Story submitted by Eric Worrall.
The BBC, the UK Government Broadcaster, has banned former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson from appearing on BBC programmes to talk about climate change.
According to a spokesman for the BBC, a series of complaints about an interview in which Lord Lawson expressed climate skepticism, led to a ruling in favour of the complainants by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Board.
“This ruling found a false balance was created in that the item implied Lord Lawson’s views on climate science were on the same footing as those of Sir Brian Hoskins.”
However, this is not the first time the BBC has gagged unfashionable views.
Sir Winston Churchill, the WW2 leader of Britain, openly expressed the opinion that his views on NAZI Germany were gagged by the BBC, because his concerns about Germany were not what the BBC wanted the British people to hear.
History suggests the tactic will backfire:
According to the article on Churchill’s “gagging” by the BBC;
“There is no written evidence that Churchill asked the BBC for the opportunity to speak out against appeasement. However, he did complain to a young BBC producer who visited him on the day after Chamberlain returned home from Munich. A memo records their meeting. They spent hours discussing the Nazi threat and “Churchill complained that he had been very badly treated… and that he was always muzzled by the BBC”.
The BBC producer who tried to reassure Churchill about BBC bias was Guy Burgess. Burgess was the man who would later become Britain’s most infamous traitor, when he defected to Moscow with fellow spy Donald Maclean.
Story Title: BBC Bans Lord Lawson for Climate Skepticism
One line summary of story: A previous gagging led to disaster
h/t to Jo Nova
Regrettably, this is the sort of thing that happens when publicly financed institutions get captured by fringe groups.
The BBC gets big money from the EU as well as charging all UK viewers. 🙁
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/08/EU-hands-out-multi-millions-to-the-BBC-global-warming-propagandists-and-the-UN
You couldn’t make this up. They are now therefore going to ban Mr Pachoury, the RAILWAY engineer or Phil Jones the guy whose credentials for computer modelling are that he did a weekend workshop on Fortran in 1972?
And as a former chancellor, Lawson is way more qualified to discuss POLICY fallout than they are.
Though digging into peoples’ credentials here may not be such a bad idea, because the truth is, I’ll stick my neck out here, 97 % of the people talking about this have not looked into the DATA at all.
I think the BBC jumped the shark here, plus the “re -education”. Also when you look at who they’ve got to replace Attenborough. I cannot see how anyone looking into the splicing of historical data and satellite data can possibly have confidence in torturing it to 0.01 of a degree in good faith. They are comparing meaurements done in a canvas bucket with satellite sensors. Seriously how can anyone believe in this as more than a rough approximation?
And as to the fact that Lawson’s views are not born out by the computer modelling, that is the whole point. Lawson’s point is that REALITY is not born out by the computer models.
I no longer have any confidence in the BBC.
The ABC in Australia is known as the ALPBC (Australian Labor Party Broadcasting Commission). If you want to have a vomit for some reason or other, just turn it on any night and watch its endless gushing of politically correct diarrhea.
Sorry I forgot, Mr Pachoury the well known railway engineer and soft porn author is more credible than Lawson, or Anthony Watts or Big Mac-Intyre?
Guess what, when I wrote Mc, my spell check offered me McCarthyism. My spell check is on to something. George Orwell was pretty prescient too.
Anyway, sorry, rant over, but I used to so love the BBC and Its wildlife programmes. It’s been killed by political correctness. What they call “diversity ” I call monoculture..it’s worse than the 1950s
Rhys Jaggar
“The BBC is just like all the rest of them.”
Excuse me the rest do not get £3.5B of public funding and have a charter that is meant to ensure impartiality!
I thought the BBC plus their merry band of loyal warmists and fellow fraudsters.
Would be over the moon at being given unlimited wacks at us skeptics while we are sitting right there in front of them.
They could lecture us on their collective scientific superiority and how wrong we are with hard scientific evidence of that superiority.
They could slap us down and ridicule us live on national tv in the flesh for our rediculous common sense attitude to a non existent problem.
But no.
Instead they attempt to muzzle those that question the fraud and its motives.
With nothing to hide one would think the transparency of open debate would suit the warmists and alarmists.
There goes that common sense thing in me again.
It will end in tears for all who support this fraud and that end will not be pretty.
It will fell governments and irapairably damage good scientists.
Countrys will be bankrupted.
At the very least plunged into insurmountable debt.
Those scientists who sold their soul in turn will be asked, “was it worth taking the silver?”
Like the ABC in Australia, the BBC is nothing more than a propoganda arm for the socialist left.
Global warming and its accompanying hysteria being a perfect fit for their propoganda.
They really thought they were on a winner in global warming.
Now as it unravels around them.
They not only put up the shutters in an attempt to extinguish dissent, they nail them shut.
And still as a taxpayer I’m expected to continue to pay for this adolescent display by these and other global warming fraudsters.
“Cheshirered says:
July 10, 2014 at 2:19 am
Natalie Bennett is the leader of the UK Green party. Like Lord Lawson she doesn’t have a climate science qualification either, nor does her predecessor Caroline Lucas. Yet both ladies have enjoyed (and will no doubt continue to enjoy) extensive BBC coverage of their views relating to almost all-things climate change.”
As well they should, I have no problem at all with these people expressing their opinion. There’s an honest disagreement, it needs to be discussed. But they need to be anle to defend it against people who disagree.
Robin Hewitt says:
“Mentioning no names one of the climate sceptic spokespeople came across as distinctly dotty when you saw him in the flesh, one seemed inarticulate, vaguely paranoid and one had a distinct flavour of Sheldon Cooper. I do not believe they will want to lose Lawson.”
And you don’t think this was done deliberately by the BBC? They are notorious for abusing the concept of balance in debating by carefully choosing those who they want to represent their ‘black hatted’ guys. In other words, they choose those who are either i) not used to debating and therefore appear inarticulate, ii) not physically attractive, or iii) genuine fruit loops.
This strategy is as old as the hills and the BBC are past masters in implementing it.
As a result, and as far as the general public is concerned, the debate is balanced and the views expressed by the non-Establishment guys are not worthy of any further consideration.
They ban all discussion critical of AGW, they block the publication of any paper critical of AGW.
Then they turn around and use the fact that all discussion is pro-agw and most papers are pro-agw as proof that their bans are justified. After all, everybody agrees with them.
pat says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:35 pm
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Later on in the same article, they reveal their own bias. They note that 47% of the people believe the media exaggerate the impact of global warming. In the next line they refer to this as am improvement from a previous survey where 54% of the people believed that the media was exaggerating global warming.
Man Bearpig says:
July 9, 2014 at 11:23 pm
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Your mistake is believing that all complaints will be treated equally.
Will Nitschke says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:07 am
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The problem is that publicly financed organizations ALWAYS get captured by fringe groups.
This is especially true of any regulatory agency.
Richard111 says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:20 am
The BBC gets big money from the EU as well as charging all UK viewers. 🙁
===============
That might explain why the BBC is so rabidly pro-EU.
Did not read prior comments. No time this AM. But, just a reminder that Stalin and Hitler had a pact at the time and so it would have been Guy Burgess’s marching orders at the time to not allow things on the BBC that were anti-Hitler or anti-Stalin and to try to get things aired that undermined the British Empire and their allies and any non-socialist/non-communist governments.
The warmists and their BBC fan club are 180 degrees incorrect.
CO2 is beneficial, global cooling is not. Covering your ears does block the conversation, it does not change the fact that the warming phase of the Dansgaard-Oechger cycle is over, cooling has started. it is a fact that are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record (both hemispheres, same periodicity), some of the warming cycles are followed by unexplained abrupt cooling events. Of course past cyclic warming events, in all cases followed by a cooling cycle, sometimes abrupt cooling, has a physical explanation, a physical cause. The past is a guide to the future.
http://www.lyricsboy.com/n/naughty-boy/naughty-boy-la-la-la-lyrics-video-ft-sam-smith/
I’m covering my ears like a kid
When your words mean nothing, I go la la la
I’m turning up the volume when you speak
Cause if my heart can’t stop it, I find a way to block it I go
La la, la la la…
La la, la la la…
I find a way to block it I go
La la, la la la…
La la, la la la…
What we are observing are people following the rules connected to a paradigm. This situation, time period, is peculiar, surreal. It is not possible to hide or talk away unequivocal cooling and there is a set of significant problems attached to what causes the cooling.
http://news.yahoo.com/earths-magnetic-field-weakening-10-times-faster-now-121247349.html
“Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now
…Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. (WIlliam: 10 times faster than physically possible if the cause of the geomagnetic field changes is changes at the liquid core/solid core boundary. It should also be noted that the geomagnetic field strength has been dropping at 5% per century based on direct measurements up until the last decade when it suddenly started to drop 10 times faster, at 5% per decade. Obviously something significant changed to cause the geomagnetic field intensity of the earth to drop 10 times faster.) As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.
Floberghagen hopes that more data from Swarm will shed light on why the field is weakening faster now….”
so it would have been Guy Burgess’s marching orders at the time to not allow things on the BBC that were anti-Hitler or anti-Stalin
Maybe, maybe not. He was a mole and may or may not have been activated at the time.
I find myself in an interesting position. I have no “official” scientific background at all. Yet currently I am among the leading experts in surface station placement (vis a vis heat sink), as a result of five years’ directed study. One might argue that I am a history student making a very typical historical statistical study of the history of US climate. In fact, it is the almost complete dismissal of station siting effect on trend by the scientific community which has given me this opportunity at playing “Citizen Scientist”.
Yet this would not qualify me for comment insofar as the BBC is concerned.
The BBC is the quintessential representation of the Mediacracy.
But well connected pedophiles get a free pass
In Canada we have a similar setup called the CBC. It is essentially a mouthpiece for what has been determined to be acceptable slant. It mirrors the BBC on the subject of CAGW perfectly. To make matters worse, a deluded, millionaire eco-loon (David Suzuki) gets prime coverage in ANY debate on the environment. He also earns a mint from contracts with the CBC. The situation is so bad that everyone I know is repeating the mantra of CAGW, including some science professor friends (who never bothered to actually read up on this).
Harper, our PM, has been vilified by seemingly everyone as the govt has been cutting back funding to the CBC. I now see this as a good thing. Freedom of the press should follow freedom of speech. There should be no degrees of these. One either has it or one does not.
But in the end, despite the best Bernaysian efforts, the media still cannot force us to believe anything. It is a matter of actually doing some work, some research and applying some critical thought.
Dudley Horscroft says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:45 pm
Re Dan’s comment
“What did Goldfinger say about coincidence, happenstance and enemy action?”
I don’t think Goldfinger said anything like that. If he did, he was quoting Simon Templar – aka “The Saint” – of great and glorious memory.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Goldfinger said: ‘Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”’
evanmjones says:
July 10, 2014 at 6:58 am
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Even so, he still would have known where his master’s interests lay.
The BBC is now filled with traitors like Burgess. Their allegiance is to the EU (who give them millions of euros) and also to the NGO climate activists, to whom the EU also give many millions of euros.
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=85066
‘The database is a goldmine of information, telling us, for instance, that the EU paid the BBC €6,100,987 last year, Friends of the Earth (in all its incarnations) €4,188,230, WWF €5,344,641 and the RSPB €3,802,544. What is also of very great interest is that the EU subsidised UN institutions to the tune of nearly €140 million.
All this and much will be the subject of further reporting and analysis, but once again it brings to light the huge amount of taxpayer funding going to unaccountable NGOs, and especially (but not exclusively) climate change advocacy groups. ‘
Shona says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:28 am
“Anyway, sorry, rant over, but I used to so love the BBC and Its wildlife programmes. It’s been killed by political correctness. ”
Attenborough was an anti-population Malthusian all those years; Optimal Population Trust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_Population_Trust#Patrons.5B12.5D
Buddy of Lovelock and Ehrlich and Crispin Tickell, who allegedly gave Maggie the idea to use CO2AGW against the miners.