframbois’s marvellous tracking of the UN IPCC lies-assembly process. Effectively, far from being rigorous science, it’s a chance for each of the lead authors to plug their own work. This is another report you won’t see reference to anywhere on the BBC.

Last night, I had a long chat with a BBC man I last saw during 1983 in Derek Amore’s days at BBC Radio London. He subsequently became one of the key developers of the BBC website. He’s out of it now; but the point he made was important. Departing deputy director general Mark Byford – he believes – imposed on the newsgathering and editorial operation over the past decade a centralised control that included rigid policy lines on issues like global warming, where the BBC maintain there is a “consensus”. This, he explained, was a deliberate approach aimed at creating supposed consistency, but its impact on editorial independence has been disastrous. Mr Byford, of course, is an automaton Stalinist by instinct, and so it all seems plausible – the editorial soul of the BBC (if it ever existed, which I increasingly doubt)was hijacked by a leftist control freak.

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