BBC1 AUDIENCE PLUMMETS...

When I worked at the BBC, many moons ago admittedly, the main justification for the licence fee was that people actually watched BBC shows. Peak time audience share for BBC1 regularly nudged the 40% mark, and over a week, most people actually tuned in to the channel for a significant amount of time. Latest official figures, however, show that BBC1's overall audience share during December was down to 21.5%, and that the peak average (between 7pm and 10pm) during the month - even though BBC shows easily dominated Christmas Day - was only 23.4%, down a whopping 4.7%. So millions of viewers are deserting the BBC's flagship shows. In an internal BBC meeting yesterday, director general Mark Thompson reportedly vigorously defended his salary of £834,000 a year on the ground that he was worth it. On these latest viewing figures the case for his monstrous level of pay - and the BBC licence fee at all - is vanishing almost as fast as snow in summer. If ever there was one. Even his own staff think Thompson's salary is "corrosive and wrong".

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HOW TO DO BBC RESEARCH - LESSON 1

This, on Bishop Hill, says it all about the BBC mindset. Note the worship of the greenie bible Since Silent Spring (which condemned millions of Africans to death in its total villification of DDT); the belief that the NASA warmist lunatic and eco-thug James Hansen is an authority worth consulting; and the idiotic, arrogant certainty that such an investigation on these terms is terribly important. Truly toxic!

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Question Time 14th January 2010

Question Time tonight comes from Finchley and the panel will feature Conservative MP Ken Clarke, comedienne Shappi Khorsandi, former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. Peter Hain and Chris Huhne.

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POLAR POSTURING

I've said it before, but the BBC greenie fanatics are forever on the hunt for new scares, even when it's so cold that global warming stories are scarce. Today's alarmfest centres on the cuddly polar bear. Overpaid ecofreak scientists in Denmark have now decided that it's not only melting polar ice that's a threat to our ursine friend, but also nasty chemicals from industrial activity. There's no such thing as a happy greenie, of course; if it's not 'climate change', it's breathing, farting or simply being here at all that's putting us in peril. The BBC loves to report it all, with knobs on; note especially the rigged graph in the item, and the complete lack of mention - as usual - of alternative views, such as this, which points out that even the alarmists-in-chief, the World Wildlife Fund, say that polar bear numbers are on the up.

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SAINT BONO RAPPED

The BBC's complaints unit have rapped the knuckles of BBC producers who decided to give the execrable Bono and his band U2 acres of free publicity at the launch of their latest boring album back in February. But what about removing the hundreds of free plugs on the BBC website? The admiring boys and girls at the corporation chart his and the band's every move, short of when they go to the lavatory. He repays them by spouting foul-mouthed abuse on air. But no matter, Bono ticks every box for BBC sainthood; he's a lefty, he hates Britain, and he believes Africa's salvation is through bucketloads of aid from 'climate change' supporting NGOs.

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Question Time 14th January 2010

With 2010 now not just through the front door but making itself fully comfortable in your favourite armchair and smoking your cigars, we must surely be due a return to the weekly joy that is Question Time.

And indeed we are, for Question Time tomorrow comes from Finchley and the panel will feature amongst others Conservative MP Ken Clarke, comedienne Shappi Khorsandi and former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. More on the other panelists when details are published.

For those who wish to take part in the B-BBC Buzzword Bingo, we will be playing by the "Tudor Court Rules" meaning that 'Thatchers' are worth double points and a 'Climate Change' with an 'Al Gore' on the same card means disqualification. The usual prizes will be awarded.

As usual, the live chat will begin here at 22:35 UK time. Please come and join us!

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Today's Nazi words of wisdom from the BBC

You may think that headline is overwrought, but it's literally true. Today's BBC front page http://www.bbc.co.uk currently has up, effectively as quote of the day, without any comment, and indeed with a slight implication of approval, the words of a prominent Nazi.

I don't know how to record it for posterity, but the quote is towards the bottom left of the front page (as seen from Britain, anyway; the international version of the site may be different).

It comes as part of a "QI FACT OF THE DAY", just after the information that Arthur Conan Doyle and WB Yeats believed in fairies. Placed thus, it reads to me as a kind of riposte to them:

"Unfortunately this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh. MARTIN BORMANN"

Which is all very well, but the job of saying the stern words of sense in response to credulity could have been given to someone more savoury. Martin Bormann was Hitler's Private Secretary and head of the Party Chancellery. He was condemned to death in absentia at Nuremberg.

OK, you don't have to explain it to me. Whoever put this up has no idea who Bormann was but there were lots of those German philosopher blokes weren't there? The BBC are not Nazis but numpties.

Update: Hat tip to Happysnapper who kindly provided this screenshot. I would also like to pass on Millie Tant's comment:

It's extremely crass of the BBC to quote a Nazi - and doubly crass: a murderer talking about the struggle for life. Yeah.

The Bormann quote is still there on the main page at 18.48 GMT.

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CLIMATEGATE BBC TERROR ALERT

Fishy. Some days ago, the excellent Bishop Hill site broke the news that - rather bizzarely - the police National Domestic Extremism Unit is involved in investigating the ClimateGate leak at the University of East Anglia. The BBC has finally woken up to the story, and there are worrying signs that it is somehow part of the saga. First of all, it adamantly describes the leak as a "hack" even though this has not yet been established. Second, they have this extremely odd quote from the police:

"At present we have two police officers assisting Norfolk with their investigation, and we have also provided computer forensic expertise. While this is not strictly a domestic extremism matter, as a national police unit we had the expertise and resource to assist with this investigation, as well as good background knowledge of climate change issues in relation to criminal investigations."

If I had been the journalist covering this story, I'd be asking first of all what the hell a terrorist unit is doing involved in 'climate change'and what "expertise" in this field they claim to have. Second, with the world still on terrorist alert after the latest attempt to blow up a plane, how can a terrorist unit spare resources to investigate file hacking (if indeed, that is what it was) when the only 'victim' of this alleged crime is academic internal mail - and the leak was in any case in the public interest?

But not the BBC. It's creepy beyond words that Climategate should be bracketed by the police as a terrorism incident, and equally so that the BBC should broadcast this chilling quote without asking such basic questions. My guess is that the police asked the BBC to carry the story as damage limitation because they suddenly realised that linking Climategate to terrorism was extremely questionable. In overall terms, the BBC has dismissed the importance of Climategate, but if it will provide material to attack 'deniers', they are on the case like a rat up a drain pipe.

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Unbelievable

Here’s something that deserves to be aired on B-BBC.

Guantanamo Guard reunited with ex-inmates.

“But what were the pair doing in Afghanistan in 2001?
They explain that, being in their late teens and early twenties at the time, they had made a naïve, spontaneous decision to travel for free with an aid convoy weeks before a friend’s wedding, due to take place in Pakistan.”

If you believe that you’ll believe anything. The BBC seems to.
Harry’s Place shows the BBC sanitising radical Islam, and yet again meddling in an area that it shouldn’t.
An update includes a transcript of part of an interview on R5 where Victoria Derbyshire asks some questions, but eventually seems to give the Tipton Three the benefit of the doubt.

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Another Labour Luvvie

The BBC began election year with a new topical comedy show hosted by a Tory-hating Labour supporter. What next, Labour luvvie Dermot O'Leary presenting election coverage? Actually, yes:

X Factor host Dermot O'Leary told of his "excitement" at the prospect of fronting a political show in the run-up to the general election.
The 36-year-old told the Radio Times he is obsessed with politics - but said the show would not be "particularly serious".
The magazine said O'Leary is in talks with the BBC about presenting a political programme.
O'Leary said: "I won't be the man with the swingometer, but politics is a huge obsession with me, so I'm incredibly excited about it.

Here's O'Leary talking to the Guardian in 2003:

Labour, Tory, Liberal or Socialist Workers?

I suspect that these days I'm politically closest to the Socialist Workers, but they'd take all my money so it's still Labour.

And from an article in the Independent in May 2005:

Shortly before the general election, O'Leary was branded a Labour luvvie after inadvertently suggesting at a Make Poverty History rally that Tony Blair should become head of state.

That rally, which took place during the 2005 election campaign, was covered by Ben MacIntyre in The Times:

OH, LUVVIE, I can’t tell you how marvellous it was; truly, darling, an unforgettable performance. There we were at the Old Vic Theatre — just twelve hundred of Labour’s closest friends — waiting for Tony and Gordon to do their matinee double act, when the whispered word went round the audience that the greatest political performer of our times would be making a cameo appearance — none other than old blue eyes, schmoozer in chief, the trouser president: Bill Clinton himself, via live satellite link.

The occasion was a rally — the biggest of the campaign so far — to mark World Poverty Day and held by the Make Poverty History coalition. Everybody who was anybody was there, le tout Labour: there was Dermot O’Leary, Big Brother presenter, and Alastair Campbell, Big Brother enforcer, and June Sarpong, the Channel 4 presenter.

The announcement of Ms Sarpong's addition to the BBC election team can only be a matter of time.

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OPEN THREAD...

A new week and a new open thread for you. Just what is bothering you about the BBC today?

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NEVER QUITE AS IT SEEMS...

A B-BBC reader advises...

Did you see Marr on Sunday, with Maureen lipman (Labour Supporter) and Tristam Hunt (Ex Labour Headquarters and prospective Labour candidate) reviewing the papers AND how quickly they glossed over Peter Wat's new book! Tristram also had a go about climate change, funny his dad is a warmist ex-head of the met office.

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GITMO RE-UNION, CARE OF THE BBC

Hope you get a warm feeling at the news that the State Broadcaster has helped former Guantanamo Bay residents get together with a guilt ridden former Guard. Read the details here.

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Dead as a dodo?

Greenies, supported tirelessly by the BBC, never give up in their efforts to persuade us that we are all going to hell in a handcart. The UN, of course is the revered cheerleader, and today - as their 'climate change' fascism seems to have stalled a tad after Copenhagen - this corrupt Hydra has turned its attention to the need for 'biodiversity'. There's a special year devoted to it. So seriously does the BBC take this threat that it has sent Richard Black on a jolly to Berlin to watch the revered secretary-general deliver his hellfire sermon that we must stop our wicked ways. To him, there is no doubt what's wrong:

The expansion of human cities, farming and infrastructure is (sic) the main reason. Dignitaries including UN chief Ban Ki-moon...will speak at the launch in Berlin. Mr Ban is due to say that human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate, and that "business as usual is not an option".

As usual, Mr Black - in pursuit of his greenie zealotry - obviously thinks the science is totally settled and the words of Mr Ban are the Holy Writ. It's the Wicked West to blame, as always. Shame that he could not do a little journalism and look for alternative views - this, for example from the Watt's Up With That? blog. It points out that despite all the hot air about extinction:

Very few continental birds or mammals are recorded as having gone extinct, and none have gone extinct from habitat reduction alone. No continental forest bird or mammal is recorded as having gone extinct from any cause. Since the species-area relationship predicts that there should have been a very large number of recorded bird and mammal extinctions from habitat reduction over the last half millennium, I show that the species-area relationship gives erroneous answers to the question of extinction rates.

Complex stuff, but it shows just how deeply, deeply one-sided the BBC always is in its science coverage.

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Hold the front page!

Shock, horror! Paul Hudson, the Yorkshire-based BBC weather reporter who caused a furore last year when he dared to break ranks from his warmist fanatic colleagues and suggested that the sun, not CO2, might be responsible for perceived global warming, has entered the fray again. This time, he's pointed out that Joe Bastardi, of the climate realist weather service Accuweather, correctly forecast back in September that we were in for a tough winter, while the buffoons at the Met Office were busy using their new £170m computer to tell us that it was going to be - as ever- much milder than usual. Mr Hudson asks how this could have happened and poses in response a question which will no doubt leave his warmist colleagues speechless:

Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias, after such a long period of milder than average years? Experts I have spoken to tell me that this certainly is possible with such computer models. And if this is the case, what are the implications for the Hadley centre's predictions for future global temperatures? Could they be affected by such a warm bias? If global temperatures were to fall in years to come would the computer model be capable of forecasting this?

How long before Black, Harrabin &Co; pile in with a horrified rebuttal?

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DAVE'S A BIG FAN OF THE BBC

Anyone else catch David Cameron interviewed by Andrew Marr this morning? Call Me Dave informed Marr that he was "a big fan" of the BBC, and the licence fee. Inspiring stuff.

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BBC Luvvies For Labour

The BBC is going big on "Doctor Who star David Tennant 'backs Gordon Brown'". Tennant, a Scot recently replaced by a younger man, is quoted:

"Clearly, the Labour Party is not without some issues right now and I do get frustrated. They need to sort some stuff out, but they are still a better bet than the Tories."

Meanwhile, election year sees the start of a new topical comedy show on Radio Five Live presented by Chris Addison, the only person who comes anywhere near to matching Tennant's recent levels of BBC ubiquity. So, will Addison's new programme offer a fresh perspective on current affairs, or will it be the same tiresome worldview from the BBC's left-wing comedy establishment? Addison's opinions on the Conservative Party could give a clue:

"It's very difficult, if you were brought up as a child during Thatcher's period, to ever contemplate being a Tory. There is no way I can physically bring myself to vote Tory. That will stay with me till I die."

On Twitter a couple of days ago he was asked what he thought about the current government and responded:

"Better than the alternative."

A little later he tweeted:

"My political leanings are decidedly liberal."

Which, coincidentally, is the first box you have to tick if you want to present a Sunday morning programme on Radio Five Live.

Update 5.05pm. Perhaps we'll be treated to some of Addison's views on Europe. From an interview with him on the BBC's comedy website:

I am fiercely pro-European. I would very much have liked to see this country join the Euro a few years back. Not least because it would greatly annoy the kind of people that I don't generally like.

I'm fiercely pro-European as well (OK, maybe not "fiercely"), but I don't buy into the anti-democratic EU project.

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Book of Revelation

BBC environment correspondent David Shukman has a book out in April: "Reporting Live From the End of the World". A suitably alarmist double meaning in the title there, but I guess it's more catchy than "Reporting Live From a Temporarily Low Reservoir (Rain Sure To Follow)".

In his tips to schoolchildren on how best to report on the environment Shukman offers this advice: "If it's about rubbish, get yourself right in the middle of it." Like this:


At least he knows exactly what will happen to all the unsold copies of his book.

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Eats, shoots and leaves

I commented in the open thread about mistakes and shoddy editing. Here’s one.

‘Six Palestinians killed in West bank, Gaza attacks’

Was this responsible for another piece of carelessness that shows how one thing can lead to an other?

“Israel yesterday shot dead six Palestinians in two separate incidents in the West Bank”

It appeared in an anti-Israel editorial in the Observer the next day.

Of course the two incidents were separate, but one was in the West Bank, the other in the Gaza strip, and a comma is different from a forward slash. But if I'm right, it suggests that carelessness, combined with agenda-driven churnalism is alive and well, and that some of us don't bother to read beyond a headline.

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James Cove Update

On Monday I blogged about some of the 'global warming is going to kill the ski industry' stories produced by the BBC over recent years. Many of those news items came from the BBC's long-time 'man in the Alps' James Cove who, I pointed out, had just started his own online ski news venture. For some reason I was in an uncharacteristically generous mood because I offered Cove my best wishes for his new PlanetSki website.

I'm feeling less generous today.

Cove spent a decade producing global warming scare stories for the BBC, but in December on his PlanetSki blog he said, "the snow level has been pretty similar on average throughout the last decade" and quoted a 73-year-old mountain guide who said, "Overall things really haven't changed that much." That's not the impression Cove was creating with his articles for the BBC. He knew what his editors wanted and gave it to them. It's what hacks do.

Now I see that Cove's PlanetSki website is facing accusations of plagiarism. A writer for another ski website, PisteHors, has noted the similarity between an article of his about Corsica and one written by Cove in August 2009 for PlanetSki (the Internet Archive shows that the PisteHors article first appeared in June 2006 and was last updated in April 2008). Cove even embellished his version with invented quotations:

PisteHors:
The snow is usually very good above 1800 meters and can be found down to 1400 meters depending on the conditions. Skiing is possible from December through to April but you can only rely on snow after mid-January. There are currently three downhill ski areas on the island and always talk of projects of creating a real ski resort in the style of the Southern Alps.

James Cove:
The snow is usually very good above 1800 meters and can be found down to 1400 meters depending on the conditions.
"Skiing is possible from December through to April but you can only rely on snow after mid-January," says a spokeswoman from the island’s tourist office.
"There are currently three downhill ski areas on the island and always talk of projects of creating a real ski resort in the style of the Southern Alps."

PisteHors:
In 1934 the worst avalanche of this century occurred on the slopes of Castagniccia at only 700 meters altitude, sweeping through the village of Ortiporio and killing 37 people.

James Cove:
In 1934 the worst avalanche of this century occurred on the slopes of Castagniccia at only 700 meters altitude, sweeping through the village of Ortiporio and killing 37 people

PisteHors:
The regional ski committee has a long standing plan to develop a ski station in the bowl at La Lattiniccia on the road pass close to Corte The proposal is for 30km of pistes between 1550 and 2400 meters altitude with the possibility of doubling the area in the future. The total cost of development is estimated at 12.5 million € including necessary artificial snow cover. Presumably a large part of this money would come from European funds. Whether this project will ever be realised remains to be seen.

James Cove:
Corsica has several small ski stations and one, near Corte in the centre of the island, has ambitious plans.
The regional ski committee has a 12m euro plan to develop the bowl at La Lattiniccia.
The proposal is for 30km of pistes between 1550 and 2400 meters altitude with the possibility of doubling the area in the future.
It would however need funding from the EU for the project to go ahead but, so far, that is not forthcoming.

PisteHors:
Before you get ideas of snow, sex and sun in the isle of savage beauty you should be aware that Corsica is basically a 2,500 meter high rock surrounded by huge expanses of ocean. As such it catches every weather system as it tracks across Europe. Off piste skiers and freeriders need to carry an altimeter, maps and compass and know how to use them.

James Cove:
Corsica is basically a 2,500m rock surrounded by huge expanses of ocean. As such it catches every weather system as it tracks across Europe.
Off piste skiers and freeriders need to carry an altimeter, maps and compass and know how to use them.

PisteHors:
In the winter violent storms are somewhat less frequent but the constant wind drives the snow into potential slab avalanches. Powder is rare due to the wide daily temperature variations which leads to its rapid transformation. This stabilized snow-pack is favourable to extreme skiing.

James Cove:
In the winter constant wind drives the snow into potential slab avalanches. Powder is rare due to the wide daily temperature variations that leads to its rapid transformation. This stabilized snow-pack is however good for off piste skiing as it makes the snowpack safer.

With that level of journalistic integrity is it any wonder Cove's alarmist articles for the BBC were so unconvincing?

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