Bishop Hill Oh dear
Tony Newbery has lost his FOI claim for the details of the attendees at the BBC's climate change seminar. The decision was issued in an extraordinarily short period of ten days (it normally takes four weeks).
But that's not the reason for the headline. The reason is to be found in Andrew Orlowski's latest post on the hearings:
Tribunal judge David Marks QC supported the broadcaster, cut off several avenues of questioning from Newbery, and agreed with the BBC that it can be considered a "private organisation", despite the fact that it is funded by a compulsory tax.
The hostility of lay judge Alison Lowton, one of the three-strong panel, to Newbery was also noticeable - but perhaps understandable. The former director of legal services [PDF] of Camden Council took a six-figure severance package in 2007 when her post was abolished. Camden fought to keep the details of the settlement away from freedom-of-information requests.
The other lay judge, former Haringey councillor Narendra Makanji, appears to have strong views on climate-change skeptics, as he tweeted here this year:
Michael Hintze who dines at no 10 is backer of Global Warming Policy Foundation, climate change deniers fronted by Nigel Lawson. Pls RT.
We asked the Information Commissioner's Office how a lay judge with such partisan views on climate change came to oversee hearings so closely coupled to the subject of climate. Campaigning lay judges would not normally be appointed to sit on such a case, a spokesman noted, and concerns would be legitimate grounds for appeal.
Reader Comments (63)
The BBC is turning out to be far worse than I ever thought. My heart fell when I heard that that [snip] Petain was to become chairman of the board.
With the latest errors at the BBC and its reporting on other matters it might be a good time to appeal the judgement as biased and get the FOI request going again.
How that judge claimed that the BBC is a private organization I cannot imagine. The BBC themselves admit to being a public body.
"appeal the judgement as biased"
Particularly in view of the panel, who seem to have been specifically chosen for their hostility to the plaintiff!
What readers must understand is the panel was biased because the BBC and many other organisations are arguably working on a much larger plan than most can comprehend. The apparent aim has been to put British Society back 100 years to Edwardian levels of inequality. Read about it in Worsthorne's 2005 polemic 'In Defence of Aristocracy' in which he blasts the post WWII grammar school meritocrats as responsible for the country's ills.
False data, probably via the Home Office, was apparently used to bias the decisions of the government over the past 25 years to destroy meritocracy thus leaving the best jobs open to the public school educated. Also the renewable energy scam was organised by the people who put Brown and Balls in Power, the W. Midlands Mafia, many sons of the WWII scrap dealers who got control of Birmingham whilst the rest of the men were off fighting. Their sons went to public schools and joined the Establishment, becoming hollowed out by scum.
Their legacy is the major business scams, Transtec, Rover for example. The clue is to look at the DTI reports, published 6 years after events, beyond the Statute of Limitations and leaving out key data like the ‘disappearance’ of major capital plant from Northern Ireland, alleged by ex senior executives and the ~30 questions in Hansard asking newly appointed CoE Brown where his mentor got £7 million. The other clues are the PFI contracts giving 38% profit for example for the elite owners of the companies, which contracts were organised by that mentor.
It looks now as if these people, including their equivalents in government, are coming under remorseless attack. The BBC is easy prey because it is stuffed with so many inefficient elite bureaucrats. It’ll be more difficult to confront the Committee on Climate Change which controls the trough via DECC on behalf of the elite who run the carbon trading outlets and the troughing landowners.
The MSM may be interested in this story, given the current debate about the quality of management in the BBC news group. A good briefing note from someone with proven writing skills would help....
"BBC allowed to keep its dirty little secret"
"A remarkable legal drama has been unfolding recently in London’s Camden Town, pitting a lone pensioner from Wales against all the might of the BBC, represented by an array of highly-paid lawyers......"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9668782/David-Cameron-backs-the-EUs-grand-design-for-energy.html
Thanks Green Sand for the link. Booker’s article is in the print edition, reaching a potential 2+ million readers. Comments are open on the blog.
Delingpole has mentioned this scandal in passing in an article about the problems of the BBC.
Is the BBC toast? I wish!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100188919/is-the-bbc-toast-i-wish/
"We've just seen an excellent example of how the BBC deals with valid criticism. It pays the best lawyers licence-fee-payers' money can buy to ensure the problem remains covered up."
The second sentence contains a link to the article on the FOI case by Andrew Orlowski in the Register.
The Guardian does not seem to have covered this case yet. However its website has lots of articles about FOI cases and it also has lots of articles on the BBC and on climate change. Therefore, since Tony Newberry's FOI case ticks three of the Guardian's most important boxes it is obviously safe to assume that it will soon cover this case in detail - or am I being a tad optimistic?
ENTWISTLE RESIGNS.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20284124
Quite the ultimate dilemma, (perhaps?), for the BBC's own FOI correspondent Martin Rosenbaum, who produced the recent remarkably balanced BBC radio 4 documentary on Climategate revisited.
Quentin Letts for Chairman of the BBC Trust. I'd forgotten about that idea. Thanks Dellers for the reminder.
Pharos: Good point about Martin Rosenbaum. I wonder if he'd have a cup of tea with Newbery and Orlowski. It's time for major change.
The approach by the BBC to this issue is more symptomatic of their appalling journalistic standards than the Newsnight affair, though both are different sides of the same coin.
The key issue here is that the corporation will not engage properly with anything or anyone - no matter how compelling - that challenges its journalisic integrity, and has refined the practice of hiding behind smokescreens to the level of high art. If that fails, it then adopts crude, thuggish bully boy tactics.
Those broadly on the left of the political spectrum (and that includes all but a handful of Conservative MPs)are cheerleaders in this process, because they know that the BBC is now an active and vociferous campaigner on a range of issues close to their hearts, including climate alarmism.
Take David Marks, QC, the tribunal chairman. He's an advisor to the British Institue of Human Rights (BIHR) (http://www.bihr.org.uk/profiles/advisors/david-marks), an organisation which is engaged in sustained campaigns to ensure the UN and EU human rights agendas are enforced. In turn, BIHR works in ramming this legislation down our throats with an outfit called Capacity Global http://www.capacity.org.uk/ which has an overt, direct goal of forcing us all to become ardent greenies.
In essence, therefore, the tribunal that decided on this matter was made up of at least two members who seemingly are from exactly the same pool of activists who attended the BBC climate change seminar. You could not make it up, even in a Kafka novel.
"If its a private organisation I don't see why I should pay a licence fee."
(Nov 9, 2012 at 5:10 PM | Unregistered CommenterMikeHaseler)
The answer is you do NOT have to pay a license fee. Your comment sadly suggests that if the BBC were a genuine "public" organisation that the license fee would somehow be more acceptable to you. So if you accept that then what next? Should the government grant permits to read books? At what point in your life did you accept that it is for the government to grant you permission to operate a television set?
Stop buying the license. Acknowledge that it is immoral. Continue to watch television if you want to, just as you use the internet, read books and do whatever else a free society affords you. Given that the UK is not a free society, if you don't like the idea of prison you'll play it clever and make sure the TV can't be seen from any window, or else they'll have you. Keep in mind at all times it is not the right of anyone - in government or not - to tell you that you can't operate a TV without a permit. When they come knocking at your door - as they have come to my door on a few occasions - politely deny them entry. Throw their letters in the bin. Laugh at their hollow threats of calling back with a police officer and a warrant; without any evidence they can't get a warrant. Remember you are free and it is the fascists who are slaves of their own ideology. That is all it takes on your part. Break the law and be proud, for the law is a big fat fascist ass.