Here you go and as requested, a new open thread. Detail the bias here please!

The singer Cat Stevens became a Muslim….I’m sure it had nothing to do with Islam.

However his stated desire to kill Salman Rushdie had everything to do with Islam.

Shame that, present day events considered, the BBC thinks such a person is fit to star on their shows when DLT has been erased from history for squeezing a girl’s boobs.

Once again you have to ask serious questions about the BBC’s news bulletins which reduce a story to the very minimum in such a way that the facts are so distorted that they give the listener or viewer a very misleading idea of events.

Welfare minister Lord Freud has been heard to say that ‘disabled people aren’t worth the minimum wage.’

I was listening in the car to the BBC news and surprisingly managed to keep on the road as my eyes were rolling rapidly in amazement at yet another Tory foot-in-mouth balls up.

And yet…I had an entirely wrong view of events and of what he had said, the full context that gave meaning to his words. being missing.

Even the BBC agrees the BBC is wrong……

The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said it was important to understand the context of the conversation and that Lord Freud was not arguing for a new policy of routinely paying people less than the minimum wage.

He said one interpretation of Lord Freud’s comments was that he was “thinking aloud” but suggestions that the minimum wage could be undercut would seem “heartless” and come back to “haunt him”.

 

But as I write this the BBC has this on their front page…

Lord Freud: Disabled people ‘not worth full wage’

This is the entire report on that page…

A welfare minister said a small group of people are “not worth the full wage” and could be paid £2 an hour.

And though there is a fuller description yet again it fails to produce the full wording.

Damon Rose, from the BBC’s disability blog Ouch! having read the full transcript can make up his own mind and says in his analysis:

It’s perhaps understandable that Lord Freud might want to think outside the box to allow desperate disabled people to shine and get a real job with a real (if low) wage which for some may be preferable to remaining at home, isolated, looking forward to a life on benefits.  ……Lord Freud sounds like he was raising an important debate, but has muddied the waters with what sounds like disrespectful language.

 

So perhaps Lord Freud may have a point….it’s just that his phrasing, ‘not worth the minimum wage’, was thoughtless and crass.

In fact the BBC on PM with Eddie Mair (17:07)  did cover this story in depth, asking ‘Does Lord Freud have a point?’

It was only on hearing the full story that I was able to understand exactly what Freud had said and what it was that he in fact meant by it…..unfortunately the programme had on a very hardcore disability campaigner who had no interest in nuance or a measured and reasoned response…but she was kicked into touch by the second guest who explained the issues in a more rational way that put things into perspective…..a perspective missing from BBC news bulletins which went more along the path that the campaigner took.

Here is a transcript (From the Daily Record not the BBC) of what went on at the meeting when Lord Freud ‘mis-spoke’:

In a recording passed to website Politics Home, Lord Freud is heard discussing the plans.

The conversation took place between Lord Freud and a Conservative councillor from Tunbridge Wells, David Scott [who asks if  ‘mentally damaged’ disabled persons need to be paid the minimum wage….]

“You make a really good point about the disabled. Now I had not thought through, and we have not got a system for, you know, kind of going below the Minimum Wage.

“But we do have … You know, Universal Credit is really useful for people with the fluctuating conditions who can do some work – go up and down – because they can earn and get … and get, you know, bolstered through Universal Credit, and they can move that amount up and down.

“Now, there is a small … there is a group, and I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say  they’re not worth the full wage  and actually I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it’s working can we actually.”

After he finishes speaking the two carry on their exchange, with Mr Scott telling the peer that “no-one is willing to pay the Minimum wage” for disabled people to work.

Scott: “They particularly want to work because it does add so much to their lives…”

Freud: “Yes.”

Scott:  “…being able to do something. And actually being employed in a job actually gives them so much self-esteem, but nobody is willing to pay that Minimum Wage. And then we’re supporting them massively financially, but we also want them to work, for their own self-esteem and everything else.”

 

It is quite clear that the disabled people Freud is talking about are people who are severely disabled and unable even to do the same work as less disabled people and therefore might find themselves completely unemployable in the normal course of events, and that in order to give them a more fulfilling and interesting life it might be necessary to offer them a job where they do what they can with the employer paying what they can afford whilst the government tops up the rest.

So Eddie Mair and PM did do a good job in finding the answer to the question ‘Does Lord Freud have a point?’.  Unfortunately all that good work counts for little when BBC news bulletins strip away all the context and produce a barebones report that not only is misleading but is enormously damaging.  Something that all too often the bulletins are prone to do.

Time perhaps to retrain its bulletin writers and even lengthen the bulletins if a story merits a longer, more nuanced explanation as this one certainly does considering the ramifications.

A history of Ebola outbreaks from 1976

From 1976 to 2013 a total of 1,716 people died from Ebola.  Around 45 a year.  Kind of puts things into perspective.

Ebola is being treated as if it were a nuclear bomb ready to detonate and contaminate vast swathes of the world, a huge threat that the drugs industry has ignored despite having known about it for nearly 40 years.

The BBC is on the warpath eagerly quoting the ‘experts’ who tell us that a cure for Ebola would have been found if it had broken out in the West.

The drug companies get the blame…There have been no drugs to do the job because developing them is extremely expensive, and, until now, the major pharmaceutical companies have not seen enough of a market.

And yet research has been ongoing for years….Research….and a potentially successful drug has been developed:

The first Briton to contract Ebola, Will Pooley, received ZMapp and then recovered, but the drug’s American manufacturer warned it would take months to replenish supplies.

 

Ebola has not been ignored….Oxfam thinks differently…..

It is neither ethical nor sustainable to leave decisions and financing for research and development to be dictated by the commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies. They will continue producing the medicines that can make the highest profits rather than the therapies that are desperately needed for public health.”

But hang on….Ebola’s history is described as “Until this outbreak, Ebola was a rare disease occurring in small instances and burning itself out.”

Discovered in 1976, just how many cases have there been since then?

From 1976 (when it was first identified) through 2013, the World Health Organization reported a total of 1,716 cases

So over the course of 38 years there were 1,716 cases…around 45 per year.  Any wonder the drugs industry (clue’s in the name) didn’t mobilise and direct massive resources to the disease.

Shame the BBC allows politically motivated people onto its programmes to spread damaging lies. BBC journalists have themselves been making such statements about this….one saying ‘Isn’t it awful the west didn’t apply resources to defeat Ebola decades ago!’

Just how much in the way of resources does the BBC think would have been suitable to cure 45 people a year?

Climate models, the tools used to carve up the economy to suit the socialist dreamers, aren’t as reliable as they told us they were.

The BBC admits…..

Climate change: Models ‘underplay plant CO2 absorption’

Remember that the BBC has in effect banned Lord Lawson from the BBC on the basis that ‘ Lord Lawson’s views on climate change: “are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research and I don’t believe this was made sufficiently clear to the audience.”

As the science writer and Conservative peer Matt Ridley made clear this week in The Times, linking the words “evidence” and “computer-modelling” in the same sentence is an oxymoron. Computer models try to predict the future and can only be tested as potential evidence when they are proved to be correct.

The article from the BBC reports that…..

Global climate models have underestimated the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plants, according to new research.

Scientists say that between 1901 and 2010, living things absorbed 16% more of the gas than previously thought.

Despite telling us that…..‘Working out the amount of carbon dioxide that lingers in the atmosphere is critical to estimating the future impacts of global warming on temperatures. ‘

…they ‘reassure’ us that…..

‘…experts believe the new calculation is unlikely to make a difference to global warming predictions.’

And….

‘…it may not mean any great delay in global warming as a result of increased concentrations of the gas.’

And….

Many experts agree that the effect is interesting and may require a recalibration of models – but it doesn’t change the need for long-term emissions cuts to limit the impact of carbon dioxide.

And….

“This new research implies it will be slightly easier to fulfil the target of keeping global warming below two degrees – but with a big emphasis on ‘slightly’,”

“Overall, the cuts in CO2 emissions over the next few decades will still have to be very large if we want to keep warming below two degrees.”

Four times in one report the BBC tries to subtly rubbish this study and downplay any significance to the clmate.

Can’t have you getting the idea that climate modelling is mostly nonsense.

The BBC quotes the researchers who produced the study asking just how big an error is there in the modelling…and then rushed in its ‘other researchers’ to pour cold water on any suggestion that the models are seriously wrong….

‘The researchers believe that Earth systems models have over estimated the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by about 17%, and think their new evaluation of plant absorption explains the gap…. If we are going to predict future CO2 concentration increases for hundreds of years, how big would that bias be?”‘

The BBC’s counter….

‘Other researchers believe the new work could help clarify our models but it may not mean any great delay in global warming as a result of increased concentrations of the gas.’

There may be global warming, or not, but the science hasn’t proved man is responsible.

The BBC is pushing propaganda not science.

What a bit of luck the BBC can slide its hand into our wallets and extract that license tax. Just imagine if it had to finance THIS sort of indulgence itself…

The BBC has spent more than £220,000 on iPhone lessons for staff. Figures have revealed the corporation spent licence fee payers’ money teaching 783 employees how to properly use the gadget over a period of three years. This works out at a cost of nearly £300 per person.

Anyone else watched Darragh MacIntyre’s 30 minute undermining of Nigel Farage on Panorama? Shocking bias. As someone else has pointed out, what a PITY the Panorama team never did a similar job on Jimmy Savile.

The Today programme investigated ‘Chinaphobia’(08:20) and brought us Sir Christopher Frayling, art historian, and Trannia Brannigan from the Guardian, in to enlighten us.

Frayling thinks Chinaphobia is alive and kicking and has informed all our perceptions and actions towards China and made us reach conclusions about China that are undeserved and prejudiced.

Remarkably perhaps, Trannia, from the Guardian, actually took issue with him and undermined his argument.

Personally I don’t think ‘Chinaphobia’ exists in the Public mind, certainly not an innate prejudice against Chinese people based on ridiculous caricatures such as Fu Man Chu.

People base their perceptions of China on what they know its recent history to be….Korea, Vietnam, the brutal imposition of Communism that killed millons, the constant military threats to Japan and Taiwan, never mnd the invasion and occupation of Tibet (praised by Humphrys, or was it Naughtie?, when he went there) and of course Tianamen Square…just to mention a few things.

And those perceptions don’t reflect on the Chinese people but on its government.

Seems that Frayling came up with an idea and pressed on with it regardless and now has a book to sell.

In 2012 Frayling’s attitude towards China were apparently different as the Royal College of Art was in danger of becoming a ‘Chinese finishing school’ with so many Chinese students….  How do I know that?  Because someone called Sir Christopher Frayling said so..in a BBC programme in 2012……

If we don’t do more to encourage our young people to art and design, Frayling tells me, the RCA will find itself simply “a Chinese finishing school”. Canny Prince Albert would not have approved.

I guess ‘Chinaphobia’ is okay when your own interests are under threat.

There is a great deal of talk of ‘Chinaphobia’ on the internet but you have to ask just how much of that is driven by the Chinese government trying to undermine the perception that it has taken over the world by using cheap labour, cheap money, lax environmental controls and the exploitation of third world countries’ resources and the ‘occupation’ of many with Chinese labourers?

The Today programme didn’t delve that far though, happy to bring us the frothy and exciting, eyecatching and controversial, instead of dull old reality.

Morning all. Time for a brand new week and a brand new Open Thread! The floor is yours!

There’s this from the Telegraph:

Scrap the Climate Change Act to keep the lights on, says Owen Paterson

And this from the Mail:

Britain will run out of electricity unless it axes green target, warns ex-Minister

And then there is this from the BBC:

…a big fat nothing.

Still when they get round to it here’s the format….a quick run down of what Paterson claims, then a range of ‘credible’ voices disparaging him and his views, then Ed Davey will pad out the rest of the report, ie nearly all of it, with his pro-green claptrap assuring us that the lights will shine even brighter when generated by attaching electrodes to climate sceptic’s doodahs and making them lick the skin of toxic toads, and that otherwise we are all doomed.

You know it all makes sense….or you would know if the BBC reported it.