GREEN BUSINESS

Some time ago, I noted that Roger Harrabin seemed to be offering his services for hire as a speaker at greenie events, and was seemingly paid amounts up to £10,000 and more for his appearances. I can’t confirm this, of course, because I haven’t seen his financial records, but I believe it is a reasonable inference to make; he’s registered with a fee-making agency as a “performing artiste” (no less) and I don’t imagine that he is there purely for the good of his health. If he doesn’t accept payment, I will be happy to put the record straight, though he hasn’t responded to my invite to do so.

I also suggested that his colleague Richard Black was similarly making money. That led to yelps of protest (and, in due course, a BBC solicitor’s letter) that he did not allow his integrity to be thus prostituted, and I accept that Mr Black does not similarly hire himself out. But this rather begged the question of why, if Mr Black thinks it is so wrong to be a hired gun, Mr Harrabin is seemingly happy to be so. Oh hum, such are the complexities of being a BBC environmental activist.

I’ve been digging a little bit deeper in this patch, and it doesn’t stop there. Our Mr Harrabin is also listed as a speaker with an outfit called Green Business Events (GBE). This is a body which frightens me to the core, and – I submit – shows the extent to which greenie madness has taken hold of the establishment, with activists persuading each other on a regular basis that they are on a righteous crusade to save the world. In reality, it’s a conspiracy of rich companies finding new ways of extracting the maximum amount of money out of subsidies, grants and taxes under the guise of “corporate social responsibility”. Said GBE holds an annual “Green Strategy” screw-the-poor, love-in conference (which our Roger chaired in 2009), and also monthly “Green Mondays” around the country in which 200 or so of the senior management acolytes (chillingly called “corporate climate change leaders”) of this religious-fervour group get together in rather plush venues to crow about their save-the-world policies.

(Incidentally, the whole shooting match was founded by a young whizz-kid called Ben Patten. He seems to be on a good money-making wheeze. His qualifications for running this climate change extravaganza? A dreaded MBA and a degree in, er, ancient history. He thus has as many scientific qualifications as Mr Harrabin).

When I found GBE, I was gripped with a mixture of abject horror and fascination; horror that such a group actually exists and fascination that so many companies, organisations and arms of the government have actually willingly signed up to this brainwashing process. What it means is that there is now a shadowy momentum (as well as the declared mainstream political agenda) towards entrapping us all in the climate change machine, subscribed to by the most powerful organisations in the land.

Mr Harrabin’s involvement reveals something far more worrying. It shows that the BBC not only seemingly allows him out as a hired gun, but also does not care if he is directly associated with an organisation that has a declared partisan goals. Groups like GBE might claim be saving the world; in reality, they are ramming a political agenda down our throats and are working flat out behind the scenes to subject to us to fuel poverty, to invest billions in crackpot wind schemes, to reverse the industrial revolution, and to ensure that the developed world transfers billions of pounds to the corrupt pockets of developing world dictators. The BBC should be ashamed of itself.

Update: Mr Harrabin (having been complicit in spreading the Met Office’s climate change propaganda), is now professing indignance at their conduct in keeping quiet about the recent cold snap. Pot. Kettles. Black. (h/tip B-BBC readers)

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27 Responses to GREEN BUSINESS

  1. David Jones says:

    Shukman and Toenails Robinson are also on that list of speakers for GBE.

       0 likes

    • Craig says:

      Another one is Robert Phillips, CEO of Edelman UK.

      Edelman, as Robin revealed last week, is the PR company where Richard Sambrook, former boss of BBC Global News, moved to after leaving the BBC early last year.

      Small world, isn’t it?

         0 likes

  2. David Jones says:

    This is serious. A new law has been passed by the German government, quietly and almost unnoticed. Soon in the future, the government will tell its citizens how much energy they can consume.

     

    If the German State can pass this, then it can pretty much do whatever the hell it damn well pleases.

     

    Gone are the days of a government that is there to serve its citizens. Here to stay is a group of elitists who are going to boss the citizens around and tell them how to live.

     

    But of course it’s all in the name of saving planet from climate catastrophe. Never mind what Edenhofer of the PIK said awhile back, read here. They are moving quickly now, and Germany is now lost. Although climate scepticism is rising, it’s too late. Germany’s new energy law

     

    I expect Harrabin and Black are wetting their pants over this one.s

     

    h/t hauntingthelibrary

       1 likes

  3. Cassandra King says:

    Ideology? Certainly.

    A rapacious greed and hunger for money and power? Of course.

    A creed that oils the wheels with insider trading, money laundering through a series of ingenious parasitical enterprises with a common purpose, to extract shared financial resources from the many to the few, to acrue power and political influence in the course of stealing it away from the people.

    So there you have CAGW in a nutshell, a ghastly combinationn of the most negative and poisonous and grubby traits that humanity has always indulged in and as always it uses a fabricated cover of high principle. The ends justify the means right? Wrong!

    The BBC knows full well that some of its employees are on the make and on the take, it doesnt take a genius to see that the one sided presentation of lies and deceptions has a price. One man with a ‘face’ and a platform to spread the lies is worth its weight in gold. One crook on the take who can speak to millions is a rare catch, no wonder then that the Bliar route to riches is so tempting.

    So what about honour and integrity and honesty and conscience? The post democratic state has enough money to buy anything it wants, in the new world order its all for sale. Lies and treachery become normal, back stabbing and selling out becomes the order of the day and always there is money flowing to grease the wheels of corruption, a sea of money and all you have to do to swim in it is erase from your soul any notion of honesty/integrity/honour/conscience?

    This brave new world lacks morals but is awash with money, who says money cant buy you love? Maybe it cant but it seems it can buy everything else. Its all for sale, who cares what the truth is as long as the bank acounts are topped up? The gangrene of corruption where only the maggots can fill their bellies, money money money?

    The ends justify the means dont they? Oooh just what were those ends supposed to be anyway? Who gives a shit, look at all the money.

       1 likes

  4. Andrew says:

    Interestingly enough Harrabin crops in a DM story this morning:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343863/Met-Office-knew-Decembers-big-freeze-coming-hushed-up.html

    Apparently, the Met office knew it was coming but hid.  There’s a beautiful quote in the report from Harrabin’s original piece (I’ve only just finished choking on the irony of it)

    “Last night Mr Harrabin said: ‘With Britain shivering through a third winter in a row, shouldn’t the weather forecasters have warned us well in advance? Why didn’t the Met Office tell us?
    What’s that I hear you ask, expecting someone to tell us the facts and not massage them?
    I also love this little gem from him:
    ‘It did forecast in November that December would be bitter, but many of us may have taken the prediction with a truckload of salt.’

    I’ll bet you did.

    All that aside if true this story has much more serious connotations.  A tax funded reporter knowing something very much in the public interest and hiding it. A tax funded met office pretending it knew no such thing when they did.  Wasn’t the so called failure to predict the reason they asked for more funding.  Isn’t asking for money and using deception to get it called FRAUD?  Maybe the worse thing is a Cabinet Office knowing and doing nothing

       1 likes

  5. George R says:

    “Met Office ‘kept winter forecast secret from public'”

    BBC-Greenpeace lobby implicated.

    Weasel words from Harrabin:

    “The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office.”

    As we know,  Met Office and BBC-Greenpeace lobbyists are propagandists on global warming.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8237397/Met-Office-kept-winter-forecast-secret-from-public.html

       1 likes

  6. Martin says:

    So why does the BBC allow Harrabin to speak at pro greenie events? Shouldn’t he also go to anti greenie events for balance?

       1 likes

  7. Autonomous Mind says:

    I have taken a detailed look at this story…

    http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/bbc-spins-that-met-office-got-winter-right-just-kept-it-secret-from-public/

    Too much doesn’t add up.

       1 likes

    • matthew rowe says:

      Great read  Autonomous will be interesting if  the F.O.I requests  ever get released !

         1 likes

      • Natsman says:

        FOI?  They’ll wriggle their sleazy way out of that one, won’t they?  They’ll probably fiddle the dates and claim immunity under the “Oh, you’re too late” rule…

           1 likes

    • Craig says:

      That’s a very penetrating article. This could be dynamite under Harriban & co.

         1 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office’

      There goes another Beeboid with that rather loose and over-inclusive  ‘we’ thing again.

      When the word ‘trust’ is in the frame, I fear ‘I’ don’t put any BBC related entity, or the Met Office too high on the list.

      For some reason.

         1 likes

    • Cassandra King says:

      This is classic exceptional investigative journalism. What we see is the BBC employing its usual tactics of muddying the waters and creating confusion to cover and assist its axis partners. The political establishment are implicated up to their necks in the CAGW fraud, the axis partners are not about to go down alone, either they all stay afloat together or they all sink together, there will be no individual sacrifice in this joint fraud.

      Its easy to spot and Harrabin performs his task in the usual manner, no outstanding merit on his part of course simply a template that is modified to suit the narrative of the day. His actions have been used from Israel to CAGW to US domestic politics to islamism to immigration. The same standard BBC tricks used for the same ends.

      This is what the BBC does best, its core responsibility is misinformation and propaganda and factual manipulation/exclusion to further a particular narrative. This particular story, one in a long line of stories where the BBC applies longstanding techniques to pervert and manipulate the facts to suit its agenda.

      The met office are part of the BBC axis so they have automatic protection, BBC hacks are trained to exlpoit certain tricks to cover and assist its axis partners and uses other tricks to smear the politcal and ideological enemies of the axis. A shot across the bows of a faltering axis partner usually does the trick.

      The UKMO can pin the blame on the current CAGW believer coalition via its axis partner, the coalition can either damage its bought and paid for CAGW propaganda source(UKMO) or it can cover it all up to protect its own incredible lack of preparedness. A game where everyone is partly to blame brings a closing of ranks, the coalition and the UKMO and the BBC and the CAGW establishment all have a hand in the fraud. The BBC shows it hand by its actions, the current CAGW establishment has yet to respond to the obvious UKMO invite to close down the scandal in the usual way. The BBC is acting as the transmitter, the axis will close ranks of course the trick is to see just how it acheives that end.

      Whats the betting that if pressed the establishment do a climategate style whitewash inquiry staffed by bought and paid for establishment stooges that determines no wrongdoing funnily enough by NOT examing any evidence or calling real witnesses and perhaps claiming the usual ‘lessons will be learned’ topped off with promotions all round with a couple of Ks thrown in for the principles.

      All very predictable so far?

         1 likes

  8. Charlie says:

    We had an earth moving experience last night. Must be Global Warming.

    Click to access ripon_03_jan_2011.pdf

       1 likes

  9. George R says:

    Supplementary; reprise of Christopher Booker’s article of last week:

    “The green hijack of the Met Office is crippling Britain”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8223165/The-green-hijack-of-the-Met-Office-is-crippling-Britain.html

       1 likes

  10. Tom says:

    Either the Cabinet Office or UKMO are NOT going to come out of this unscathed / undiminished.

    Will the Cabinet Office back them up ?

    If the Cabinet Office confirm UKMO warning why didn’t they act? – because they don’t believe in the competence of their forecasts? – so why should they believe in global warming etc?

    It seems under the circumstances that UKMO, to preserve what’s left of their dignity should have simply kept quiet.

    Don’t squander the gift.

       1 likes

  11. David Preiser (USA) says:

    The GBE is clearly a political activist organization.  Aren’t Beeboids prohibited from engaging in political activity, in the interests of maintaining impartiality?

       1 likes

    • Natsman says:

      “…in the interests of maintaining impartiality?…”

      I doubt it, it’s not interesting enough.
      Political spin, lies and bias – NOW you’re talking!!

         1 likes

  12. Natsman says:

    Please will somebody point Moonbat, Black and Harrabin to Joe Bastardi’s latest video here:

    http://www.accuweather.com/video.asp?channel=vbbastaj

    Bloody cold in the States coast to coast, soon, and his comments about why it snows, or doesn’t snow, depending upon which version of Global Warming you believe in at any one time…

    Joe is THE MAN!!

    (Posted elsewhere, too).

       1 likes

  13. John Horne Tooke says:

    “For nearly a quarter of a century Roger Harrabin has been one of the media’s most influential voices on environment,…”

    http://www.performingartistes.co.uk/artistes/439/roger-harrabin.htm

    “..influential voices on environment..”?
    This is not the phrase used for a journalist or unbiased reporter.

    Influential  – ‘Having or exercising influence.’

    Influence – ‘Power to sway or affect based on prestige, wealth, ability, or position’

    The  ‘..influential voices on environment..’ is only usually applied to:

    ‘Gore, a Nobel Laureate and one of the most influential voices on environmental issues’
    http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Gore-praises-anti-smelter-stance-106808678.html

       0 likes

  14. John Horne Tooke says:

    “The event’s chair, the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin, tore into the coalition Government and the apathy he perceived around cuts as well as the climate change movement.”
    http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=19037

    “It is important that the personal, commercial, business, financial and other outside interests of BBC staff do not compromise their BBC role. The onus is on the journalist, content producer or on-air talent to let the BBC know if they (or in certain circumstances their family or close personal contacts) have any outside interests which could be perceived as a conflict of interest.”
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/page/guidance-conflicts-personal

    These “guidelines” are a joke.

       0 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Sadly, tragi-comedy not really my bag when it comes to rational plans for my kids’ futures.

         0 likes

  15. Euroslayer says:

    Ah, Martin. Will Harrabin be required to attend anti greenie events?No mate. David Jordan, the lead author of the new BBC editorial guidelines, has explained that when it comes to climate change, the word ‘impartiality’ has a different meaning to the dictionary definition. 

     

    In a shameful episode of Newswatch from November 29th – at:

     

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vjxv3/Newswatch_29_10_2010

     

    Jordan told Raymond Snoddy: “If both sides of the debate were to be reflected it would give the impression that both sets of views were equal and we don’t have to approach impartiality in climate change in that way”. 

     

    Snoddy just let it pass and I suppose he is just picking up his BBC cheque. But for me, who trained as a journalist in the late 60s and became a fully-qualified senior journalist in 1970, it was a moment of abject humiliation for BBC journalists everywhere. They have been left in no doubt by their masters – they are NOT to be impartial when it comes to reporting global warming issues.

       0 likes

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