BBC bias: John Humphrys confirms BBC tactic of bias by omission

The BBC has begun its effort to sanitise, downplay and distort the comments by Radio 4 presenter, John Humphrys, in the Radio Times in which he said that BBC coverage of EU and immigration matters has been biased to the left because the corporation is ‘broadly liberal’.

Despite the Humphrys piece being picked up across the media for his observations about liberal bias, you can see in the image on the left that the BBC is instead focusing on his comments about the corporation being ‘over-managed’. Move on, little to see here is the clear message. Humphrys is doing his bit to backtrack by claiming this was in the past and the BBC isn’t like that any more.

To be sure listeners get the message, Radio 4’s Feedback programme, presented by the pathologically smug and condescending Roger Bolton, continued the fightback today by broadcasting an interview with Humphrys (audio below).  But what the BBC hadn’t counted on was Humphrys inadvertently making the hole even deeper, with comments about the editors and how they work, which confirms all we have asserted over the years about ‘bias by omission’, where voices that dissent from the BBC worldview are deliberately denied airtime, effectively censoring the counter viewpoint.

The following exchange begins on the You Tube clip at 4 min 21 seconds…

Roger Bolton:  But the point surely is this, it’s not what people may feel in the BBC, it’s whether they control those feelings and remain as objective as possible. So to make the claim that the BBC was liberal is to say that its policies and its decision making were liberal, not necessarily that those [unitelligible]

John Humphrys: No, I think it’s to make the claim that the mindset was liberal. So when somebody suggested, might suggest, on this programme or others ‘let’s do so and so’ a particular politician who’s known for his anti European, his sceptical views, people would tend to say ‘mmm a bit bonkers isn’t he? Hmmm well maybe not’. And maybe he wouldn’t then be interviewed. So it wasn’t rampant, I’m not suggesting, I didn’t suggest in that conversation, that Radio Times conversation, that it was rampant, that we were kind of foaming at the mouth pro Europeans, you know, federalists to a man and woman. We weren’t. But there was a mindset that thought that the right approach to Europe should be supportive. So no, of course there was no conspiracy, but it was a mindset, it was an approach. And I think if you do an analysis of our coverage during those years I think that’s the impression you would gain as well.

Then a few minutes later at 7 min 41 seconds as the interview draws to a close, there followed this exchange which illustrates the point perfectly, that the problem of bias which needs addressing is the editors who are able to shape the programmes to reflect whatever point they want to make, be it political or activist…

Roger Bolton: And just finally for the record, has any editor ever told you to go soft on a political interviewee?
John Humphrys: Nope. Nope. Nope.
RB: Has anybody ever told you to go soft on the question of immigration?
JH: Nope.
RB: Has anybody ever told you to go soft on the question of Europe?
JH: Nope. But that doesn’t prove the point, Roger. Because I don’t edit the programmes, I don’t decide who gets interviewed and that is crucial to it.

The bias problem at the BBC that Humphrys is at pains to tell us is a thing of the past, is still very much alive and all too apparent.  But thanks to Humphrys’ candid comments, we now have helpful confirmation that the BBC treats with contempt and frquently excludes from its programmes those who do not share its worldview (unless they are so poor a speaker or utterly disagreeable that they put people off) and that contributor selection is what counts.

BBC News: All the news that we are willing to report

The BBC has graciously deigned to report on the vicious assault of a prison officer after he was held hostage by ‘three inmates’ at Full Sutton Prison in Yorkshire.

The BBC News website goes on to tell readers that:

‘The North East Counter Terrorism Unit, which is investigating, said two of the suspects were aged 25 and the other 26.

‘The men are not in prison for terror-related offences, a spokeswoman said.’

Eh?

Reading through the rest of the report there is no indication as to why this incident inside a prison is, in a highly unusual step, being investigated by counter terrorist police, and no explanation as to why a spokesman said the inmates were not in jail for terror-related offences.  It’s all very curious.  Well, curious until one casts their eye across other news media…

The Sun

Daily Mail

The Express

The Mirror

Even the Guardian refers to the reports that the hostage takers were Muslims but that the claim was unsubstantiated because the prison PR team had not said as much – despite the flood of information coming out of the prison via unofficial channels.

It is truly pathetic to see the BBC twisting itself into contortions without ‘outing’ Muslim extremists or Islamists when they stand accused a violent incident.  It is worse than disingenuous to self censor and do everything possible to keep viewers, listeners and readers in ignorance of what is being reported everywhere else, simply because of the ‘sensitivity’ of identifying perpetrators of violent and criminal acts as Muslim – ironically the way they proudly identify themselves.

It is hard to feel anything other than contempt for the BBC.

Farage meltdown

Confession time.  No way did I think Nigel Farage would inflict so much damage on himself so quickly after such a high profile improvement in his party’s fortunes.

His badly thought out appearance in Scotland was bad enough.  Requiring a police escort away from protesters was humiliating.  But what has followed – his ill-tempered name calling and undignified petulance in putting the phone down during an radio interview when walked into confirming the somewhat  embarrassing fact UKIP has no elected members north of the border, suggests the shine is coming off the blessed Nigel incredibly quickly.

UKIP insiders are all too well aware of Farage’s ignorant refusal to brook any challenge or opposition to his views.  But Farage’s demonstration of his inability to rise above the abuse he experienced on the street and defuse its sting won’t play well with voters, who are entitled to expect potential leaders to deal with such things in a gracious and magnanimous way.

I honestly pity Farage’s press adviser.  I am certain in my own mind that Farage would have been told how to handle this incident and respond assuredly to the unpleasant and seemingly intimidating experience, but refused to take the advice on board.  He could have told the media that seeing those Scottish protesters enjoying their freedom of speech was a welcome sight because such freedom is essential in a democracy – and that the political class increasingly censors people and the deeper we are integrated in the EU the less democratic this country becomes.  He could have added that while he strongly refutes and disagrees with their arguments and accusations he defends their right to express them and he would respond fully and openly to their claims.

Instead we have seen a senior politician engaging in pathetic namecalling that would be considered immature on a playground.  Far from being the bloke one would he happy to have a pint with, I would now be more concerned he would smash some glasses and kick some tables over if he hears something he doesn’t like.

Farage, as predicted, has just done some damage to UKIP and its credibility.  That party deserves better.

English law again shows itself to be a complete ass

In the Mail on Sunday is a story concerning two adults from a family from Eastbourne.  It is thought they have taken an overdose, possibly as a suicide attempt.  The facts are not yet known, as such the media is in full speculation mode.

The point to note here is their names have not been used in the story because their daughter cannot be named for legal reasons.

This is because the daughter ran away to France with her married schoolteacher.  The teacher, who has been charged with child abduction, the girl herself and her parents all became household names earlier this year as a result of the manhunt, with their photographs splashed all over the television and newspapers.

To name them in this blog post would be breaking the law.  If the media named them it would be breaking the law.  This despite the names and photographs of all the actors in this sad piece still being instantly accessible on the internet.

So what we have is a courtroom constructed fantasy that the identity of the child – and by extension her family – can now be kept secret to protect her.  It takes a special kind of stupidity, or a complete detachment from reality, for the courts to think a genie can be put back in the bottle by banning the publication of the girl’s name – and by extension her family – in this way after saturation media coverage of all concerned.

Peter Hitchens, what about raw bias?

It is somewhat ironic that Peter Hitchens, so often a man who reminds us he can see what is going on where others are unaware, used his blog yesterday in the Daily Mail to say he has now discovered he is almost the only journalist who didn’t know that Jimmy Savile was a child molester.  He must be feeling quite left out among the media pack.

Hitchens goes on to ask, ‘If they all knew, why didn’t they tell you?’ before going on to declare most profoundly that:

Well, let them explain all that. What’s much, much more important is that you now know that there is a lot going on that nobody tells you.

They don’t tell you because they’re scared that very rich men can use the libel courts to ruin those who tell the truth about them.

Well there is something in that but it goes far deeper.  As Richard North observes, Hitchens is only partly right:

Hitchens suggests that the omerta owes much to our punitive libel laws, and there is some truth in that. But there is a great deal more to it than that, not least the sheep-like behaviour of the media pack, and the power of the narrative.

Too often, journalists (and their editors) want to stay in the comfort zone delineated by the herd. Once a “line” has been established (the narrative), they will not depart significantly from it. There is no need for censorship or libel laws here. This is what the media does to itself.

North is bang on the money and there is plenty of evidence to support it – including, amusingly, the behaviour of Hitchens’ paymaster itself, the Daily Mail.

For example, perhaps Hitchens would care to investigate why the Daily Mail, without any explanation, deleted a story it published about David Leigh of the Guardian in relation to his own phone hacking exploits?  The story was accurate, but nonetheless the Mail pulled it soon after publishing and deleted all reference to it.  That’s an instance of people not being told something the media decides to keep out of the public eye.  Leigh, unsurprisingly in the incestuous world of the print media, has friends at the Mail. Go figure.

Then there is the example of the Met Office being caught out lying about no longer doing seasonal weather forecasts, as uncovered by this blog.  We dug up documentary evidence in the form of Minutes from the Met Office board meeting where the decision was taken, at the suggestion of Chief Executive John Hirst, to ‘rename’ and ‘manage the presentation of these longer range forecasts’.  AM gave this completely free and without condition to a reporter at the Daily Mail and an editor at the Daily Express.  Neither paper chose to tell the story to their readers.

Neither of these stories were libellous.  There was nothing for the papers to be scared of.  Unless the Guardian is now a powerful commercial interest.  They just decided it wasn’t something the public should know about.  They self censored for their own purposes because of narratives they prefer to follow.  So if Peter Hitchens wants to play the ‘honest broker’ card, perhaps he should tell the whole truth about the reality of why there are things the media don’t tell us.  It’s not all because of fear of a consequence.

UK based Climategate 2 blogger has computers seized in police search

Question: Why have six police officers from the Metropolitan Police and Norfolk Constabulary searched a property and seized the computers and DSL router of a blogger for reporting the leak of the Climategate 2 emails, in order to clone his hard drives and inspect them, if he is not a suspect?

Details on Watts Up With That? / Jo Nova / Climate Audit

Welcome to the United Kingdom in 2011.

A new twist in the Wolfgang Wagner resignation saga

Following on from the previous post about the Spencer and Braswell paper… In an ideal world journalists like Richard Black at the BBC and Leo Hickman at the Guardian would try to find out if there was something more to the resignation of Wolfgang Wagner, which they reported in their traditionally biased fashion.

But given the BBC and Guardian acolytes, among others in the media, have an agenda  favourable to those who assert the world is warming and humans are to blame, what else can we expect? From to chairing conferences to delivering speeches and filing copy derived unquestioningly from press releases that enjoin people to accept at face value what they say, the BBC and Guardian.

Anything that raises questions about the actions of their friends in the alarmist ‘consensus’ is ignored or quietly shoved out of sight under the nearest convenient floor covering. Anything that goes beyond regurgitating the

This is why the blogosphere, so often derided by the oh-so-grand churnalists, is so important today.  This latest example of defacto censorship by the Guardian and outrageous bias exhibited by the UK’s taxpayer funded public service broadcaster, the BBC, can again be partially countered by bloggers who put the journos to shame and act in the public interest by searching for information and sharing the salient facts and background the media has deliberately omitted or tried to leave buried.

The lastest example of this can be found at the end of this post on Watts Up With That? which reveals information about a previously unmentioned relationship between Wolfgang Wagner and arch-alarmist who has been most affronted by the Spencer and Braswell paper – to the extent that Wagner issued an apology to him for publishing the paper – Kevin Trenberth.

What has been uncovered has the capacity to shed a somewhat different light on the motivation for Wagner’s resignation as editor in chief of Remote Sensing.  Yet the collective eyes, ears and mouths of the BBC and Guardian alarmists such as Richard Black and Leo Hickman will no doubt remain utterly immobile as they decide the information to be irrelevant and inconvenient to their agenda.

Dr Roy Spencer, adding to his previous thoughts on this incredible story and the reaction to the paper he co-authored, makes this comment (hat tip: Bishop Hill):

We simply cannot compete with a good-ole-boy, group think, circle-the-wagons peer review process which has been rewarded with billions of research dollars to support certain policy outcomes.

And as our focus on the media’s behaviour shows, it is an even more difficult proposition when those supposedly noble men and women of the news media – tasked with uncovering and reporting all the facts – are complicit in that group think and relay a distorted story to the general public.

How reaction to Spencer & Braswell underlines the corruption and politicisation of science

I want to tell you a story.  Are you sitting comfortably?  Then I’ll begin…

Once upon a time there was a big, shiny, expensive computer system upon which programmes were run.  The programmes were written by very clever scientists to create projections of what things might be like in the future.  They called these projections ‘models’.

Some places had got very dry over the years so the very clever people wrote a programme to see what the models said was going to happen.  After the very clever scientists entered all the information and parameters they thought were important, they ran the models.  When the models came back they suggested that unlike in the past, the rain would no longer make anything outside wet.

Now, because the models were developed by a small group of some clever very scientists in very big universities who had been given a lot of public money to carry out research, they were accepted as actual fact by politicians who said there was a big problem that only they could solve.  Being part of the establishment, the media wrote lots of stories about this endorsing what the politicians said and telling people things would have to change.

Because of what the computer models had suggested, the government decided that everyone must install complex and expensive systems to use water from a brand new source to irrigate grass, trees, flowers, crops and bushes because lots of places were drier and the rain won’t make anything wet in future.  So with other governments around the world they made lots of new laws and created big plans and spent billions and billions of pounds, dollars, euros, roubles and yen to convince people of the need for this expensive change to watering things.

They also gave lots of peoples’ money to a lot of new campaign groups and businesses to go into schools and companies to tell them to had to change the way everything is watered.  It also gives lots more money to other scientists to start from what the small group of very clever scientists has already decided and find more reasons to agree with them and arrive at the same conclusion.

But all this seemed strange to a lot of people who thought there was still lots of rain and it was still making everything outside wet.  A lot of people were not convinced and they were called sceptics and they started to point out problems with the claims from the very clever scientists.  The governments were very angry because they were making lots of deals to spend money on big corporations they were friends with to develop solutions that everyone would have to use, making owners and shareholders very rich while ordinary people were left with less money. The media wrote lots of nasty things about the sceptical people and because the media was so clever and always right about everything they called those people ‘deniers’.

Not all very clever scientists agreed with each other.  Some of them became sceptical and started to examines in detail the real world observation of what happens when it rains.  Amazingly, when they looked outside and examined lots of data records, they found that not everything was drying up after all and the rain was still making things outside very wet and therefore the basis for everyone installing the government mandated water systems was flawed.

The sceptical scientists wrote a paper about this, and it was examined and tested by other very clever scientists in their discipline in a process called peer-review, before being accepted and published by a journal called ‘Remote Sensing’.  Those people who were not convinced by the need for watering change pointed at the paper as evidence that not everything was as the government and their very clever scientists made it seem.  They argued that the small group of clever scientists supported by the government might be getting things wrong and government should wait for more evidence before taking such sweeping, expensive and draconian action.

The media largely said nothing about the paper because after spending so long saying rain wasn’t making things outside wet anymore they don’t want to be proved wrong.  And besides, some of their pension plans depended on money made from investments in the new watering processes being made by the government’s corporate friends.

A little while later, the editor of the paper-publishing journal ‘Remote Sensing’ said he didn’t agree with the paper because of all those very clever scientists who believed rain wasn’t make things wet anymore because their computer models had been saying so for a long time now. So the editor resigned in protest and the media attempted to discredit the sceptical scientists, citing that one of them once had to alter a previous paper many years previously, and that he is in some way odd because he is a committed Christian.

The media agreed with another very clever scientist who said that the paper must by defintion be flawed until it satisfied all of the observations, agrees with physical theory, and fit the computer models.  He said this even though computer models are only as good as the data put into them by humans who are nowhere close to understanding all the complex relationships that causes nature to do what it does.  Although common sense and science in years gone by would have it that real world observation is the only reliable measure of any changes in nature and has the capacity to invalidate computer models, this very clever scientist and his friends had turned science on its head by claiming computer models have the capacity to invalidate observed reality.

It would have all been very confusing if one of the very clever scientists had not been caught out saying that even if they had to redefine what scientific peer-review is, they would somehow close down any views from sceptical scientists, even though doing so would utterly corrupt science and the correct way of furthering it.  But after putting complete faith in computer models and using them as the basis for lots of incredible projections that have never become reality, he had to put his own interests before his duty to science.

And for the ordinary people, nothing changed.  The governments continued to press ahead with their financially ruinous plans.  The media continued to exaggerate every story that fitted their narrative while refusing to cover any story that contradicted them.  The computer models continued to churn out projections that did not reflect observed reality.

——————————–

The real story is carried in the words of the sceptical scientist, Dr Roy Spencer on the excellent Watts Up With That? blog.  The media hatchet job is most prevalent in the Guardian and on its broadcast arm, the BBC.  Dr Spencer goes on to explain the findings in layman’s terms on his own website.   In response to the resignation of Wolfgang Wagner, Dr Roger Pielke Snr puts the politicisation of science into context.  And the ludicrous position on observations having to fit in with computer models as advanced by Dr Pete Gleick, and Dr Phil Jones’ comment about keeping sceptical papers out of the public domain, are both covered by Indur Goklany on WUWT.

What we are seeing is anti-science.  We are experiencing pseudo science that aims not to question or challenge, but to reinforce the validity of a body of opinion that is yet to make the jump from theory to fact.  It is being done to fit a political agenda.  It is a corruption of science and the latest example of why people should be sceptical of the claims made about climate change and its causes and effects

In closing, one comment left on Watts Up With That? sums up the situation superbly and deserves to be repeated widely to help others understand what really is going on:

This is all part of the same pattern that has characterized the warmists’ approach to climate “science” since the last century. They come up with models and use these to produce predictions which are then baptized as sovereign truth. In real science, they would have been required to demonstrate the predictive validity of their models before their predictions would be granted any confidence – and when observations contradicted predictions, they would have been expected to revise their models instead of beating the data until it fit the model outputs. Instead, thanks to Algore, Hansen, left-wing politicians looking for regulatory and legislative mechanisms to control the polity and extract more tax dollars, and a compliant left-leaning media hungry for “imminent disaster” headlines, the burden of proof has been shifted to those who challenge the modellers instead of being left where it belongs: with the modellers who still have not demonstrated the validity of their models. I simply cannot believe we are still discussing a theory that, 20 years after it went mainstream, has yet to produce a single scrap of confirmatory empirical evidence.

The extent to which the AGW true believers have warped the scientific method to serve their pecuniary and political ends is simply breathtaking. Climate science represents the greatest perversion of the scientific method since the Enlightenment. It is phlogiston, phrenology and Lysenkoism all rolled up into one big, fat, corrupt boil desperately in need of lancing.

Putting the threat to our freedom into context

In a private exchange with a fellow blogger several days ago he speculated that the Anders Breivik mass murder would bode ill for dissenters.  Well, one assumes it was private, but who knows what is being monitored and by whom…

Anyway, being a ‘glass half full’ kind of chap I replied that seeing as the Norwegian intelligence service has shown Breivik up to be a dangerous and well armed Walter Mitty, attempts to tar dissenters with the same brush will fail.  I stressed the importance of continuing to cite evidence and push our arguments so the powers that be will be forced to speak to them.

After all, I pointed out, 7/7 didn’t really change anything and subsequent plots haven’t really changed anything, so therefore it follows a Norwegian mass murderer will not change anything either.

At this point my blogging friend said he was not so sure.  He qualified his concern by providing me with a link to a piece on the French language version of EurActiv, translated roughly by Google.

Reading and reflecting upon it made me reconsider my inital assessment, hence my post yesterday.  All bloggers should take a few moments to take the article on board.

Mentioned in that piece is European Commission spokesman Michele Cercone (pictured).  It seems old Michele has had a fair bit to say lately – some of it extremely illuminating and far reaching.  Consider this, attributed to Cercone by Balkans.com:

The European Commission is building a security system to issue early warnings on threats of extremism, xenophobia and other forms of radicalism

Or this quote reported by Hurriyet Daily News:

Compromises are more easily reached after shocking events like those that happened in Norway.

And International Affairs Magazine, explained that: ‘Various forces will be trying to capitalize on Norway’s bloody drama. Interestingly, the European Commission championed the cause. Breivik left a thorough description of the costs of the bomb ingredients, the result being that the EU rushed to impose regulations on the sales of chemicals that can be mold into explosives,’ and reported Cercone as saying:

The European Commission will speed up the introduction of new regulations on chemicals sales after a Norwegian extremist who killed 76 people in last week’s bombing and shooting spree admitted he used fertilizers to make explosives.

But virtually none of this has been reported by our world beating media corps, which is too busy devoted column hectares to its navel gazing over phone hacking.  Should we be worried by this?  Absolutely.

It is a fact that the European Commission, an arm of the EU, is now increasing its efforts to apply control over people in the member states.  No crisis must ever be wasted.  The EU, being unelected, unaccountable and therefore wholly anti democratic, is seizing the moment to empower itself still further at the expense of our personal freedoms.  We are being dictated to by an entity that is taking an opportunity to use the actions of one individual as justification to clamp down on anyone who opposes this essentially socialist construct – hence the focus on right wing ‘extremism’ where the EU decides what constitutes extreme.

The issue is one of mission creep.  We have seen it all before, where legislation enacted for one purpose becomes a convenient measure that is applied for a different purpose that was never intended.  The EU is engaging in naked opportunism to exert greater control, while setting itself as the sole authority to determine what dissent against it will be tolerated.

It is frightening that the EU, with its goal of eradicating the nation state, will be deciding whether its opponents are too radical, whether their views can therefore be shared on the internet, and will define what constitutes xenophobia and whether that should be punished – all backed by European courts and European arrest warrants.

In hindsight I got it wrong.  We are indeed staring into an abyss where our enemy, the EU, could take advantage of the Breivik attacks to effectively criminalise anti EU sentitment, or at the very least prevent people from sharing those sentiments with others, citing them as ‘extreme’, ‘radical’, ‘xenophobic’ or even potential ‘lone wolf terrorists’.  This response isn’t being driven simply by Breivik’s actions, but crucially the rationale he gave for them.

We must protect freedom, by restricting your freedom

Richard North, writing on his EU Referendum blog, draws attention to a communique following a joint meeting yesterday of the two Council of the European Union working groups on terrorism – the Terrorism Working Party and COTER.  The release explained that:

Representatives of the Norwegian authorities informed the meeting about the events and the ongoing investigation. This was followed by a debate which included experts from EU member states, representatives of several EU bodies and institutions (Europol, European External Action Service, European Commission) as well as the office of the EU Counterterrorism coordinator. Delegations seized the opportunity to express condolences and solidarity with Norway and the Norwegian people.

This is an all-too-predictable self insertion into the fallout of the massacre in Norway in an effort to make the EU appear relevant and strengthen its control over member states.  Although this meeting is quite noteworthy as Norway is not a member of the EU.  It seems to suggest that this horror will also be seized upon by the EU to add weight to its effort to court Norway and enjoin Oslo to put EU membership on its to-do list. 

But reading between the lines this communique is deeply disturbing as what we are seeing is the groundwork being laid for an assault on our freedom.  The clue is there in the last paragraph (relevant section in italics) which reads:

The issue of ‘lone-wolf terrorism’, represented by terrorists that are self-radicalised (e.g. through the internet) with no obvious attachment to any terrorist organisation, seems to require increasing attention. The experts also agreed that in confronting the threat of a terrorist attack, regardless of its underlying motivation, the effective exchange of information is vital. The importance of strengthening response capacity was another issue that was highlighted.

Alarm bells should be ringing already because the whiff of censorship of dissent is in the air.  There is a mood for it among those who advocate big government and its agendas.  It is inconceivable that those who have the power to legislate these things beyond our control are not accumulating a raft of justifications for shutting down free speech and only permitting views and opinions that fit in with their worldview.

In the piece above we have the clear reference to internet centric radicalisation.  In the last week there have been similar assaults on the notions of free speech and openness that have arisen from very separate topics.  There was  Thomas Hylland Eriksen writing in the Guardian who said Anders Breivik has been ‘brainwashed’ by websites and that if he had:

instead been forced to receive his information through a broadsheet newspaper, where not all the stories dealt with Europe’s loss of confidence and the rise of militant Islam, it is conceivable that his world would have looked slightly different. 

Indeed. He would have been brainwashed with the state sanctioned approved truth instead, and the topics that don’t pass official muster are censored out of existence. 

Then there was Professor Steve Jones’ report commissioned by the BBC Trust into its science coverage, where the esteemed snail geneticist and doyen of the corporation openly argued that the BBC gives too much air time to people who are sceptical of the ‘consensus’ on global warming.  The thinking is that their views should be struck from the airwaves because they might strike a chord with other people, who in turn might choose to reject the position adopted and pushed by government and its media friends.  As this blog said at the time:

We are witnessing the most successful and far reaching attempt yet by the liberal left to censor the news and information delivered to the public and indoctrinate us with their selective worldview – and do it with our money.

Watch them come for the blogs next.

They are already on their way. 

Their mission is to deny us access to information, views, opinions and commentary they have not created and they do not sanction.  It is a dangerous leap forward on the path to a totalitarian form of control.  But maybe they are their own worst enemies.  For we have just seen what happened when one dangerous man in Norway felt his views and wishes were being ignored by his government.  He tried to assassinate the Prime Minister then set about murdering his supporters in the Labour Party youth organisation.

Does the EU not realise, do national governments not realise, that restricting freedom of speech and the ability to share views and opinions – no matter how daft some might seem to others – will not dissolve the threat?  It will result in duplication and replication of the very extremism exhibited by Anders Breivik and a consequent escalation in violent acts.

The censorship that seems to be under consideration or construction to control ‘extremism’ will not passify the people, instead it will turn frustration and resentment into real anger, and it will only drive more people to adopt an extremist path trodden by Breivik.  And we all know how that turned out.

The Independent censored comment from climate scientist

A letter to the online editor of The Independent exposes a selective censorship of comments that are deemed to be embarrassing for that paper’s staff – in this case the science editor, Steve Connor.

Following publication of the email exchange between Connor and the eminent scientist Professor Freeman Dyson, covered by this blog, a climate scientist, Terri Jackson, submitted a comment that countered several of the assertions made by Connor.  The strength of feeling is clear from the introduction in the letter:

Dear Mr King

As a climate scientist I am writing personally to you as the online editor to strongly object to the blocking of my comments regarding the conversation by your science editor Mr Connor with Professor Dyson. My comments sent last night were phrased in very reasonable and temperature language and highlighted the serious and very misleading mistakes given by Mr Connor.

You can read Terri Jackson’s letter in full on Climate Realists, in which Jackson refutes a number of Connor’s central arguments used in an attempt to coax Dyson into attacking the theory of AGW.  Like Dyson, Jackson has little time for the bias in the Independent’s reporting of climate science matters, and says:

Is the Independent on a political crusade? It is high time that you started to report the facts, that human based carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses no climate threat and that the majority of graduate scientists do not accept this unproven theory regardless of what certain scientific institutions may say.

It’s pretty uncompromising stuff.  The Independent’s decision to block the original criticism of Connor from wider view by the public demonstrates it’s lack of objectivity and impartiality.  Like all other media, it puts its own agenda above serving the interests of the public. The Independent – you might be, but it isn’t.

Peter Sissons on the BBC’s climate change propaganda

The serialisation of Peter Sissons’ new book continues in the Daily Mail today, and the former newscaster turns his attention to the BBC’s editorial approach and coverage of climate change.

Perhaps it is a credit to the bloggers who have highlighted issues with the BBC’s coverage over the years that hardly anything Sissons says is new.  However what prove useful are the elements of Sissons’ professional assessment and inside observation of the BBC bias and propaganda, as demonstrated in the sections below:

There is one brief account of the ­proceedings, written by a conservative commentator who was there. He wrote subsequently that he was far from impressed with the 30 key BBC staff who attended. None of them, he said, showed ‘even a modicum of professional journalistic ­curiosity on the subject’. None appeared to read anything on the subject other than the Guardian.

This attitude was underlined a year later in another statement: ‘BBC News currently takes the view that their reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.’ Those scientists outside the ‘consensus’ waited in vain for the phone to ring.

It’s the lack of simple curiosity about one of the great issues of our time that I find so puzzling about the BBC. When the topic first came to ­prominence, the first thing I did was trawl the internet to find out as much as possible about it.

Anyone who does this with a mind not closed by religious fervour will find a mass of material by respectable scientists who question the orthodoxy. Admittedly, they are in the minority, but scepticism should be the natural instinct of scientists — and the default setting of journalists.

Yet the cream of the BBC’s inquisitors during my time there never laid a glove on those who repeated the ­mantra that ‘the science is settled’. On one occasion, an MP used BBC airtime to link climate change ­doubters with perverts and holocaust deniers, and his famous interviewer didn’t bat an eyelid.

Then there is the BBC’s cult worship of celebrity and love of being courted expensively, as demonstrated by their fawning over Al Gore:

Meanwhile, Al Gore, the former U.S. Vice-President and climate change campaigner, entertained the BBC’s editorial elite in his suite at the Dorchester and was given a free run to make his case to an admiring internal audience at Television Centre.

His views were never subjected to journalistic scrutiny, even when a British High Court judge ruled that his film, An Inconvenient Truth, ­contained at least nine scientific errors, and that ministers must send new guidance to teachers before it was screened in schools. From the BBC’s standpoint, the judgment was the real inconvenience, and its ­environment correspondents downplayed its significance.

And Sissons provides us with confirmation of the BBC’s determination to present only one side of the story, in wilful breach of journalistic ethics and flying in the face of the corporation’s own claims of impartiality and balance:

At the end of November 2007 I was on duty on News 24 when the UN panel on climate change produced a report which later turned out to contain ­significant inaccuracies, many stemming from its reliance on non-peer reviewed sources and best-guesses by environmental activists.

But the way the BBC’s reporter treated the story was as if it was beyond a vestige of doubt, the last word on the catastrophe awaiting mankind. The most challenging questions addressed to a succession of UN employees and climate ­activists were ‘How urgent is it?’ and ‘How much danger are we in?’

Back in the studio I suggested that we line up one or two sceptics to react to the report, but received a totally negative response, as if I was some kind of lunatic. I went home and wrote a note to myself: ‘What happened to the journalism? The BBC has ­completely lost it.’

Indeed.

The demonisation of people for what they think

We are on a very slippery slope.  Today was the day the media reached a sickening new lows in its unjust and disproportionate treatment of people it makes the objects of supposed news stories.  The media has appointed itself the judge, jury and assassin of the characters of people for daring to say what they think.

Story One
Listeners to BBC Radio Five Live have endured near saturation coverage of what is probably being called ‘SkySportsGate’ behind the scenes.  At the time of writing the story of Sky Sports presenter Richard Keys and pundit Andy Gray engaging in some misogynistic conversation about Premier League linesman assistant referee Sian Massey and West Ham vice chairman Karren Brady remains the number two news item on the BBC News website.

It was the major news item this morning.  Then it became the hastily promoted discussion piece on Nicky Campbell’s phone in.  As the BBC’s editors salivated uncontrollably and developed moist loins at being able to put the boot in to Sky, the story rolled over into Victoria Derbyshire’s show. There the listeners were subjected to an all women prosecution, jury and judgement on the two men as speculation mounted about the appropriate punishment for this ‘offence’.

At this point Karren Brady was rolled out, without any hint of irony, to explain how these sexist comments made her ‘blood boil’ and castigate Keys and Gray for their comments.  This of course is the same Karren Brady who was so opposed to sexism she left her advertising job at LBC radio to work for pornography publishing baron, David Sullivan.  Not that La Derbyshire brought that up – although a number of listeners did via text and email. Being offended by sexism, it seems, is a selective condition in Brady’s case.

To say this is out of all proportion is the understatement of the century.  Were their comments inappropriate?  Were they laced with resentment at the spectacle of a female official?  Were they ungentlemanly or downright rude?  You know what, it doesn’t bloody matter because it was a private conversation between the two men.  They were not comments made for public consumption.  Yet some opportunist toad listening across the ‘talkback’ function before the coverage started made a copy of the comments; and instead of complaining to management, sent it to the press to turn it into a big story.

Nevertheless the BBC has lapped it up.  After all, it’s their big rival Sky, a part Murdoch-owned organisation that achieves commercially what the BBC dare not attempt.  The demonisation is total.  Having been admonished and making an apology, the BBC coverage has pushed Sky into a public relations corner and so Keys and Gray now face disciplinary action.  Not for a failure to do their job well, not for doing anything wrong on air, but for expressing their personal thoughts in a private conversation.  The BBC have gone hunting for scalps and will not be satisfied until Keys and Gray have lost their livelihood.  So now the two men are to be punished for what they think.  It is deeply disturbing.

Update: After another clip of Gray being offensive was released he has been sacked by Sky Sports. It was justified but the manner of this coming to light, via the leaking of a private conversation, remains of great concern.

Story two
Readers of the Belfast Telegraph in recent days will have experienced near saturation coverage of the tragic honeymoon murder of Michaela McAreavey, the daughter of three-time Tyrone All-Ireland winning GAA manager Mickey Harte.

A beautiful, popular and by all accounts talented girl, Michaela was killed by hotel staff when she caught them stealing from her and her husband’s room.  However the Belfast Telegraph’s intimate coverage of the story makes it feel like she has been elevated to the position of Northern Ireland’s Princess Diana.

The killers have been caught and made confessions.  Michaela has been repatriated and buried.  But still the Telegraph’s coverage continues unabated. To date, in the 13 days since the story broke, the Belfast Telegraph has published no less than 60 related articles about the killing, family grief, funeral, family background, calls for an inquiry etc. etc.  Maybe you could expect such a number over a period of time if the case was open and police were still trying to catch the killer.  But this case is all but over.

Not everyone appreciates the excessive coverage.  One such person is a 19 year old girl called Susanne Morrison.  Writing on her Facebook page, this witless kid – a part time photographer for an obscure paper in County Down:

ranted that she was “sick of hearing” about Michaela’s murder because she could not see “what makes her so special”.

Susanne also made other sickening remarks which we are not repeating.

Morrison’s comments are at best inelegant, and if her other remarks (removed from Facebook) are indeed ‘sickening’ then she is clearly unpleasant and inconsiderate as well.  But the reaction of the Belfast Telegraph gives great cause for concern.  Like the BBC in the casestudy above, the Telegraph has a self serving agenda.  It has gone after Morrison in a faintly sinister manner that is deeply disturbing.

Without any good reason, the Belfast Telegraph has told readers where Morrison lives, Rathfriland.  In a society where religious denomination is often denoted by the football team one supports, the BT tells readers that she supports Rangers and Linfield (predominantly protestant supported teams).  To help readers identify Morrison, the Telegraph goes on to name her employer, the Co Down Outlook – while inflaming the matter by pointing out the paper ‘circulates in the area where Michaela’s devastated widower John McAreavey plays football for the Down county side’.

Despite Susanne Morrison’s comments having nothing to do with her part time employment, the Sunday Life (from where the Telegraph picked up this story) contacted the Co Down Outlook’s editor Joanne Ross – who then issued a statement saying that they were horrified by the Facebook comments and the paper was investigating.  This is an example of the media attempting exact retribution by trying to harm someone’s career prospects and livelihood by dragging the employer into the story, where the employer feels compelled to take action for PR purposes. Why also is there any need to tell readers which High School Morrison attended and provide details of her HND qualification in photography?  The Telegraph appears to be making Morrison a target for abuse by going to extraordinary lengths to give as many details of her as possible, while including a large colour photograph into the bargain.

It is both cynical and vicious, but it is also personal.  For at the heart of the Telegraph’s determination to nail Morrison to the wall is her criticism of the Telegraph’s over the top and disproportionate coverage of the story.  It says that Morrison had already widely circulated her comments on the Internet. But there is no evidence this idiotic and mouthy youngster did anything other than make comments on her Facebook page to her 600 or so ‘friends’ – a very different circulation to the tens of thousands of people who read the Telegraph.

This is another example of the media trying to silence people through direct bullying and the threat of intimidation and the potential loss of employment.  It is an effort to dissuade people from expressing their thoughts and views, whether they are considered or obnoxious. It is by extension a form of censorship and attempt to stifle any opinion but that of the media outlet indulging its editorial whims.  It is unacceptable, but it underlines the loss of freedom of expression and the growing intolerance in our society.  It shows we are on a very slippery and disturbing slope.

Update: Following the Belfast Telegraph’s successful witch hunt, Susanne Morrison has lost her job.  Her comments on Facebook were unpleasant but the Telegraph has twisted the story, claiming Morrison was criticising ‘the outpouring of grief’.  She was not, she was criticising the completely disproportinate and self serving saturation coverage in the media, particularly in the Belfast Telegraph which is now up to 62 articles covering every conceivable angle of the story and family’s private aftermath. After what are alleged to be spiteful comments by Morrison the Telegraph sunk to her level and was equally spiteful because she had pointed out the overblown coverage.

What have we allowed this world to turn into?  What have we allowed the self appointed elite to get away with?  Is there any way to redress the balance?

Comment is Free?

Unless you are trying to comment on a post in the Guardian.

Bishop Hill suggested taking a look at the comments in response to Bob Ward’s latest self indulgent whinge in the Groan (his job is to get column inches proclaiming impending catastrophe, so if climate armageddon predicted by his employers is being ignored Ward is proving ineffective).

And as usual it looks like the only thing that is liberal over there is the use of the moderator’s hammer…

Met Office: smokescreen, confusion or conspiracy?

This whole story is becoming a tangled mess.  But it is important to stick with it because that could be exactly what the protagonists want, in the hope that people give up, turn off and let them quietly move on without any consequences for their actions…

John O’Sullivan, writing in the Canada Free Press, reports that the BBC has served a Freedom of Information request on the government concerning the Met Office’s private forecast to the Cabinet Office.  Plenty of other people have already served similar requests so this news initially resulted in a mere shrug of the shoulders.

Until that is, reading on into paragraph three forced me to do a double take.  For it is there we see what, if I am correct, is a completely new and unreported allegation connected to the story:

Last week the weather service caused a sensation by making the startling claim that it was gagged by government ministers from issuing a cold winter forecast. Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.

The emphasis in the quote is mine. I stand to be corrected, and I invite readers to share with me any reports that bear out this claim, but this is the first time I have seen any suggestion that the Met Office was gagged by the government from issuing a forecast projecting a cold winter. Until this article the Met Office has said on more than one occasion that it gives seasonal forecasts to the government that it no longer makes public because people supposedly told the Met Office they did not find seasonal forecasts useful.  But I can find nothing that suggests the government ordered the Met Office to withhold the forecast from the public.This represents a complete departure from the narrative to something altogether more serious.

The consequences of the gagging allegation would be extremely serious.  Either John O’Sullivan has accidentally misreported the facts in his article, in which case he can retract and correct it – or he has been briefed with a previously unreported version of events.  If it the result of a briefing, then the only possible explanation for it is a concerted effort to put up a smokescreen, sow confusion or shift scrutiny from the Met Office on to the government for the conflicting forecasts, that were put in the public domain and given to the government respectively. If that is the case it would mean there is a conspiracy afoot.

What sparks particular interest about this story is the continued intimate involvement of the BBC’s Roger Harrabin.  Far from reporting the story impartially, there is more than a suggestion that Harrabin is actively engaged in formulating it in conjunction with the Met Office.  It was Harrabin who in the Radio Times (subsequently reported by the Telegraph and Daily Mail) broke the story that a cold winter forecast had been submitted to the Cabinet Office – but interesting there was no story on the BBC’s own website about it at the time.  Harrabin effectively became a spokesman for the Met Office with that piece and notably, as highlighted on this blog, his use of language was clearly an attempt to influence the story and portray the Met Office as an unfairly maligned party.

Returning to the Canada Free Press piece, John O’Sullivan explains he contacted Harrabin to:

ascertain if the Beeb had a better handle on the story

Because of the Harrabin connection to the original story and this new piece, what needs to be clarified is whether O’Sullivan believed that the government had gagged the Met Office from his own understanding, or if this element of the story was shared with him by Harrabin as background.  O’Sullivan shares Harrabin’s reply to his question about the BBC having a better handle on the story thus:

Harrabin advised me, “I phoned the Met Office about this statement and the Met Office press office told me they’d given information to the Cabinet Office that we were facing an early cold winter.”

Mention of the ‘secret’ cold winter forecast appears in the Quarmby Report (Section 2.4) which states, “The Met Office gave ‘early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November’ at the end of October.”

Giving a strong hint that a major rift appears to have opened up between Met Office chief executive, John Hirst and Climate Minister, Huhne, Harrabin further revealed, “The Beeb now has an FoI [freedom of information request] to Cabinet Office requesting verbatim info from [the] Met Office.”

We need to understand which statement Harrabin is referring to, the original or this previously unheralded accusation of being gagged by government ministers.  What we do know is that the Met Office version of events reported in both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail articles which originated from Harrabin, made no mention at all of any government gag of the department in respect of the winter forecast. Indeed, they suggest the Met Office chose to withhold them fearing ridicule of the forecast was wrong.

So we are no clearer about just where has this story of the government gagging the Met Office has come from.  If O’Sullivan learned about this new episode he reports as a result of communication with someone then he needs to say where it came from.

There are some other less pressing but nonetheless unanswered questions that need to be examined.

The first one concerns the Freedom of Information request the BBC has submitted.  As the Met Office had told Harrabin their story of an early winter forecast delivered to the Cabinet Office, why do they not simply cut to the chase and give Harrabin a copy of the communication they sent?  Is it likely such information – a weather forecast – would be restricted?  Is there a deliberate attempt here to play the ‘no smoke without fire’ game and cause confusion while focusing attention on the government?

There also remains the unanswered question about why the Met Office publishes its temperature probability maps, but then renders them of absolutely no tangible use whatsoever because they all carry a disclaimer that they are not forecasts. What is the purpose of these maps and why are they not forecasts?  No adequate answer has been provided.

Returning finally to the O’Sullivan piece, readers are told that:

In what may well be an orchestrated manoeuvre between the Met Office and Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC the freedom of information demand will heap huge embarrassment on David Cameron’s gaffe-prone coalition government.

At this time the only orchestrated manoeuvre seems to be is between the Met Office and certain journalists who are bought in to the climate change alarmism promoted by the Met Office, namely Roger Harrabin and Steve Connor of the Independent. The rationale for this is that the Met Office is wholly compromised.  Just yesterday, as made clear in the update on this post, their blog was used to maintain their stance on global warming while contradicting statements from their own climate scientist Peter Stott.

** It seems incredible that all of this stems from an organisation’s desire to stick doggedly to their belief in the concept of man made climate change and refusal to deviate from their predictions of subsequent warmer, wetter winters. With those not materialising they are twisting themselves into unbelievable contortions and now seemingly enlisting the support of prominent journalists to help them save face and their substantial funding. With that still not having the desired effect we see the stakes being raised with the possible briefing of allegations of gagging by Ministers and dark hints of malfeasance in public office.  This is not environmental concern, it is politics.

Climate change and media dishonesty

A fully paid up member of the climate alarmist society, Germany’s Spiegel has published a piece that tells readers ‘The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keeps going up and up, but public interest in climate change is sinking. Environmentalists are trying to come up with new ways to make the issue sexy.’

The problem for the ‘environmentalists’ is that the more people have learned about climate change and its supposed causes and effects, the more they have smelled a rat and seen that the claims have not matched the reality. Many people are smart enough to spot a scam when they see one. Those who allow themselves to be taken in tend to be those who desperately want to believe and ignore any evidence that runs contrary to their faith.

It is not just the deceit and dishonesty revealed by the leak of information that became known as Climategate that has seen global warming / climate change / global climatic disruption* (delete as appropriate) drop off the radar. It is the fact that blogs and social media are giving scientists who disagree with the AGW mantra a platform to explain why the alarmist claims do not add up. Perhaps that is why in their desperation the alarmists/warmists are becoming more open about their efforts to shut down the debate they previously claimed was over, and brainwash people with spin through the media. As the Spiegel piece makes clear:

A new kind of journalism: Climate activists have begun directing millions in funding into training programs for environmental journalists, with the goal of encouraging what’s known as “advocacy journalism.” This type of reporting is “pretty much dead in Europe,” says Markus Lehmkuhl, a media expert at Berlin’s Free University. British science journalist Alexander Kirby warns that journalists who remain neutral on the issue could endanger the cause of climate protection, but many of his colleagues refuse to take sides. The Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, for example, fears that the line between science journalism and advertising could become blurred. Owen Gaffney, director of communications at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, advises that, rather than leaving reporting about climate change to the media, scientists should establish their own media outlets, preferably online. “We have more credibility than journalists and we need to take advantage of that,” Gaffney says.

This is clear confirmation of the huge financial resources that have been devoted to the alarmist cause and acceptance that shameful bias has been the order of things unofficially for some time. Just look at the vexatious BBC-Guardian axis, the New York Times, Spiegel itself and almost all African media and you will see naked bias through the omission of opposing views and the absence of any kind of challenge of the hypothesis. Big money and vested interests are trying to perpetuate a fraud using public money and resources.

While this is not news to anyone who has watched the climate change debate over the years, this unheralded transparency is valuable in that it proves to people the media is not in any way impartial or even handed. It is a propaganda tool that is trying to push an agenda on people while desperately trying to keep them in ignorance of the significant counter arguments. The truth is the media cannot and should not be trusted.

ConservativeHome buries its head in the sand

It bodes ill for grassroots conservatives if their main online venue for discussion and sharing their views is using its recently applied moderation process to censor reasoned comments that are critical of the government and ConservativeHome itself.

It is true I comment on the site less frequently than before, but this post yesterday was deserving of a response. I duly submitted my response to Melanchthon which was displayed by the moderators. By following that link and clicking on ‘show more comments’ you can see the replies to my comment.  One of the replies, by ‘Pauline Smith’ stood out for the serious and disturbing point it made – but one of the regular commenters on the site, ‘SuperBlue’, made one of his frequent dismissals of anything that does not register with his sycophantic fanatacism and unquestioning approval of anything and everything Cameron and the Conservative Party say and do:

This is the stock response from ‘SuperBlue’. If someone says something critical of the Conservatives they are either UKIP, a ‘troll’ or as in this case they are pretending to be in difficulty and do not actually ‘exist’.

There are far too many people for whom the Pauline Smith experience is reality. At the heart of this is the energy and climate change policy of this and the previous government. So I submitted another comment to make this point.

My follow up comment covered SuperBlue’s track record of prostrating himself before anything and everything Team Cameron say and do so that his comment was put in its proper context, how Chris Huhne and David Cameron’s policies will make Britain’s energy the most expensive (and inefficient) in the western world and drive millions of people into fuel poverty – something not one MP will experience – and that it was about time ConservativeHome, which has adopted an increasingly tabloid style recently, did the grassroots a favour and focused its attention on the effects of this government’s energy and climate change policy and hold their party colleagues to account.

The comment has been moderated out. Other comments submitted today – including from SuperBlue in the same part of the thread – have been published. It seems dealing with weighty matters of major national interest are now beyond ConservativeHome and instead we can expect more of this highbrow stuff. Such home truths seems to have made the editors somewhat uncomfortable and prompted censorship, despite the comment being in no way abusive or containing bad language. An email has been sent to Tim Montgomerie asking why the comment has been withheld.

EU spin machine moving into another gear

The ‘party line’ is the order of the day for the EU in 2011.

Stephen Fidler, writing in the Wall Street Journal, explains that at the top of the European leaders’ new year resolutions is ‘promising to stay on message’. In other words, leaders and officials are being told to shut up and only sing from the Brussels approved hymnal. It is a recipe for deceit that will widen the gulf between the political elite and the people they are determined hide the truth from.

Fidler provides an anecdote that neatly summarises what communication from the EU will look like in the future:

It used to be quite common for politicians to say one thing to audiences at home and something quite different abroad. The Brazilians have a saying for it: só para inglês ver. It literally means “Only for the English to see” but it’s used to describe things said or done for show where the underlying reality is quite different. It is said to have derived from the 19th century when the British were clamping down on the slave trade, and the Brazilian government (which did not abolish slavery until 1888) pretended to be helping them.

In the example, the role of latter day Brazilians will be played by the EU and the deceived English will be played by the ordinary people of the member states, who be told the party line rather than the truth. This is not about better communication, it is about controlling the flow of information to keep people in the dark. We will only hear what Brussels wants us to hear.

It is an abuse of power by the political elite in its determination to avoid being held to account or accept the wishes of the people. It is neither democratic nor acceptable. But this is what will come to pass unless people wake up and resist what amounts to a concerted effort to enslave us within a new bureaucratic order over which we will have no control.

Update: Witterings From Witney weighs in, observing that the Heads of Member States are just confirming that they are no longer in charge of their country’s destiny.

Silencing Gilfoyle is an outrageous injustice

After 18 years behind bars, found guilty of a murder he has always maintained he did not commit, Eddie Gilfoyle has been allowed out of prison on parole. However, he has only been allowed out on condition that he does not comment on the case.

Last year, police investigation notes that the Merseyside force had always maintained did not exist, were uncovered. They showed that the doctor who declared Mrs Gilfoyle dead told police that she had died six hours earlier – when her hospital porter husband was at work. Paula Gilfoyle had been discovered dead by hanging and there was a suicide note. The police detectives working on the case argued that Gilfoyle had tricked his wife into writing the suicide note, convinced her to put a noose around her neck and climb a step ladder, and then pushed her to her death.

The information that the time of death coincided with Eddie Gilfoyle being at work was withheld from the jury and never mentioned during his trial. Clearly they would have cast reasonable doubt on his guilt. So they were conveniently left out, which is a travesty of justice.

But the injustice continues with this news that the Parole Board made it a condition of Gilfoyle’s parole licence that he must not comment to the media, either himself or via a third party. Who the hell do these people think they are? Presumably they will argue this is for Gilfoyle’s own good, but you can be certain their motives will be entirely selfish. No one must have their freedom of speech curtailed in this way.

There are safeguards under the law to deal with incitement to violence or slander. It is perfectly proper that there should be. But there is absolutely no justification to silence a man, whose conviction was demonstrably unsafe, from speaking about it. It is an outrageous injustice, a wrongful infrigement of liberty and an example of the censorious nature of bureaucrats in this supposed democracy.

Justice must be done but it must also be seen to be done. But increasingly we are seeing people prevented to telling their story in order to protect the establishment from scrutiny and embarrassment. There is this current instance and there are many instances, as Christopher Booker keeps highlighting, such as families that have been ripped apart as their children have been taken from them in kangaroo court hearings who are similarly gagged from speaking about their cases to suit the interests of the authorities.

This enforced silence is utterly wrong. The right of free people to speak to whomsoever they wish must be protected under the law. But instead the law is being used as a cudgel against the people rather than a protection for them. There is something rotten about a country whose officials abuse the law in order to withdraw the rights of others to suit their own ends or hide their failings. The self serving parasites who seek to operate with impuntiy in this way must be stopped if the people of this country are to be genuinely free.

First steps taken towards global information censorship

How best can we keep information to ourselves and prevent ordinary people exchanging it?

That is the question being asked by the global political class as the United Nations, now confirmed as an entity committed to global control, considers setting up an intergovernmental working group to ‘harmonise global efforts by policy makers to regulate the internet’.

Regulation. Censorship. Control. Repression.

As iTnews reports:

At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would to attempt to create global standards for policing the internet – specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.

The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for an “takeover” of the internet.

Of course they don’t want it to be seen as that, but that’s what it is. The political class has seen how the information age has brought with it the ability of ordinary people to scrutinise their behaviour and expose their actions. Politicians around the globe cannot stand any examination of what they do and resent the opportunity that has been provided for ordinary people to spread awareness and share information around the world in seconds at the click of a mouse, without state control or sanction.

Because states have different rules ordinary people have been able to shop around for locations in which to host data where freedom of speech is protected. The only way to exert control over what people can say, write, watch, listen to and read online is to have harmonised regulation that facilitates global control over what will be permitted to be shared around the ether and what will be censored because it is inconvenient to the politicians.

So here we are, just days after global climate change conference in Cancun where plans were being made for centralised UN control over the redistribution of money, learning that plans are being made for centralised UN control over internet content.

Is there anyone who still scoffs at the notion of a developing world order? One that is committed to eradicating democracy and using regional supranational entities, like the EU, as the local branches of its governance structure with power in the hands of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

If I had read this post elsewhere a couple of years ago I would have laughed at it and had visions of conspiracy theorists and foil hats. But the fact is the evidence is being presented openly like pieces of a jigsaw. On their own the pieces seem fairly inconsequential, but when put together to complete the picture you can see what is happening. Even then many people would tell themselves ‘oh that’s just ludicrous, don’t be so stupid’. It is not ludicrous, it is real and those of us who live in nominal democracies risk experiencing what it’s like living under complete state control.

This isn’t about the aims of secret societies, Freemasons, Illuminati or shadowy organisations. It is simply the aim of the self selecting political class and their well known financial backers and beneficiaries. It is happening openly in plain sight.