Saturday
Nov172012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Booker on 28gate
Nov 17, 2012 BBC Christopher Booker makes sure that the 28gate story doesn't go quiet, with a survey of the affair in his Sunday Telegraph column.
There is a scandal here that is, in its own way, as disturbing as the one over the Savile affair. But whereas that is being looked into by a series of inquiries, we can be sure that no one will inquire into this second scandal. Remember, after all, how the BBC Trust (now chaired by that committed warmist Lord Patten) aided the cover-up with that lie about “the best scientific experts” in its 2008 report – which was, laughably, supposed to be addressing the BBC’s statutory commitment to impartiality.
Isn’t it odd how often, through all this, one word recurs: “trust”?
Reader Comments (92)
Christopher Booker is consistently magnificent. His column in the Sun. Tel. some years ago introduced me to WUWT and then all the other fine blogs linked there. Bishop Hill is daily reading for me.
As many others have said the involvement of the IBT in BBC, and other TV channels, policy making is a bigger and more serious problem than Savile and MacAlpine as it is in direct contravention of the BBC charter.
Very good. I have just posted this at the site:
As the "discoverer" of the link to the "dirty little secret" list let me thank Mr Booker first, then state the following:
1. Had the BBC not tried to squash a pensioner's FOI rights by way of six lawyers rather than one or two, I would not have looked for the list - this is called the Streisand Effect
2. As far as I am concerned the BBC can get its editorial guidelines from wizard and fairies. I don't mind...as long as the BBC is clear, open, transparent, forthcoming about it.
The scandal is seldom in the fact as much as in the cover-up, untruths, misleading statements, bullying etc etc that follow.
Finally:
3. Some reason-challenged people have argued that the "dirty little secret" is not important. Well, those people are implying then that the BBC has wasted money (140,000+£) on lawyers to protect something that is not important. And that'd be yet another scandal.
BTW if anybody can reach Booker, the site name is OMNOLOGOS not OMN-I-LOGOS
I was keeping my fingers crossed and hoping Booker would do the business on Sunday.
On a similar theme of media bias:
I cancelled my subscription to New Scientist about a year ago, because I felt it had become superficial and unbalanced. However I bought this week’s edition (17 November) because the front cover is entitled “Climate Change – Five Years ago we feared the worse. But it’s looking even worse than that”. I had to check this one out !
The unsigned editorial is headed “Don’r stay cool on warming”. There is a colour pull-out “Energy Realities” promoting wind, solar and attacking developing countries increasing use of coal sponsored by Norwegian StatOil, plus a sponsored photo of a Siemens 300m wind turbine. There is only one balanced and reasonable article by Fred Pearce reporting a lowering risk of drought, but even this is then “offset” by an article directly below by Michael Marshal stating “…but climate uncertainty is less cloudy”. The whole issue seems to have been driven by a certain Michael le Page, a “feature” editor who as far as I can ascertain is actually a biologist seemingly unlikely to understand the complex physics involved in the greenhouse effect. Michael le Page wrote the leading article which for me is basically pure propaganda rather than offering reasoned argument. He even rubbishes Fred Peace’s article in the same issue who is someone I have always respect.
This is a classic example of New Scientist bias or perhaps that should really be “Post Modern New Scientist” !
Clive, thank you reading and reporting on the latest New Scientist so that I don't have to :)
Almost nobody votes for the Green Party; Green Peace comes well down the list of British charities; temperatures haven’t risen since 1997 (1989 in the UK); windmills are dreadful, biofuels are stupid; carbon capture is impossible; the Green Deal has crashed and burned; carbon trading is a joke; nobody wants to pay EU flight taxes, not even Obama's Democrats; the British carbon footprint has gone up when you count imports; we’ve had Climategate, Glaciergate and now 28Gate; and in 3 years time the lights will go out. What has to happen before the smug, dilettante, would be environmental politicians listen to Booker and realise we don’t give a damn about AGW?
He’s good, isn’t he?
Newbery and Morabito have done a brilliant job. Tallbloke, Autonomous Mind, Mike Haseler, and no doubt others, have followed up admirably. But it takes a real journalist, nearly fifty years on the job, to do a summing up like that.
As the first editor of Private Eye, Booker was one of the founding fathers of the “Swinging Sixties”. Then, with “The Neophiliacs”, he was its best critic.
This article will get to a thousand times more readers than anything His Grace or we can say. Or even Delingpole.
Without Booker, we are nothing. Gaia bless him.
By the way, Omnologos (Maurizio) is revealing details in his latest blog (in Italian) which he hasn’t told us. Do go see.
oops..did I? Sorry :)
I thought about posting an English translation of it. Hopefully Google Translate will do for now?
The Booker thread has some good hints in the comments, so I am slowly expanding my analysis -
The attempt at secrecy [was] not just a random act. The BBC could have just come out saying, "Lord May and Mike Hulme told us to be less impartial and we believe that's the right thing to do". That would have been the end of the story for Newbery, five years ago, because Lord May and Mike Hulme are not ignorant unknowns.
But no: the BBC'ers could not just explain themselves. They had to conceal the names and protest FOI attempts, because as we have seen by what happened the aim was not to abandon impartiality, rather to shut dissenting voices off completely and absolutely, and to disseminate the CAGW meme everywhere and about everything, as only a true Catastrophist could do.
Cue CAGW in CBBC programmes and even the BBC Italian Language Course. And for years the Sci&Env page had at least one CAGW story up every single day (I know that because I noticed the pattern and followed it through).
So they thought the world was going to end so they overstretched themselves into pure absolutism, silenced not only the skeptics but even the mildy questioning, hammered the message at every level and then of course had to try not only to stop Newbery, rather with six lawyers they wanted to tell everybody that there was not one chance their FOI requests would be accepted.
I presume that's a natural attitude when you think you're at war, and so you make Truth your first victim.
Omnologos (Maurizio),
What of the significant role of BBC’s reporter Harrabin in the effort to ban coverage of skeptical scientists in BBC’s worldwide news coverage?
At CA I posted the below in response to some general support there of Harrabin as a journalist because some of his articles on climategate where considered fair.
No overall positive view of Harrabin from me. He has participated, in a central role, in the censorship of the independent and open science dialog.
John
John - not everybody is able to maintain composure and to keep focus on fundamentals like freedom of speech, democracy, human rights and the BBC Charter when they are firmly convinced the world is going up in a smoke.
The BBC were clearly running seminars with lobbyists and then later decide to use the Chatham House rule as a justification for hiding that lobbying influence. Can politicians do this?
I think this is interesting because the document that Maurizio sweetly turned up has something more than the names - it is boasting stark statements of assumed control and influence from the IBT that seem rather comfortably assumed.
I finally sprung for the buck and read the Conspiracy in Green, because I thought there maybe something I was missing.
There was.
I liked it
I like it as a condensation of the issues – it is well written and it pulls together much stuff in a way I never thought of (and will think on) even though I followed along in real time – at the time.
However,
I still think the BBC may be happy to be marked by this issue rather than scathed though - because - as long as the discovery of the 28 activists is an issue then I think the fact that there is substantial evidence for a well-oiled pathway for covert lobbying being overlooked– then this is missing the most salient point I predict . Something I am sure that will be realised eventually. The Bish and Newbery say it explicitly too en passant – but I suggest they lose that focus for other preferred issues that they had clearly in the headlights at that time?
Consider this BBC response to Melanie Phillips
Freeze that in time. I will pay another buck for a rewrite with the latest news incorporated. With this set of facts stated by the IBT concurrently revealed about how they felt control beholden to them. - read their archives know they seem to think the Beeb should jump at their beck and call - why should anyone accept this implied control?
See the Beeb doesn't think it now - They are no longer involved.
Stark?
Omnologos:
That’s a very good point. Then you say: True, for certain journalist/activists. But the BBC is not a monolith. It does not express the opinion of one single person (unlike the national media in some countries). It was, after all, an interview with his employee John Humphreys which destroyed the career of Entwhistle. That couldn’t happen here in France.To get to the bottom of this scandal, it’s necessary to step outside the story of the failings of one institution, and generalise it to encompass the failings of a whole social class, the bien-pensant left-leaning university-educated middle classes who riddle (but don’t totally control) the media in Britain. In Italy and Germany members of the same social class took to assassinating people. We may be thankful that in Britain they have limited their misanthropy to putting up fuel prices.
Booker’s “Neophiliacs” provides an excellent sociological analysis of this class, though couched in the prose of a radical journalist of the early nineteenth century.
Hmmm...given the popularity of Žižek, I wouldn't bet against a sudden collapse in their misanthropy...
Like where this is all headed, and where you guys are taking it ...
- - - - - - - -
Omnologos (Maurizio),
Harrabin's apparent version of a fanatical fundamentalism which would prevent opposing views from seeing the light of day would be less disturbing if it was promoted by someone other than a member of the 5th estate.
Harrabin’s position is irrational, he would strenuously protest (to say the least) if it was advocated that his work should be banned from seeing the light of public awareness.
John
Anybody that reads the whole story will have to come to the conclusion that the same attitude that allowed vulnerable teenagers to be left in the hands of predatory celebrities lies behind the attempt at bullying an FOI requester with no power of his own, and the general conviction that the BBC was always right.
That's not what I said and this is all I will say. Have a fantastic Saturday night.
[snip] Please think for a moment why a leftie organization such as the BBC would allow the weak to be exploited. The answer addresses both the Saville affair and the 28 'Gate affair.
Nov 18, 2012 at 12:22 AM | shub
Yes I came to that conclusion too.
The BBC is ... well Auntie isn't it ? Bend over and take your spanking if you don't agree...
It is a monolith that can plough on regardless. I see institutional issues with the Beeb (bit like RD North says) doesn't mean there is one "conspiracy" overall but it is a an institution that clearly has pusillanimousity built into its DNA. The fact that is so well regarded by PR means means normally it has a well built system of self pitying PR crying on hand that is can rely to fall back on without a moments notice. Just recently it hasn't worked.
You know - "You care are conditioned to get cold turkey if we take the teletubbies away - or some such " I don't watch myself
The fact these latest scandals seems to have short circuited this normal response should be tactically noticed.
As many have noticed the BBC is just run by comfortable bullying cowards.
@Maurizio I think you are just going to have to change your name, and blogger ID. That's the only way that you will ever ger it spelled constantly correctly -- How about "Bill Smith", and bloggerbill as you blogger ID?
:-)
But, seriously, the real issue here isn't the composition of a group of advisers on policy, its the influence that IBC and similar organizations have had (and still have?) on the broadcast media in the UK (and probably other countries).
This is effectively a fifth column disseminating propaganda designed to influence popular thought and hence government policy. Its actually more insidious than an outright armed invasion.
Audio tapes have been recovered from BBC archives where Saville is 'being playful' with girls/young women. How would this be possible if people at the BBC didn't know about it?
THE GOOD NEWS! The BBC and PSU can share legal strategies and lessons learned in defense against charges of not reporting pedophilia by their employees.
The BBC can also consult PSU about BBC's most recent CAGW related scandal centered on Harrabin. PSU can share with the BBC their experiences and strategies about how to do a cover-up investigation of a pro-CAGW employee.
John
@1:54 AM
Just having the knowledge that DJ's had needs and hoping it would go away is something you have no knowledge of what it would be like as a company to know.
If IBM had charismatic salesmen who plied their trade in the 70's and it turned out they were all groping women and abusing children what would you think?
Should they apologise later or should we all just accept it as a phase that doesn't undermine their greater good today?
Maybe we should ignore it?
It is complicated I think
[snip]
In the next school term I can see two new cases studies evaluated by law schools throughout the USA.
Case Study 1 - PSU/BBC & Non-Compliance with reporting of Pedophilia by employees.
Case Study 2 - PSU/BBC & Coverup of FOI request avoidance by CAGWists who think they trying to save Gaia.
John
Bish, take out the garbage.
The institutional culture of an organization is the end-result of the collective behaviour of the individuals that constitute it. Small and petty acts can be expected to be common in a behemoth.
[snip] This is not an appropriate analogy for this blog. Please desist.
[snip] This is not an appropriate analogy for this blog. Please desist.
Troll-feeding has reached ridiculous proportions in this thread. Why do people never read the sign?
DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!!!
Hey that is typical. You have been arguing about it for 3 hours but as soon as it becomes clear that your argument is full of holes you call 'troll', grab your toys and flounce off to bed.
Oh God! It's all me, me, me with you believers isn't it? He could be taking about me you know?
A cat with a sense of humour? My kind of cat :-)
[snip]- I do love a bit of self-righteous indignation in the middle of a rather sensational Brisbane tropical storm. It's all that heat desperately trying to escape to the poles you see.
"/snip] What people are saying is that there is institutional dysfunctionality at the BBC. You will recall the remarks from the Lawrence inquiry, that there was 'institutional racism' at the Met. The implication was not that it was racist at a policy level. But the implication was that it was more than a few individual aberrations. They're definitely not saying that the BBC 'consciously allowed this to happen' as a policy level.
They are saying that there's a culture in which standards of behaviour are not enforced and may not exist at all. The claim is that Saville and his collaborators were widely known about by individuals at a personal level but that they turned a blind eye, and that the institution at a policy level avoided confronting the issue. They are saying that people behaved like this because they believed that this was just the norm at the BBC.
They did not believe child abuse was the norm. They believed that turning a blind eye was the norm.
People here are then going on to say something else. They are saying that there are key elements to the culture of turning a blind eye which can be seen in other unrelated episodes. They take the issue of the seminar and the 28 and the FOI request, and see some of the key elements to the toleration of Saville in this episode too. The elements are secretiveness, lack of any real management, indulgence of groups who are within the fold, closing ranks against any critics. The lack of any standards and any culture of enforcement of those standards. They are saying a group, as long at it has certain key buttons pressed, is going to be able to avoid scrutiny and behave by most standards very bady in a variety of ways, some worse than others, because of the mixture of the turn a blind eye culture, and what they see as kneejerk reactions of approval to groups within the BBC who are ideololgically correct.
So, for instance, Saville touched the charity and the viewing figures buttons. The journalistic bias that the seminar introduced, they are saying, was a total breach of integrity and impartiality, but the turn a blind eye culture allowed it (and defended it in the FOI case) because the hot button of environmentalism and endorsement of CAGW meant that it was generally approved of as a direction. This allowed the implications of the policy for journalistic integrity to avoid notice or intervention.
They are not, obviously, saying that the episodes were morally comparable, or that the FOI episode was as bad as the Saville one. Obviously it was not, it lasted a shorter period of time, and it was a breach of journalistic integrity, not the infliction of damage on children.
When we think about institutions we need to look at them in the round, and if we are going to accuse a culture, we need to point to more than one manifestation of it. One product safety failure is an aberration which we deal with by a recall. A series, even if some lead to less human tragedy than others, is evidence of a pattern and a cultural issue.
What people are saying is basically that the BBC has a problem. It seems unable to enforce standards of behaviour on its staff and contributors. It may not even have any to enforce. They are tying this to guaranteed tax payer funding. Their argument is, this and lack of public accountability either through market mechanisms or through Ofcom has produced a culture in which abuses of various sorts have flourished. They are not saying that all the abuses that have flourished are comparable in gravity or extent. They are saying that they flourished in the same fertile soil.
Its a serious argument. It tends logically to a change of structure. For instance, making subscription voluntary. Regulation by Ofcom. Or sharing the license fee income if its kept with other broadcasters. Its not an argument [snip] that some of the abuses were worse, a lot worse, than others. [snip]
Don't feed the troll. it's just trying to deflect everyone away from the topic of the thread.
The Telegraph also has an article about Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust, who appears to have his snout in many troughs and:
That sounds familiar. He no doubt fits in comfortably with top politicians and the BBC hierarchy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9685617/Lord-Patten-may-have-bitten-off-more-than-he-can-chew-at-the-BBC.html
Hi Jimmy, sorry for not replying to your email last week, been busy. Good news - neighbouring landowner has finally thrown in towel over his proposal for the Birks Hydro scheme, but SSE are now wanting to add another 30 windmills to Griffin and 7 more to Calliachar (which has just started construction). That will take Griffin up to 98, only a couple off the 100 turbines they originally wanted, and Calliachar up to 21, which is only 7 less than the originally planned 28. I shall be asking them what was the point of the two local public inquires. Meanwhile SSE has put up electricity bills by another 9%, (12% last year). So I have switched to British Gas, who to my knowledge have not built any windfarms, and don't plan to.
Autumn has been much colder than last year - many frosts in September and October, and lots of snow on the mountains too. You still on a tropical beach?
Booker writes:
“The seminar’s co-organisers, Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith, were later able to boast that one of the first fruits of their good work was the BBC’s Climate Chaos season, a stream of unashamedly propagandist documentaries, led off with two fronted by Sir David Attenborough which featured a string of ludicrous scare stories.”
watch the opening 10 mins of the first of Attenborough’s “i believe in CAGW” docus, which aired just months after the 28Gate Seminar, and be prepared to be shocked by the mass of misinformation. notice this is not an ordinary Attenborough docu, requiring time and travel. it’s like some stock footage US/Discovery-style docu, with Attenborough simply narrating. this was thrown together post-28Gate Seminar and Attenborough should be embarrassed. it's one of the most difficult of his past programs to find in full online. would like to see the full credits, including who is playing the Carbon Family. omnologos, over to u:
Can We Save Planet Earth (VARIOUS SEGMENTS)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1U37QrXpfI
that the Beeb (and all other MSM) have not contacted Newbery and Maurizio, given how BBC has just won the battle to keep this now-so-public list from the public, tells us so much about MSM gatekeeping.
BBC's influence is far-reaching and influential and, unless BBC can prove the list is incorrect and provide us with the names of major scientists in the fields that cover climate who were the real attendees that led to such a momentous decision, this is indeed one of the biggest scandals in the annals of science.
O/T
Was there once an alarmist blogger here called BBD, who ended up being banned for abuse?
Samples of his best handiwork appreciated.
Thanks.
Nov 18, 2012 at 7:20 AM | lapogus
Sounds like there can't be too many of the trees I planted up in the hills there left.
I'm offshore East Africa at the moment. There are humungous amounts of natural gas down here. I'll be back to the tropical beach in early December.
So a cold Autumn back home. Could we have another cold winter this year? Global warming says we will. Or maybe, this year, global warming will bring a mild winter.
@Nov 18, 2012 at 4:39 AM michel
Bravo. Nice summation.
I know (and kinda hope) my comments will be snipped here, but I hope your summation stays.
re Attenborough docu Can We Save the Planet:
2 June 2006: Guardian: Nancy Banks-Smith: Last night's TV
House (Five) has an ingenious twist on the old scenario where two enemies, handcuffed together, rub along as best they can or, in extreme cases, fall in love. A policeman who doesn't like black people and a black doctor who doesn't like cops are in quarantine together. The policeman is suffering from something that causes him to laugh maniacally and he has infected the doctor.
House works on the Holmesian premise that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. He has already considered and rejected Legionnaires', listeriosis, staphylococcal infection, marijuana poisoning, a brain tumour, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide ("All because those bastards didn't ratify Kyoto," said House sarcastically) and pigeon droppings...
As Can We Save Planet Earth? (BBC1) seems incapable of producing a finished tape for review, I see little hope of mankind changing its ways in time either. As Sean Lock, a comic who takes you off guard by looking like a clerk, said recently, "I'm washing out Marmite pots and they're digging for oil in Alaska" ·
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jun/02/broadcasting.comment
found this link in a comment from 2007 online. can anyone open this article or locate it on another url? it is allegedly about the above Attenborough docu:
Independent: Steve Connor: The real global warming swindle - Climate Change, Environment
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece
24 Sept 2006: DanForTheGreens Canada: The Big Picture
Elizabeth May is one of the invited guests on The Big Picture this Sunday (with Bob Mills, MP, conservative chair of Environment Committee, Terry Glavin, BC author, and Mark Nantais, Canadian Automobile Association).
Sunday, 2006 September 24 at 6:15pm.
CBC, 205 Wellington St West. Free
Please join The Big Picture with Avi Lewis, as we tackle global warming: the single biggest challenge of our time. The two-hour program starts by gathering a large studio audience to watch a provocative documentary exploring climate change and its potential impact on human civilization. Lewis then leads a spirited town hall debate with knowledgeable and passionate activists from the environmental movement, industry and politics.
The Documentary: The Truth About Global Warming: Can We Save The Planet In the blink of an eye human civilization as we know it could be gone. Some or all of our coastal communities could be under water. Millions of plant and animal species gone and never to return. All because of global warming. All because of the choices we make every day. Legendary UK broadcaster Sir David Attenborough shows us the terrifying consequences of global warming. He says we’ve reached a tipping point and that we must act now to save our planet...
If you can’t attend the taping, you can watch it on Wednesday, September 27 at 10pm on CBC Newsworld, as part two of The Truth About Global Warming. Part one airs Sunday, September 24 at 10pm.
http://danforthgreens.ca/the-big-picture/
read somewhere that this was a panel discussion when it aired in the UK, but don't know if it was in the docu, or after it screened. anyone know? who was on the panel?
12 Nov: Gulf Times: Bonnie James: Climate Change panel chief says ‘not invited to COP18’
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.
“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha…
opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.
Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before.
“I don’t know what it is. The executive secretary of the climate change secretariat has to decide. I have attended every COP and the chairman of the IPCC addresses the COP in the opening session,” he explained…
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=544308&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
http://www.spiked-online.com/site/printable/3798/"At first sight, the BBC’s decision to scrap its much-heralded Planet Relief is puzzling.
Planet Relief would have been presented by Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross, and was set to bring together numerous celebrities to raise awareness about climate change amongst the British viewing public. The BBC has justified its decision to scrap the programme on the basis that it is not the BBC’s job to promote a crusade and ‘lead opinion on climate change’."
Copied this from archive at Spiked online its by Frank Feuradi .
Question is who was that BBC spokesperson
There was the Live Earth at Wembley stadium concert that week only got 5 million viewers
Week previous had been the Concert For Princess Diana that got 18 million.
Duran Duran played at both Gigs. At Live Earth Simon Le Bon said "So how many acts here today haven't flown in by private Jet"
Some interesting stuff here about the BBC 'culture'
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n21/andrew-ohagan/light-entertainment
Parental Guidance required
The problem is at the top : the BBC can't be trusted to stick to its charter of impartiality, and the BBC Trust can't be trusted to force them to. The whole top echelon needs sacking. Along with bigoted judges who collude with the BBC in hiding what it is up to.
Please do not respond to troll comments. These comments and
follow-ups have now been removed.
just went back to re-read the comment on the steve connor "independent" article, and it doesn't refer to attenborough's docu, but martin durkin's Swindle docu. another line of inquiry could be - why hasn't Ch4 commissioned a follow-up to Swindle, given all (climategates, himalayas, etc) that has transpired since it was made?
don't tell me it's because it was found be to have been misleading or whatever in some witch-hunt that only applies to CAGW sceptics. i do know Ch.4 was in talks with the Govt around 2006 for certain funds. not sure where it all ended up but, given the success worldwide of Swindle online, it doesn't make commercial sense that we haven't seen a sequel.