From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg8dg3ke40o
You will recall this BBC article last month, which claimed in the opening paragraph:
Climate change has brought record-breaking heat this year, and with it extreme weather, from hurricanes to month-long droughts.
The report then went on to list a series of bad weather events, but failed to provide any evidence that these were anything other than natural events which happen all the time. Nor any evidence that such events have been getting more frequent or extreme over time.
I submitted a complaint, and have just received this response:
In the body of the article, Esme Stallard, BBC’s climate and science reporter, cites the findings of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group who’s new research shows that people around the world experienced an additional 41 days of dangerous heat due to climate change.
Overall, as highlighted in the headline, the article reviews a year of extreme weather that impacted billions, contextualizing the listed events where climate change is not specifically mentioned.
In short, they have tried to wriggle out by claiming that they never said the events were linked to climate change!
This is of course contradicted by that opening paragraph, which said climate change had brought extreme weather, including hurricanes and droughts!
I have now resubmitted my complaint to Stage 2.
But it is obviously significant that they are struggling to find any evidence to back up their claim.
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The only way this scam can be stopped is by cutting government funding. I was hoping that the coming Trump Administration could do something about it. Unfortunately, Biden administration Federal agencies have received lots of funding under the “Inflation reduction act” and they’re planning to give the unused funds away to NGO’s (including climate alarmist organizations) to avoid that Trumps administration can reclaim the money back. Let’s hope that the courts can prevent such
a clear abuse of taxpayer money.
The government does not fund the BBC, the licence fee is levied on anyone who owns a television…
Not quite. You have to use the television for certain purposes in order to have to buy a licence. I recently cancelled my licence although I own a television. However, I don’t use it for the purposes that necessitate a licence.
It’s the funding stream of choice, there always oddities like streaming non BBC content etc
As I understand the situation you have to pay for a licence if you watch live TV broadcasts from anywhere in the world plus BBC iPlayer. Satellite broadcasts from Europe for example. This catches people out I think.
BlackBeltBarrister has some YouTube videos on the topic.
That’s correct, Ben, live broadcasts & I-Player.
Not quite. You pay the licence if you have any equipment capable of receiving live broadcasts, or watching iPlayer, or capable of recording on demand programming. Whether you do so, or not.
Incorrect. Think about a TV connected to a broadband service. It is capable of receiving live broadcasts, and I-Player. If you don’t watch them, then you don’t need a license.
https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/easy-read/when-you-need-a-tv-licence#
That’s incorrect. Your own link tells you so.
If you have that TV and watch anything – even if it’s not the BBC – you have to get a license. Your link says this:
This includes recording and downloading. On any device.
And if you get charged but you say the equipment is never used for any TV at all, the onus is on you to prove it. Which is very hard to do as why would you buy such a thing if it’s just an ornament?
This proves it.
You don’t need a TV Licence if:
you don’t watch on any TV channel, like BBC, ITV, Channel 4, U&Dave and international channels
AND
you don’t watch TV on a pay TV service, like Sky, Virgin Media and EE TV
AND
you don’t watch live TV on streaming services, like YouTube and Amazon Prime Video
AND
you don’t use BBC iPlayer.
If I don’t do any of those things, I don’t need a licence. Even though I own a TV which is capable of receiving such transmissions.
The onus is on the BBC, not the viewer.
If the inspector comes into the house, they not permitted to turn on the TV without consent.
They cannot enter without consent.
They use electronics to detect the operation of the set from outside. It doesn’t need to be receiving license fee funded broadcasts.
that’s bollox, modern TVs and computers that also have DVB are undetectable.
The onus is not on you.
A tax or fee, levied or enforced via the threat of legal action, violence or intimidation — the police power — is an act of government or of a criminal organization (when there is a difference between the two).
Its a tax. But keep fooling yourself.
I know full well what it is.
Do you pay it too?
With a tax, we have no choice of not paying it, and it would be deducted at source under our PAYE system. Therefore, even if we did not watch any live broadcasts, we’d still pay (unless we were on benefits as per unemployed).
Currently, we can opt out of paying if we don’t watch live broadcasts, or record them.
That’s like say a sales tax on specific items (like alcohol or tobacco taxes) are not taxes because you don’t have to buy those things.
That is exactly correct. I’m much happier in this situation, than being forced to pay for it in taxes whether I use it or not (like most developed countries).
No opt out provisions . Just the potential to recieve counts
Since they have no record of the fee paid at your address , it’s a bulls eye on your back and they have electronic means to detect a screen being used or a reciever in use , even if it’s not tuned it it’s still working
Duker, I don’t know where you’re getting your ideas from. The BBC has a database, with every single address on it. They know whether you’ve paid or not. At one time we used pay it at the post office, and the post office recorded the details.
That’s how they know where to patrol.
They do not have any equipment whatsoever, that can’t detect a screen/tablet/pc/phone is being used.
Years ago, when most TVs were CRT based (incidentally I got blocked on FB, for using those initials), they could possibly have picked up the line scan from the heterodyne circuit. But it was difficult.
If it was difficult then to pick up the RF signal, they stand no chance now.
that;s utter cobblers. where TF do you get your info from?? The BBC?
However, the BBC does receive about 1Bn Euros in funding from the EU. So their bias is well understood.
I think you will find that is utter nonsense.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36149789
Was that article verified by the BBC’s Verify unit?
Is that true, or did you see it on the BBC?
A mandatory tax that is enforced by the government, is still government, even if it is dedicated to an outside organization.
BBC isn’t an outside organisation. It’s not a ministry but it’s still an organ of the state
Why you’ve got a score of Minus 11 is beyond me. The BBC itself is against tax being used for its funding.
Admin is by a private company.
If you have to pay the BBC “license fee” while never watching one second of content produced by the BBC, it is a TAX on all television.
The BBC used to use Detector vans kitted out with bogus equipment and drive around frightening people who hadn’t bought a TV licence into getting one. That’s the sort of organisation we are dealing with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39884623
That may be a variation on the cat detector van.
Who created the license fee? Government.
The license is a tax. Other countries show that you can get TV without government funding and minimal involvement. You aren’t paying for a service if you are forbidden to watch televised programs without buying a license. It’s a tax.
The BBC hides behind its political agendas – Auntie is a fully paid up member of the Human Caused Climate Change Brigade – and will behave exactly as do all those like a certain Mr Mann who doesn’t care whether something is true or not as long as law tends to back him up..
That is why we are the mess we are in.
You have that exactly backwards. The political agendas hide in the nether recesses of the BBC.
Nether Regions? Have you researched Justin Rowlatt and his immediate family? Or his predecessor from a few years ago Richard Black?
just like Jimmy savile did!
This morning the BBC informed us (R4) of the lethal nature of cooking with gas. It was pointed out that people use it all their lives with no problem to which the alarmist replied: “they won’t know what the effects are“.
At that point I laughed and turned the damn thing off.
…..the alarmist…..
part of the new KKK.
Klimate Klan Kids.
Boy buggering communists
Or as the most high and exalted would say “pass me another choirboy, this one’s split”.
Sadly, the English language is bereft of any suitable adjectives to describe just how odious Mann is. The worst, most vile insults levied against him, are nothing more than compliments to the likes of him.
When there is no evidence finding some will most certainly be a struggle.
Verified.
At least the BBC is trying to wriggle out of a false statement, on the other side of the pond the equivalent news (propaganda) group just keeps on going, willing to keep their faithful until it’s over. It’s over on January 20. Wait for it.
The BBC is a government run mouthpiece for their propaganda. It’s an absolute joke, hardly anyone watches it .
And the propaganda is inserted into every programme and every script.
“If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in the programme…”
Auntie has an helpline for that
Mmkay…
Hardly anyone with a brain watches it, but it is still effective indoctrinating masses by sheer volume and repetition, ask Goebbels, Stalin, Mao etc.
Most of its viewers are watching sport and entertainment. The indoctrination part you talk about gets the off switch
Surely a representative of an august institution like the BBC knows the difference between who’s and whose. But I suppose instrumental accuracy of weather and climate flunkies is not a KPI.
That’s slip I am easily able to make myself and I cringe when I fail to notice and correct it in time.
The huge problem is their response leans on a claim from the self-styled World Weather Attribution (WWA) group. That “group” is a group of at least two, including Friederike Otto who invented the novel attribution methodology they use. I can’t find out who else is in the group.
The headcount doesn’t matter though. What matters is the robustness of the methodology. It seems dodgy AF and it’s not our job to prove it isn’t. If the WWA is all the BBC has got, they’ve got hand-waving and feelz.
Incidentally, Esme Stallard has an MSc in Environment & Sustainable Development. We can safely assume she didn’t earn that by asking hard questions (like a journalist should).
World Weather Attribution = Pseudoscience.
Definition:
AI Overview
Pseudoscience is a term used to describe a set of beliefs, practices, or statements that claim to be scientific but are not based on the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often used to describe fields of study that make claims about the world and natural processes, but do not meet the standards of legitimate scientific study.”
end
That’s what we have here with World Weather Attribution. It’s not based on the scientific method. It is based on unsubstantiated assertions/opinions by the people at WWA.
No, you are wrong. The BBC considers this an expert organisation. A trusted source. The BBC is not interested in science itself.
Just like ‘factcheckers’..who don’t actually check facts but go to their ‘trusted’ sources to find the Truth.
Again, no science to be found. The people who hire them know what they are doing..
The person who said
“Unlike other branches of Climate Science or science in general event attribution was actually originally suggested with courts in mind”
they had plenty of “feelz” with savile and rolf H.
World Weather Attribution = w . a (nkers)
Esme Stallard – Climate and science reporter?
No, she is a propagandist for the cult of climate alarmism.
Not an ounce of nuance, or historical context.
A poorly written dramatisation of meteorological extremes that exist on our planet, and that have existed for millennia.
“we are living in a dangerous new era”. – World Weather Attribution (WWA)
An entity created for the sole purpose of amplifying climate alarmism.
World Weather Attribution (WWA) That’s a misnomer. It should be…
From Natural Weather Event to Deadly Human Climate Change (Attribution) – with extra added alarm.
And who better than a weird Stasi Fraulein to lead it?
Friederike (Fredi) is a Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment
Fredi is the co-lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events.
https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/f.otto
Using models, of course.
I suspect it is “international” only in the sense she shares an office with someone from the Netherlands. We are invited to imagine a vast agency with possibly hundreds of employees from around the world, but it is probably just two desks in a cramped office.
They are masters of hype.
they have a lot of help. Each unsubstantiated claim they make about extreme weather is carried near and far by the Climate Alarmist Media, and presented as facts.
It’s pure propaganda.
Yes, but to say that in public makes you a conspiracy theorist. Then you are in the looney bin and be warned against..
“possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events”
There’s no “possible” about it when it comes to World Weather Attribution. They claim the extreme weather they describe is directly connected to CO2 in the air. Without ANY evidence, I might add.
World Weather Attribution claims are all unsubstantiated assertions. It’s not science.
It doesn’t take much effort to assert that something is ‘possible’.
“An entity created for the sole purpose of amplifying climate alarmism.”
Which just goes to show that the Climate Alarmists are not doing well with public opinion, so they have to try to increase the psychological pressure on the public by claiming they see CO2 everywhere they look.
The WWA is just another version of alarmist climate science propaganda.
World Weather Attribution is Voodoo Science.
yes the nutty little teenager who missed school claims “they see CO2”.
except when their hot air comes out they don’t.
They talk about decarbonising (and by the same token deindustrialising) the economy. Thus far the fiscal economy is way ahead of the energy madness to come.
“…pubs will have no choice but to hike prices across the board and cut back opening hours. The much-vaunted “penny off a pint” clearly done nothing to help swallow the bitter pill. Maclean put it bluntly: “The phrase we are using is ‘Survive 25.’”
https://order-order.com/2025/01/14/businesses-face-pressure-to-hike-prices-and-slash-staff/
In most London pubs a pint is now £7 to £8. A round easily costs £30+
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) estimated 1,200 pub closures in 2024. Easy to see why. The taxes on alcohol are absolutely silly and of course even the snoutcasts** have been driven away.
** Snout – a 60s/70s slang word – popular in prisons etc – for a cigarette.
Survive 25 that could catch on…
I’m worried about the UK. Their clueless leaders are driving them off a Net Zero cliff.
Buckle up…
In the year 2525, if man is still alive
The lyrics of that song have been popping into my head lately.
I guess it is because the year 2025 makes me think of the year 2525.
Likewise : )
A ‘pint’ is $7 to $8?? Wow… I would be staying away from pubs… & beer… What kind of paycheque do ‘regular’ pub-goers get, to afford that larceny?
That’s actually USD8.50 to USD9.50, so a bit more than you thought. Regular pub-goers can only afford it if they are (a) independently wealthy; or (b) on state benefits.
They are doing this because in every pint of beer are millions of those deadly poisonous CO2 molecules hiding inside.
The worm turns, but still a worm.
Pink Floyd, perhaps unintentionally, summed up the BBC quite succinctly with a line of lyrics in the album “The Wall:”
“And the worms ate into his brain.”
Well, things from their side do not have to be factual and based on data. It is enough to ‘attribute’ higher temperatures w more extreme weather events. That is usually linked to ‘likelyhood’.
So, attribution studies that couple Co2 to higher temperatures (which is supposedly bad) and which causes more likelyhood of extreme weather events.
And that is the simple message they want the population to get. Or simplistic. Deliberately.
You might object but then you are part of a conspiracy misinformation movement intent on doing evil. And that is the second story which they then use to pose the question: how do ‘we’ stop this misinformation? Followed by a discussion whether enough is being done to stop it. And there you have it: a positive propaganda feedback loop.
I’m unclear on how the television license fee in the UK works.
Is it a tax or a mandatory fee?
It is a tax, payable per household, if you own a device capable of receiving live TV broadcasts. That means, live broadcasts from any company. The proceeds are paid to the BBC. People always used to try to avoid calling it a tax, but it was ruled to be one some years ago by some agency which reports tax revenues. The penalty for evasion – non payment when its due, is criminal prosecution, which is what makes it a tax.
So you only watch, lets say, live sport over satelite via a subscription to Sky. You must pay the tax and your payments will be paid to the BBC. Who will also pay the costs of collection out of the proceeds.
If all you watch is netflix and your set is not connected to an antenna or is otherwise disabled from receiving live broadcasts, you don’t owe the tax.
The current level of the tax is £159 a year, rising to £169.50 in 2025.
“If all you watch is netflix” what if your favorite netflix is Great British Baking Show?
If Netflix is live streaming the GBBS you need a license. If it takes to live streaming sporting events you need a license. If it is just offering on demand material, you don’t.
I think, but am not certain, that it would not be a matter of a particular show or event. It Netflix starts to offer occasional live streams, I think that would probably mean that a subscriber to it would need a license.
You also need a license to use the BBC on demand service, iPlayer, and this is a potential issue since any phone or computer can access iPlayer. However they have worked around this to a degree by requiring registration to access iPlayer.
It obviously raises some troubling issues. What kind of examination of your household devices would be required to establish if you have, or have not, registered for iPlayer without having the required license?
Well, the whole license fee question raises some troubling issues. One problem is who gets prosecuted. It is disproportionately single mothers, and you can see why it would be – the combination of poverty and the need to have something to keep the kids occupied. Its a very regressive tax. There have been periodic proposals to decriminalize license fee evasion, but they go nowhere.
It would probably be a better solution, if you are going to have a tax funded TV provider, to just fund it out of general taxation, add it to Council Tax, whatever. The BBC at one point proposed transferring the tax to Internet access. But with a Labour government in power now, its going to remain as is for at least another four years.
But if your renewal comes in November 2024 you pay the 2025 price anyway.
Nuts!
https://www.defundbbc.uk/
I am not optimistic, but maybe some day these climate zombies will wake up to the fact that weather is natural phenomena and climate is a statistical construct. Climate can not, by definition, cause anything. It is a long term (30 years to hundreds of millennia) average of weather. Climate is a statistical construct.
But we all know this.
I appreciate this clarity… thanks.
I’ve complained to the BBC about this one as well.
I have my case number, but so far, nothing but tumbleweed
Par for the course with the BBC
UK energy policy gets worse and worse by the day.
Now we have Starmer announcing huge investments in AI. But without considering that the main thing about AI is its power needs, and of course this is just another thing that is going to increase demand at the same time as he tries, with Ed Miliband, to move power generation to wind and solar, home heating to heat pumps, and cars to EVs.
Its really astonishing. Total incoherence. The estimate is that the plans will require power equal to another nuclear power station. But of course EDF is proposing turning off most of the current ones, and there’s no plan to replace them, nor is there any plan to provide gas plants for when the current gas parc requires renewal. They are planning to raise demand while turning off reliable generation, without seeming to understand that this simply cannot work.
More than a nuclear power station’s worth of electricity will be needed to meet surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), experts have warned, as Sir Keir Starmer unveils plans for a data centre blitz.
A construction boom needed to meet the soaring requirements of advanced AI will more than treble the industry’s demands on the energy grid in the coming years.
The figures come as Sir Keir outlined proposals for a 20-fold increase in public computing capacity, a new supercomputer and “AI growth zones” and billions of pounds in private investment in data centres as part of plans to become an “AI superpower”.
The Prime Minister said developers would have fast-track access to planning decisions and grid connections.
More than 4,000 megawatts (MW) of data centre capacity is currently under construction or in development in Britain, according to figures from researchers at DC Byte, compared with just 1,512MW currently.
This would mean demand rising by more than the capacity of a large nuclear facility, such as the Sizewell C or Hinkley Point C stations, Edward Galvin, DC Byte’s chief executive, said.
From the UK Telegraph.
Sir Kier?!
I would refuse to call anyone that willfully stupid “sir.”
Ditto the ones that conferred that title.
“This year is expected to be the hottest on record, and new research shows that people around the world experienced an additional 41 days of dangerous heat due to climate change.” During the dustbowl drought of the 1930s and its offspring in the 1950s that short period of time would have been welcome. Based on citations of so many papers very little now seems to count from the last millennium.
Similarly, one of their links here on record ocean heat said “Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era.” Well, they did go back a little into the last millennium but seem to be treating the ocean like a teapot. Well, a little bigger than that. If your read enough of this it enhances the normal human problem of ”smashing” exaggeration.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68921215
Good for you Paul, that is exactly what we need to be doing. Call out the individual reporters and their employers. We should not only call them out but we should broadcast that they will be called out. If they speak nothing but the truth they have nothing to fear.
An additional 41 days of dangerous heat? Is this based on a tenth of degree difference between dangerous heat and loosening your tie?