How many of you reading this were abused by Jimmy Savile? Few if any, I would hazard. And while I don’t wish to play down the misery wrought over four or more decades by that loathsome perve, the BBC scandal I’m about to describe has resulted in damage, pain and destruction far more widespread than anything Savile managed.
It may have affected you, for example, if: you’ve had your view ruined and your property value trashed by a wind farm; you’re one of the 2,700 people killed in Britain last year by fuel poverty; you can’t get a job; you’ve lost your job; you’re skint; your kids can’t sleep because they’re so worried about the pets that are going to be drowned by the carbon monster; you’ve ever wondered why occasionally — even once would be nice — the BBC doesn’t make a programme about ‘climate change’ which isn’t relentlessly alarmist.
There’s a reason for all this — one that the BBC has spent six years trying to conceal. The story goes back to a seminar, held in January 2006, where the BBC (to quote one of its own reports) gathered ‘the best scientific experts’ who concluded that ‘the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus’ on anthropogenic climate change.
To give you an idea of the effect this conference had on the BBC’s programming, here is a sample from 2006: 24 May — David Attenborough launches ‘Climate Chaos’ season with a two-part documentary, Are We Changing Planet Earth? (his pained, breathy, earnest conclusion: YES!); 28 May — Songs of Praise — Sally Magnusson visits an environmental project in Oxford that has made a real difference to the local community; 28 May — Test the Nation — Know Your Planet: Are you aware of climate and environmental issues?; 6 June — Five Disasters Waiting To Happen: a study of potential climate disaster scenarios in London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Paris and Tuvalu; 2 June — The Money Programme spends a week with a family in Teesdale, the area with the UK’s highest CO2 emissions per capita; 6 June Panorama: Climate Chaos — Bush’s Climate of Fear.
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