OPEN THREAD

Morning folks. Just spent 45 minutes on BBC Nolan Show re my criticism of the Olympic Opening ceremony. I brought up the fact that Labour MP Paul Flynn had already tweeted it was a paean to Socialism. Nolan did not want to discuss this. Instead the plan was to paint me as the world’s biggest begrudger which was rather confounded when the first caller fully agreed with me. I feel Aidan Burley’s pain! Anyhoo –  a new open thread for you all whilst I go into a dark room and meditate.

Harrabin, Back On Form, Or Is That ‘With Form’?

The Telegraph’s Met Office expert tells us (no link yet) that 1948 had similar weather patterns to ours this year…..with high temperatures and heavy rainfall.

In 1948 the highest temperature recorded was 35° c with rainfall of over 1200 mm for the year.(one of the highest)….and the driest year since 1910 was in 1933.

The early summer was very wet followed by a heat wave which was then followed by a very wet August……apart from August it’s sounding remarkably familiar.

And yet we are told this is a year of records and we’re still going to fry if we don’t build more windmills…Christopher Booker in the Telegraph calculates to meet the Ed Miliband inspired CO2 reduction  requirements we will need to build another 32,000 wind turbines.

We are also told that man made global warming didn’t start before the 1970’s….so what caused the heatwave in 1948 and in previous years?…and if it didn’t start until the 1970’s why are we supposed to be guilty about the Industrial Revolution?

Looking at the previously quoted Guardian rainfall record rainfall has stayed pretty consistent throughout the last 100 years…and you will find if you dig out temperature records that temperatures are pretty consistent over the last 100 years also.

 

And let’s look at how the BBC’s Harrabin has been reporting the latest revelations about the wind farm subsidies only being cut by 10%….

‘On the face of it this is a win for Ed Davey – angrily fighting off the chancellor who was under pressure from right-wing rural conservatives who don’t like wind turbines in the countryside.

Uncertainty over the direction of government energy policy has been criticised by the industry and has lead to delays in investment.

Wind farm company RES, which generates about 10% of the UK’s onshore wind energy, said the subsidy announcement showed the government’s commitment to renewables.’

Nothing perjorative about that then…and look…the government is committed to renewables?…despite evidence to the contrary…it’s the Liberals and Tim Yeo…the man with many ‘renewable industry’ financial interests, who are banging the drum.

In this report  Harrabin tells us that the UK body that represents the wind farm industry here will take the government to court if it cuts the subsidy by more than 10%….but nowhere does he mention that it is foreign firms that are getting the biggest slice of the cake when it comes to handouts of tax payers money…..which goes abroad to fill their government’s coffers whilst emptying ours.

Here’s the Telegraph being somewhat more honest and open:

Foreign energy firms pressured ministers to keep wind farm subsidies high

Ministers were “bounced” into retaining large subsidies for controversial on-shore wind farms by foreign-based energy companies who threatened to pull jobs and cash out of Britain.

CHEERS!

I’m certain that many BBC staff will be celebrating the end of their final salary pension scheme along with their bosses who indulged in a slap up champagne fueled celebration paid for by the firm that did the knife work, KPMG…one of the world’s biggest accountancy firms.

I guess corporate sponsorship is OK when you’re on the receiving end.

 

….And isn’t it a paradox that probably the world’s biggest and most powerful media organisation complains so bitterly about other commercial corporations…ones who make an honest living…or at least work for their money?

DJ TREVOR and DA DUMBED DOWN CREW

It seems that the BBC has decided that the dumbed down Jubilee coverage was a template, not an aberration!

The BBC faced a fresh barrage of criticism yesterday following Trevor Nelson’s “terrible” commentary during the Olympics’ opening ceremony. The backlash comes a month after DJ Fearne Cotton received thousands of complaints for her coverage at the Diamond Jubilee. The Corporation had at least 50 complaints about DJ Nelson. As sports presenter Hazel Irvine and newsreader Huw Edwards provided much of the factual information during the athletes’ parade, Nelson, 48, was criticised for his “useless” input.

I spotted well know Sports expert Will Young providing insight yesterday. Think I better leave right now…

NHS WORSHIP ON THE LICENSE FEE

Well, the Olympic London 2012 Opening Ceremony is now behind us and what a piece of Statist agit prop nonsense it was. Little wonder the BBC have been going on about how “wonderful” Danny Boyle’s production has been. The only wonder is how Her Majesty tolerated it. Hope you all spotted our pal Universal Shami’s big moment.  The NHS section was particularly odious and yet that seems to be one of the bits the BBC liked best. A paean to a BLOATED grossly expensive inefficient cold Statist monstrosity – mmmm….think I know WHY the BBC liked it so much! On a separate note, Biased BBC has just clocked up more than ONE MILLION page views since 28th March. Not bad, eh?

Mardell, Humphrys and Webb…The Bullingdon Boys?

 

If you wanted to hear the Bullingdon Club in action you could do worse than to tune in to the Today programme where Humphrys, Webb and Mardell do a good impression of a cabal of rich, over indulged, self obsessed, elitist, arrogant, complacent yobs throwing bread rolls and brickbats at any passing foreigner they don’t like.

 

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‘Cynics say the best thing that could have happened to whip up enthusiasm for the Olympics here was to have a high profile foreigner come here and rubbish them. Well it happened. And you don’t get much more high profile than Mitt Romney, who might well become the next president of the United States. The BBC’s Mark Mardell reports.’

Romney rubbish the Olympics?  ‘Well it happened’.

No it didn’t….that’s just a flagrant BBC lie.

Mardell ‘reports’…only he didn’t, it was one long sneer at Mitt Romney and it was clearly intended to be that because looking at what Romney said there was nothing in the slightest offensive or ‘gafflike’ in it….and seeing as he is not privvy (cue loo jokes) to British school boy humour about tits, boobs and backsides….and Mardell in this report on the BBC website actually excused Romney…so for him to play along with Web and Humphrys and then to add to the mirth by suggesting Romney was the nearest thing to the Luftwaffe London was likely to see this year neatly shows that this ‘report’ on Today was a pure attack on the Republican Presidential candidate.

It is in effect BBC racism…Humphrys and Co thinking it’s OK to mock Romney in a way they never would Obama purely because Romney is a white, Christian, Republican American…whereas Obama is black, a Democrat and may not even be American….and may  be a Muslim to boot.

This is what Romney said about the Olympics…bearing in mind the BBC’s weeks of apocalyptic predictions about strikes and security Romney’s remarks are measured and considered and completely fair…..

‘Mr Romney told NBC News he saw “a few things that were disconcerting” about London’s preparations. “The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging,” he said.’

 Yes…highly controversial stuff, an obvious diplomatic gaff of great importance.

This is what Mardell said on the web:

The British press have decided he is a knave and a fool.

As for the major offence, Mitt Romney was merely raising the same doubts behind the stories that have dominated both the BBC news and newspaper headlines for weeks.

The Sun did not accuse the Mail of a slur, nor the Mail say the Sun was a party-pooper for raising legitimate questions about London’s readiness to run the Games.

Their security physically stopped the cameras getting shots of anti-Mormon protesters, but nothing could block the barrage of negative coverage.

 

And note that ‘anti-Mormon protestors’.  Something the BBC approves of as Romney is white and Christian?  Funny how the BBC takes a completely different tone about the EDL as they protest about Islam.

 

PS: From ‘Spiked’….This explains why the BBC et al attacked the Olympics:

That is the thing about the current attacks on the Olympics for what look like freedom-loving reasons. These attacks are cynical and opportunistic. And as a result, they are particular. The reason for that is threefold. The increasingly shrill attacks are motivated as much by a dislike of sport and those who enjoy it – seen by our enlightened commentators as ‘bread and circuses’ dupes – as for any principled reason. Second, it is only now, in London, amid the transport disruptions and increased police presence, that such authoritarianism is affecting broadsheet journalists and Hackney-dwelling postgraduate Marxists. Before, the state’s focus always seemed to be confined to those on the margins of British society, from the binge-drinking chav to the foul-mouthed racist. And third, it is now not just the British state involved in limiting individual freedom; it appears to involve entities far worse: that’s right, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Nike. Big Corporations. Evil Corporations. For metropolitan liberals, who have tacitly supported the state’s war on the behaviour of the less savoury members of society, it is only now, when Nike and McDonald’s are seemingly involved in this perfect storm of illiberalism, that there seems to be a battle worth fighting.

But slamming London 2012 for supposedly bringing corporation-backed authoritarianism to these shores is not only wrongheaded; it’s also just really miserable.

A COUPLE OF BBC TWEETS ABOUT THE OLYMPIC OPENING CEREMONY

BBC business journalist Dominic Laurie:


A BBC business reporter bigging up the #socialism hashstag – says so much about BBC newsroom mindset. How long would a BBC business journo last in his job if he punctuated his tweets by promoting #freemarket or #libertarianism hashtags? I’m guessing either not very long, or long enough to realise that promotion is never going to happen.

And here’s BBC Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason:

Couldn’t resist the mini-lecture directed at America. You’ll search in vain for “Hear that Cuba? FREE SPEECH”, btw. Then again, Newsnight’s Comrade Kite is probably going there for his holidays.

I enjoyed much of the opening ceremony – the bit with Bond and the Queen was particularly good – but jeez, can’t these “impartial” BBC hacks take just one night off from their international class struggle against the clichéd American bogeyman?

Republicanism….Ideology of Peace

For many years now we have been told by the BBC that we have peace in our time…peace that is, in Northern Ireland and have been generous with the airtime for the slippery Hain and Mandelson who spared no blushes in fulsome praise of the brave Gerry Adams for making the decision to use the ballot instead of the bullet.

Except of course he never really did…just as he has never admitted to being a member, let alone a commander of the IRA, he will never admit that IRA weapons still exist and that the intent still exists to use violence.

Adams has successfully distanced himself from the violence but is having his cake and eating it as ‘dissident’ IRA groups continue the work….the EOD bomb disposal teams can be called out anything up to 700 times a year…at least half of those explosive devices being ‘viable’.

Adams of course did admit that ‘the Struggle goes on to unite Ireland’…..peacefully of course.

Now we hear that all the dissident groups are uniting under one command…up to 20 groups of varying sizes….you know that does sound like the war really is over doesn’t it?

Guess like Islam the IRA is misunderstood and that a few ‘criminals’ are ‘distorting and perverting’ the Republican cause.