A Place to Stand

I have received this response from Ofcom to my complaint on Tuesday
-------------------------------
Thank you for contacting Ofcom.



We’ve noted your concerns about unbalanced reporting recently.



With regards to the BBC output you referred to, while the Ofcom Broadcasting Code does contain rules relating to accuracy and impartiality, under the terms of the Communications Act these rules do not apply to BBC services – such matters are, ultimately, regulated by the BBC Trust. If you have not done so already, any concerns about this matter should be addressed directly to the BBC itself. The BBC's single point of contact for viewers and listeners complaints in the first instance is:

BBC

PO Box 1922, Glasgow, G2 3WT

Tel: 03700 100 222 www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

We will be happy to review your concerns about the Classic FM coverage you referred to if you could confirm the date of the broadcast in question.

Yours sincerely
Alistair Hall
-----------------------------

Thank you Mr Hall. I have taken your advice & sent complaints 2-6 to the BBC as well. The broadcast by Classic FM referred to under the title Complaint 7 - CLASSIC FM 10 AM took place at 10 AM on the same day as the date of the previous complaint ie Tues 22nd July (which was 2 before the email making the complaint).

You make no mention of investigating the first complaint Complaint 1 - Channel 4 news 7.30 which took place, as described, on the previous day at 7.30.

I look forward to your judgement which hopefully will not take as much detailed investigation & therefore time as the Warming Swindle one but will be settled according to the same standards.

I also wish to add a further complaint

ITN News at Ten 10.00 Tuesday 22nd July
ITN broadcast their "concentration camp" video, with statements from its creator Penny Marshall, saying specifically that it proved that Karadzic's regime had run concentration camps.

For balance ITN should have mentioned ITN vs LM Magazine wherein the judge told the jury to make their decision on the basis that pictures shown had been fabricated, though it was LM's duty to prove that Ms Marshall & ITN had not fabricated it accidentally.

The judge's remark "Ian Williams, Penny Marshall, and her camera crew openly contradict themselves if they say they did not realize they were surrounded by the old barbed wire fence" when producing a film that appeared to show her & the crew outside the fence & thus incorrectly show the camp's inhabitants as being inside it. This should have been included along with their testimony on oath that they had fabricated it accidentally & would not have allowed it to be broadcast in such a way as to suggest it could show a concentration camp if they had noticed that that is what it did.

Since a judge is, by definition, not representative of the other side it would also have been proper to have interviewed somebody on the other side who could mention the apparent contradiction between ITN & Ms Marshall saying, under oath, they had not meant to produce a fake impression this was a concentration camp & their now, years after the truth was proved in court, making precisely that claim.

------
I have also had a letter from Ofcom saying that my previous complaint - about C4 having stated they were "going to report all sides" in a discussion on warming & then have only 3 talking heads all on the warming side & no sceptic -was time expired.
---------------------------------
I have sent complaints 2-6 to the BBC saying the "BBC clearly breached such rules by not permitting those on the other side to speak. I assume you do not publicly support greater bias" than Ofcom.
--------------------------------
Further responses & judgements will be reported here.

The SNP took this seat despite it being the 3rd safest Labour seat in Scotland & in the heart of Labour's traditional heartland in Glasgow.

SNP 11,277 last 18,775
Labour 10,915 ------5,268
Tory 1,639 ------2,135
Lib Dem 915 ------3,665

I think the lesson of Glasgow East is not about policy or presentation but about party organisation. The turnout in the middle of the Glasgow Fair when much of the population is away, should have been abysmal. Instead it was only slightly down on the general election, though by-elections are always considerably lower. What that means is that somebody got their vote out. The constituency was hoaching with SNP workers (& posters) while Labour workers were thin on the ground & a high proportion of them were MPs. This in the centre of Labour’s Glasgow heartland were Labour activism used to be almost a tribal rite.

Like a large company which increases its profits by getting rid of its workers & hiring Chinese & eventually finds it is nothing but a brand name, Labour, over the last 11 years has hollowed out its supporters & is now little but a brand name. The SNP’s victory is a triumph for old fashioned party workers knocking on doors. As such it is a very good thing for democracy even though I disagree with their main policy.

The other disaster was for the Lib Dems. All the smaller parties got squeezed because there was a real contest this time rather than all the opposition parties going through the motions almost equally. The Tory vote dropped slightly even as a proportion of turnout. Nonetheless it is good for the Tories because it suggests in seats where they are the challenger to Labour they may expect success.

However the LibDem result was catastrophic. They have lost 3 out of 4 votes from being in a not disgraceful 3rd place. This is even worse since it is generally agreed that their candidate put on the best performance. At the last Westminster election they got their vote rose to 2nd place in Scotland & were widely seen as the more progressive & innovative part of the governing coalition (not so difficult when the other side were Scottish Labour). Now they are barely in the game.

The LDs embraced greenery & nanny statism & distanced themselves from economic liberalism even more thoroughly than Labour, going for the literally insane objective of 100% windmillery, & have justly paid the price. To quote Benny Peiser of CCNet

There are many good reasons for the deterioration of the centre-left's political influence and power. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the abandonment of their traditional core value of progressive optimism. After all, the left used to derive large amounts of its popular appeal from a firm belief in social and technological advancement, a political philosophy of societal optimism and hope. During the last couple of decades, however, it has eagerly adopted a green ideology that has replaced its confidence in future progress with the ever more intimidating prediction of climate catastrophe and environmental disaster, culminating in calls for economic sacrifices and collective belt-tightening.

In short, Britain's Labour Party has discarded its "progressive" principles for environmental fear-mongering and salvationist rhetoric in the expectation that voters would accept that only government control, central planning and higher taxes could prevent global disaster.

Jerry Pournelle had been having a discussion on numbers of people killed by religion Vs those killed by atheists. He listed Hitler Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot as atheist mass murderers & that the number killed by the latter exceeds all of those killed in the name of religion. This created some discussion over whether Hitler was an atheist or a Christian. Surfing I found this quote

Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, noted:

"The Fuhrer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race... Both [Judaism and Christianity] have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed."

http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id2.html

Of course this is only from the horse's assistants' mouth. but I suspect, insofar as he had a coherent continuous opinion over his period in power it is about right, though he (& the pope) went to some lengths to keep up appearances. Which is, after all, what many politicians do.

Any tally is distorted both ways in that (A) atheism is a relatively recent phenomenon whereas religions have had thousands of years to work up their tally but (B) population is so much larger now.

I incline to H Beam Piper's view that monotheistic religions are inherently less tolerant than those which already accept the existence of numerous Gods It is clear nobody has a monoploy on atrocity.
-----------------------------
On Biased BBC as part of an open thread an ex-British soldier who served in Bosnia wrote (Pounce 23rd 6.32pm), who while not stating Serb guilt gives these firsthand examples purely of Croat & Moslem atrocities:

"I unlike a lot of posters here was actually in country (Went out with the rapid reaction force) first of all in Ploce and then I moved up to GV. Let me get this straight The Serb did wrong. But so did the Croats and so did the Muslims.
For example ref Srebrenica what isn’t made that public is that while the Serbs at first respected the sanctuary of the town. What was happening was the idiots amongst the Muslims used to conduct hit and run attacks on the Serbs and then run back to the safety of the UN enclave. (Hang on its supposed to be a safe area) I’m not excusing the Serbs but there are two sides to every story.
When the Rapid reaction force landed we landed a load of 432 ambulances and they moved up country. Imagine my shock when a few weeks later as I myself moved up country I saw the very same convoy parked outside GV in a straight line. The Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) or Muslims had set up a check point which consisted of a few young lads with guns , a few land mines and a wooden hut cafe which is where the squaddies used to find something to eat and drink. Only when the Yanks and NATO attacked the Serbs did the Muslims let them in.
In GV we had 2 major camps The British one and across town the UN one. (Sector south west) The town was split in two half Croat (Catholic) and half Muslim) When they weren’t fighting the Serbs the two used to fight amongst themselves. When I saw fight I mean with AK47s and buses of Croat school girls were a legitimate target.
The ARBiH used to steal UN vehicles and paint them green so as to fill their MT pool . This was usually done at gun point. Many an Aid worker had to be sent home as after having a gun stuck in their face they wanted out. When the vehicles needed servicing or had something break (like a flat tire) they would abandon them on the road and steal another.
The UN paid a bunch of locals to remove our rubbish from camp. We followed them one day and watched how they just emptied it all in the river. The Muslim secret police had as their interrogation rooms a building which looked over the river. Their victims were simply thrown out of the window.
On patrol we came across a village in which the Muslim half had forced all their Croat neighbours into their church and set fire to it. Anybody who tried to leave was shot. When we asked them why?
(And I was attached to an RMP patrol at the time) They said “The secret police told us to do so” That isn’t second hand that is what I heard from our interpreters lips.
Oh and we had the Muhajadeen in country . They used to prance around with pink ribbons in their hair and used to piss us off by having really loud call to prayers first thing in the morning and last thing at night. (Not a good thing to do with a camp of knackered squaddies armed with rifles and trying to sleep.)
There are loads more stories like that I can recollect . But before we only castigate the Serbs. (And yes Karadzic is a cock.) lets us not forget that the other two parties are just as bad. Also the rumination by both the UN and the EU helped send many people to their deaths. A stance which is still extant in Sudan.
pounce | 23.07.08 - 6:32 pm | #

-------------------------

Ewan Watt says he has voted for me in 7th place for the Top 110 Political Blogs in Britain. I'm very flattered.

If you fancy voting, drop an email to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
--------------------------

Oliver Kamm won't be voting for me. Yesterday I put a comment on a thread of his about Karadzic. Not only did he delete it on the grounds that I am a "racist nutter" whose remarks about the ITN "concentration camp" video had been disproved by the libel case but today's post says that I will not be able to comment there again. His right & he has a record of not permitting posts that dispute, although to be fair most, of the subsequent comments on that thread don't agree with him.

His post today undertakes to prove how dreadful Karadzic is. The evidence amounts to an alleged & unwittnessed quote presented by somebody Kamm approves of & the fact that Richard Holbrooke (former US ambassador & who said the day before one of the Sarajevo mortar attacks which the Molsem Nazis staged on their own people, that such an attack was needed to justify US bombing), Ed Vuliamy (part of Penny Marshall's team that "accidentally faked" the concentration camp video) & the Independent all say he is bad. His final evidence that Karadzic is the devil incarnate is that I support him.

Well Ollie since you don't accept replies:

Calling me a racist is merely the very highest standard of honesty of which you are capable, ie a lie. If I am a nutter then the fact that on no occasion have you felt able to dispute anything I have said with facts rather than censorship, doesn't speak well for your own grasp on reality. You lied about what the ITN-LM trial decided. The judge was quite clear, as the quote I posted yesterday shows, that LN were factually right about ITN having faked the video, that Ms Marshall & co haing "contradicted themselves" in their testimony & that the only reason ITN should win was because it had proved impossible for LM to provide proof that ITN had done so with intent.

The fact that ITN rebroadcast the footage on Tuesday, repeating the claim that it was a concentration camp despite having a judicial ruling that this was a lie may now remove any doubt.

Mr Kamm I do not believe you are a fool. The only alternative is that, in supporting the likes of Tudjman, Izetbegovic & the KLA you are knowingly & deliberately lying to support Nazis who have engaged in genocide & worse (I did not until recently believe there could be worse than genocide). You do this often for money. There are names for such people but I would not wish to insult ladies of the night with the comparison.

Reporting on the arrest of Karadzic last night the ITN news showed their notorious concentration camp film again. They said that it was genuine & proved that Karadzic had been running concentration camps & even wheeled on Penny Marshall to say how good it was.

The only problem is that ITN know & indeed have accepted that it was a lie albeit an allegedly "accidental" one. In the ITN-LM trial ITN, in the names of its reporters, sued LM magazine for reprinting an article, previously published in Germany, saying that the film had been faked. What appears above to be people being held behind barbed wire, as would be necessary in a concentration camp, were actually on the outside of an electric transformer compound ITN's crew had entered to "accidentaly" film them thus.

ITN essentially relied for their defence not on saying that people really were behind the barbed wire but that they had not noticed what they were doing. The judge was helpful:

But isn't it clear, after examining the unedited pictures and the bundle of photographs from Mr. Deichmann, that before the [Bosnian] Civil War the area surrounding the garage…and the electrical transformer was fenced in? This fence was made up of tall metal posts on the top of which was fastened barbed wire and below ordinary wire mesh. It had a gate to the east bound street. Ian Williams, Penny Marshall, and her camera crew openly contradict themselves if they say they did not realize they were surrounded by the old barbed wire fence....' Judge Morland then said: 'But does this matter at all to the case?' He reminded the members of the jury what this Libel case was about. The central question which the jury had to decide on was: In the eyes of the court did LM lie when it said that the ITN reporters deliberately published a misleading photo?"

By telling the jurors that, based on the unusual British libel law, they should decide for ITN unless they were convinced that ITN had deliberately misled the public, the judge set an impossibly high standard for LM.

However ITN have now disowned the accident defence. If, knowing the facts of the court case, ITN are repeating the lie that it was a concentration camp this casts doubt on whether it ever wasn't a deliberate lie.

The judge disallowed evidence that ITN had told her to find concentration camps or not to bother coming back so they could not use this in deciding whether she was or was not perjuring herself when saying that it was an accident. The claim last night, that the film showed a concentration camp clearly shows perjury credible.

The linked article expresses surprise that LM did not appeal. I am merely speculating & have not talked to anybody from LM or its successor Spiked but it is reasonable to assume that what happened was that ITN offered a non-disclosure deal whereby LM were not forced to pay costs so long as they didn't appeal or continue campaigning on Yugoslavia. I couldn't blame them for accepting. If there was a combined legal & damages bill for £675,000 that is a pretty horrible millstone to lay on anybody & if ITN ended up picking up that bill this was a victory of sorts. Certainly nobody in LM seems to have declared bankruptcy, as was widely predicted at the time & Spiked, while producing a large number of intelligent & well thought out politically incorrect articles have noticeably declined to mention Yugoslavia since then, even today.

Fortunately for me the European Human Rights Convention has been incorporated into British law since then, as it was in Germany when the original article was published & ITN didn't sue. This convention guarantees in Sect 10

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference

which means so long as something is information ie factual it can be said. It is a condemnation of British alleged liberties that it required a European convention to allow freedom of speech in this country.

Hopefully the police will show as much interest in the accuracy of Ms Marshall & her compatriot's testimony about accident, in light of their & ITN's repetition of their claims, as they have in Mr Sheriden's infinitely less important activities.

UPDATE - 6.00pm Spiked have put up an article. It is tame by my standards & more importantly by theirs on other subjects. It makes a point of saying "Neither I nor anybody else at spiked supports Karadzic". It also says the reason Spiked have barely mentioned the Yugoslav wars since is because they aren't interested.

It was announced that Radovan Karadzic was arrested last night. Unlike Nasir Oric the perpetrator of the only undisputed mass racial murder of civilians in Srebrenica, who was let off, Mr Karadzic will undoubtedly face a show trial.

Nonetheless, as Milosevic proved even a show trial is difficult to manage when there is no evidence. This is why, after 4 1/2 years of "trial" his captors, clearly knowing the judge's reluctance to convict on zero evidence but also having been told they would decide not to allow him medical treatment in Russia, poisoned him. This would have been unprovable had he not had a blood test showing the presence of Rifampicine.

Karadzic has been subject to 18 years of a racist propaganda campaign by virtually the entire western media.

He was accused of starting the Bosnian war though this was a lie. In fact it was the openly genocidal (ex-)Nazi Moslem leader Izetbegovic who first broke the law by seizing government buildings when the rotating Presidency of B&H turned to Karadzic. It was also the Moslems who fired the first shot by shooting up an Orthodox wedding outside Sarajevo. Neither of these were considered war crimes by the NATO funded hirelings of the ICTY.

He was accused by our media of holding 90,000 women in "rape camps". In fact the only such place that can be dignified with such a description was in the Moslem controlled area of Sarajevo. It was not considered a war crime by the corrupt Nazis of the ICTY.

Our media accused him of being responsible for the war continuing. In fact he repeatedly, when winning, agreed to cease fires & peace talks with the Moslem Nazi forces. These talks were equally repeatedly broken by Izetbegovic as soon as he had been resupplied with weapons by NATO & soldiers provided by our al Quaeda allies & flown in by NATO, in deliberate breach of NATO sponsored mandatory UN sanctions. This was a war crime but was not treated as such by judges bought & paid for by NATO.

Our media accused him of the genocide of 7,000/7,500/9,000/11,000/15,0000 Moslem soldiers in the capture of Srebrenica. In fact the only genocide which happened there was that of at least 3,800 identified Serb civilians in surrounding villages murdered by Nasir Oric, the Moslem Nazi commander of the town who subsequently showed videos of him beheading women & children to reporters. Only the Toronto Star & Washington Post made minor reports of this. Despite the fact that there is no dispute about this & even General Morrilon the NATO commander in B&H at the time testified to it in the Milosevic "trial". Obviously this genocide wasn't considered a war crime by NATO's lickspittles on the ICTY, indeed they didn't even consider such genocide of "Untermensch" worth mentioning.

Our media have lied continuously & deliberately about what may be called the ever changing but "official" massacre story. The story was started by Izetbegovic who has said that he had been guaranteed US support if he could come up with a story of a massacre of at least 5,000. He immediately did so claiming that none of the Srebrenica garrison of 7,500 had reached safety. The Red cross subsequently confirmed that at least 7,000 of them had, usually being instantly transferred to the Tuzla front & prevented from writing even to their families. The US then produced before & after satellite photos of "mass graves" said to be taken 24 hours apart. In one it was pointed out that an entire house had also been built in the intervening 24 hours. Shortly before the Dayton agreement allowed NATO to go looking for bodies they started backpedalling on finding them & indeed the official "mass graves" contained none. However NATO did find bodies near the villages where Nasir had carried out his genocide & they were announced to be Moslem soldiers, even the 500 bodies of children. Obviously bodies classified by NATO as Serb have never been found. DNA measuring has advanced so much in the last 13 years that it is now possible to determine ethnicity. The hired Nazis of the ICTY has refused to engage in such testing or allow others to.

There is no factual doubt that the case against Karadic, for war crimes, is far weaker not only than that against almost all NATO politicians & journalists, who are certainly guilty but against the tea ladies in Labour, Lib Dem & Tory HQs & the canteens of the BBC, ITN & most of the press since they are all thus involved in the "joint criminal conspiracy" (to use a term beloved by NATO's paid "judges") of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, child sex enslavement, genocide & the dissection of living people to sell their organs which NATO & our media assisted in.

In the last few hours we have seen the media telling the same old lies over again & they will doubtless continue in the same vein. I can say from experience that almost the entire western press will not allow even a single truthful letter to apear on their pages. However the internet is much freer & very much more omnipresent than in the 1990s. Open debates on the net, such as the one done by Jurist some years ago, have almost all resulted in an overwhelming conclusion that the MSM have lied to us to support genocide for 18 years.

Dear Sir,
Following your judgement that the Global Warming Swindle failed to adhere to your rules about impartiality & particularly in line with section 5.12 "an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes" I wish to follow up my complaint of Sunday, to which astonishingly you have made no response, with the following from the last 17 hours.

Complaint 1 - Channel 4 news 7.30 - Though the programme accused Mugabe's followers of violence & torture & a commentator from the opposing side was interviewed nobody from the government side was.

Complaint 2 - BBC 10 O'CLOCK NEWS - Reporting the Warming Swindle programme the BBC started by mentioning that the programme had not interviewed the IPCC or Sir David King & only near the end mentioned that Ofcom had found the scientific parts of the programme (1-4 of 5) accurate. They interviewed one alarmist spokesman (from the Royal Society) but not anybody on the other side. In particular Professor Singer who was criticised for saying King said something which Hansard also says he said should have been allowed to reply. This is particularly outrageous since this is the very activity that they are reporting that has been censured by you.

Complaint 3 - BBC 10 O'CLOCK NEWS - - Reported on Zimbabwe, accusing Mugabe of murder & interviewing an MDC spokesman but not a ZANU one.

Complaint 4 - SCOTTISH NEWS BBC 1 10.30 - Reporting on a proposed new windfarm they interviewed Alex Salmond who said, untruthfully, that this windfarm "could light up the city of Glasgow". In fact with perfect conditions & 100% capacity, instead of the 27% average capacity it could light up all the houses, so long as none of them had 2 bar electric fires or equivalent which only leaves the 2/3rds of energy used outside the home. No questioning of this claim was allowed. BBC then interviewed an Airtricity spokesman. Again no attempt to produce a "wide range" of views or even 1 sceptic was allowed.

Complaint 4 - NEWSNIGHT BBC 2 10.30 - Reporting on Zimbabwe a US state Dept spokesperson alone was interviewed. The US, of course, voted for sanctions against Zimbabwe on the ground that it was a threat to regional peace. No spokesman from either Russia or China, who voted down that resolution were interviewed. It is difficult to claim that the views of 2 of the 5 Security Council leaders are not "significant".

Complaint 5 - Newsnight BB" 2 10.30 - Reported on the capture of Radovan Karadzic claiming him as responsible for the "7,500 people who died at Srebrenica". This was both unbalanced & a misrepresentation of the facts since the only undisputed massacre there is of at least 3,800 Serb men, women & children (but mainly women & children since the men were in the army) in surrounding villages by Moslem forces.

Complaint 6 - Tuesday 22nd BBC Radio Scotland 7.30 on - Reporting on the capture of Karadzic the BBC put out nearly a dozen soundbites/interviews all with people claiming him guilty of crimes. Obviously if this was ever intended to be a real trial the BBC would not have considered acting in such a prejudicial manner but even though it is merely to be a propaganda show trial they are still in breach of their duty that "wide range of significant views must be included" which obviously included innocence.

Complaint 7 - CLASSIC FM 10 AM - Interviewed Paddy Ashdown, a well known supporter of the openly genocidal Bosnian Moslem leader & former SS auxiliary whose coup prevented Karadzic performing his job as President, under the rotating presidency of Bosnia & Hercegovina. No attempt at balance by interviewing anybody from the other side.
-------------------------
I note that in a 17 hour period, watching/listening to only 1 channel at a time I have found 7 instances which clearly & indubitably breach the guidelines as you have interpreted them. It must be assumed that over a full day & all channels it must be at least double that & over a year you are thus going to have to issue 5,000 critical reports. You have my felicitations in that process since it is clear this will be an arduous task.

Of course if Ofcom's job was not the one it claims but merely to ensure that the broadcast media continue to be a fascist propaganda arm of government willing to tell absolutely any lie & distort any news in a racist &/or unscientific way your job would be much easier.

I look forward to your response & action this day.

A prompt response or Hell freezing over will be reported

Ofcom has found Channel 4 in breach of the following rule set out in the Broadcasting Code

Rule 7.1: “Broadcasters must avoid unjust or unfair treatment of individuals or organisations in programmes.”;

Ofcom’s investigation found that that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the former Government Chief Scientist, Sir David King and Professor Carl Wunsch were treated unfairly in the programme. In particular, the programme made some significant allegations without offering an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond. In the case of Sir David King, the programme makers also criticised him for comments he did not make.

Ofcom also found Channel 4 in breach of:

Rule 5.11: “….due impartiality must be preserved on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy…”; and

Rule 5.12: “In dealing with matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes. Views and facts must not be misrepresented”.

...Ofcom did not find parts one to four of the programme, which focused on the scientific debate about the causes of global warming, in breach of the Code.

....Ofcom considers that it is important, in line with the right to freedom of expression, that broadcasters continue to produce challenging and controversial programmes, so long as they comply with the Code.

I suppose the last paragraph shows they have a sense of humour.

I have sent in my complaint mentioned yesterday to Ofcom. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/progs/specific/?itemid=286480 for anybody who finds a programme which they think fails to provide a "wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme". I haven't yet heard from them but doubtles they will issue an adjudication against C4 within a few hours - at least if rules apply equally to the politically incorect as to the PC.

It isn't just China that is building lots of new coal powered plants. So is Russia & so, more remarkably, are the Gulf States. Exporting oil & importing coal.

Abu Dhabi (largest of the seven UAE emirates) has announced that it will switch to coal-fired power plants. Dubai (the second largest) is already building four of them – with a combined output of 4,000 megawatts

......They have opted for coal for a single compelling reason: cost. They can produce a megawatt-hour of electricity using Australian coal, Der Spiegel calculates, for $17.49 (U.S.). Using natural gas, the cost rises to $41.34. Using oil, the cost rises further to $79.50. At the same time, they can sell their oil on the global market for something approaching (or occasionally exceeding) $140 a barrel.

That is remarkably cheap. 1.75c or 0.9p a unit. It even compares favourably with French nuclear at 1.3p a unit though the French figure is years old so I suspect it can be improved on & shifting Australian coal to the UK would be more expensive than the trip to the Gulf. Meanwhile Britain's coal costs 2.5p a unit, onshore wind 5.4p & offshore 7.2p & I suspect that because the cost of doing anything here is higher even the cheapest coal generation here would not undercut nuclear. But it is certainly, economically, a runner.

Dubai's (population 1.3 million) new output of 4 Gigawatts is about 2/3rds of Scotland's which means it will be more than all of ours when Hunterston, Torness & our high emission plants close. The relationship between electricity production & GNP is well accepted. At this rate we are going to see Europe turn into a 3rd world area, entirely because of its deliberate embracing of eco-fascism.

How long before the Luddites, whose hatred of nuclear exceeds their general hatred for everything manmade, start telling us that to prevent global cooling we must build not nuclear but coal plants to pour as much CO2 as possible into the air. At least that would not be as economically insane as their current views.

Story found on Al Fin

Ofcom's finding on whether the Great Global Warming Swindle film was right is to be published tomorrow so the papers are reporting it yesterday.

The headline story is that they get censured. Buried further down is that they don't get censured for any factual inaccuracy:

But the broadcaster will not be censured over a second complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, with Ofcom finding that it did not mislead the public

The censure then is for:

(A) one participant, Professor Wunsch, wants out because he has clearly found what he said while in no way untrue was not career enhancing

(B) the IPCC complain that they weren't given time on the programme to put their viewpoint despite the fact that they were asked & refused to appear

Ofcom is expected to find that the programme made significant allegations against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, questioning its credibility and failed to offer it timely and appropriate opportunity to respond.

Channel 4 argues that the organisation refused to cooperate with the programme-makers.

Even had they not been asked to appear this would still be a corrupt decision. That is unless Ofcom are about to issue thousands of reports criticising the media for every occasion the warming claim has been broadcast without inviting a sceptic to say why it is rubbish. Also on numerous other "news" items such as anything to do with Yugoslavia. Indeed I am so inspired by this decision that I am going to put in a complaint about the lack of any scepticism in a C4 discussion of the Sterns Report where it was specifically promised:

"Despite this on Channel 4 News last night John Snow, while reporting on the Stern Report said that "we are going to hear from all sides of the argument" which turned out to be David Miliband, George Monbiott & somebody who hoped the new taxes wouldn't hurt too much."

Ofcom's response, if any, will be published.

(C) "In the closing moments of the program a voice over from the climate change sceptic Fred Singer claimed that the Chief Scientist of the UK had said that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the planet would be in the Antarctic and that “humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic”.

Sir David has never made such a statement."

This is an out & out deliberate lie. Sir David did indeed make that statement as can be seen from this report in the Independent 2nd May 2004.

Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

......He said that the Earth was entering the "first hot period" since 60 million years ago, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The shock warning - one of the starkest yet delivered by a top scientist or senior government figure

......"No ice was left on earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said. And Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by the end of the century".

Difficult to be more clear than that. If the Indie was fabricating their story in 2004 the time for him to have denied it was when it came out. He did not deny having said it then because it was a truthful report & it is clearly a lie for him to claim it now.

Incidentally I have reported previously on how the former editor of Nature said Sir David had proved himself, by his Antarctica claim, capable of only a "kindergarten analysis" the learned scientist/ass Jeff Harvey had failed to notice that the claim he was criticising had come not from me but from the government's chief science advisor but since science is about the facts not the prominence of the people discussing them he would doubtless be equally happy to say it to Sir D's face

Compare & contrast with Al Gore's film where a judge decided that 11 or 13 facts (depending on how you count them), amounting to almost every claim he made about warming leaving only his picture & incidental music, were lies. He also had refused space to opponents, indeed the egregious Al has never been willing to publicly debate any of his claims & an obedient media has given him massive coverage while ensuring he never had to. Had Al ever been required to allow the opposing views Ofcom claim to believe necessary he would never have been heard of, which I grant may not be an argument against such rules.

Obviously from now on any media will have no choice but to offer airtime/column inches to sceptics on the warming & indeed other subjects if they intend to claim any remote shred of impartiality (as out TV are required to) & Ofcom will come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who doesn't.

Assuming Ofcom are an honest & impartial monitoring organisation & not merely enforcers of government propaganda that is.