I couldn't quite get my head around the BBC hysteria about the 'leaked' emails from Panama, which seem to show lots of nasty rich people doing naughty things with their money.

Climategate taught us that 'leaked' emails have no validity at all - didn't it?

They'll be taken out of context. "Vlads trick to hide the money" will be taken as meaning Vlad was using the accounts to hide money when we know from the CRU it is an innocent way of saying you're being perfectly honest.

Mann's supporters were very keen on the idea of Commies/Fascists/Big Oil/Somebody/Anybody etc etc being behind Climategate. This leak proves them right.

Mann may even use it as justification for another 5 years delay, before he decides on his favourite excuse.

Strangely The Grauniad's article...
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/03/offshore-secrets-offshore-tax-haven
.. doesn't mention it's own tax-avoidance.

e.g. GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited, registered in the Cayman Islands, owned by the Guardian Media Group.

http://order-order.com/2016/04/04/media-organisations-using-offshore-havens/

Rudolph Hucker, it is clearly proven that the Guardian have an automatic, God given right to immunity from allegations of hypocrisy. Their offshore Bank Accounts and tax affairs prove this.

Interestingly, the Guardian is not worried about sealevel rise damaging their financial assets. Their offshore bank must have underground vaults, on stilts.

Radical Rodent, if their money gets wet, it will have to be relaundered. Swiss bank accounts seem a safe bet, some were untouched by two world wars, and remain untouched to this day.

GC, and Swiss bank accounts are also a long away above sea level. The Guardian seems to have missed a trick.

C'mon guys, you're slacking off. Ten whole days and no more gratuitous attacks on the BBC or The Guardian. You're losing your touch.

Mike Jackson

I did mean here on this dedicated attack thread.

O.K. substitute "mild rebuke" for "attack" if you must.

Alan Kendall
OK, any newspaper that gives George Monbiot column inches on a regular basis isn't worth reading.

SandyS.

Sorry, too feeble, gets a D+ (requires more effort).

I enjoy the occasional Moonbat tirade; it's like reading a funnies page. Very, very occasionally he has something interesting to say.

Alan Kendall, if you search the discussions list you can find a separate BBC Bias thread which people like me and Stewgreen contribute to. I have largely stopped because the BBC supply of global warming-based drivel is almost continuous. And that's just the website. I would probably break about five windows per week if I spent much time listening to Radio 4 these days.

In the short term, probably the only thing that will make them stop is if nobody reads them any more. (I think quite a few alarmist blog sites, mentioning no names, probably get a significant amount of traffic from skeptics. More than they deserve.)

Matt McGrath at the BBC was at it again the other day, having dug up a study which 'shows' that declines in Moose numbers early last century were not actually due to hunting but, wait for it.....a changing climate. And that is why they are increasing now (presumably not because we shoot less of them now). Who knows, it may even be true. Or perhaps we drove off the wolves that predate on the Moose calves (Alaskans have told me that Moose like to shelter near humans because the wolves won’t follow them so near human habitation). Either way, the BBC 'thinking', and I use the term pejoratively, is almost always one way and completely unquestioning. About twice a year they will slip in something different, probably just to keep their asses covered. Thus while the Moose story might actually seem to be good news, they still manage to describe “moose encroaching on endemic creatures”, which obviously sounds bad.

There's probably already someone,somewhere, 'proving' that deforestation isn't actually caused by men with chain saws, but by increased carbon dioxide. When it becomes part of the "peer reviewed literature", the BBC Environment and Science and Environment and Environment section will be all over it like a tramp on chips. It's probably also much cheaper than paying real journalists.

Michael,

don't you achieve joyfulness from venting your spleen?

Just think who would suffer in the event that Radio 4 ceased to exist, or in your terms got "better". Stories like the moose just make me smile (sometimes turns into a wince).

Since I retired I find Radio 4 a wonder, so many different programmes on so many different subjects. It's like being back at school. The only area where I think it fails is comedy (excepting Friday nights) and Just a minute sends me up the wall. I don't listen to Any questions and Any answers (I would probably join you in defenestration if I were forced to listen to them).

Alan, just to keep the blood pressure up, I'll relay this from Paul Homewood's Not A Lot Of People Know That, as prompted by Stewgreen. We’re All Going To Drown – BBC

It's got almost everything bad that the BBC global warming department specialises in. One might hope that these pieces become rarer as BBC cuts begin to bite because they are somewhat hidden from the front pages and not even presented as news. I am less optimistic because we know these days that the BBC develops other sources of funding (sometimes the EU), some of whom may well fund such 'educational' specials probably aimed at the school aged readers, whose teachers will be notified of it by the Guardian in the staff room.

Michael, are you using a down-filled pillow? I can hardly feel it.

Climate science items on the BBC are getting more risible. However, they do offer the possibility of observing how their side thinks and operates. I don't believe the BBC is any better or worse than other media. The lack of any balance is due to the BBC lacking direction from a scientifically informed and literate administration. They also have convinced themselves that the dissenting side doesn't matter, this belief being informed by expert opinion such as from the Royal Society.

What you object to about the BBC is not really of its own making. It's a symptom of a much greater malaise affecting society in general.

I used to wonder why the media failed to report on positive news stories that opposed gloom and doom climate orthodoxy. Then I realized such stories, if they ever do get out, are jumped upon by all and sundry. Society again.

Alan Kendall, 'bad news' stories sell well. Unfortunately, bad 'news stories' about stories about bad news, sell better, and are cheaper to make, as they are presented on a platter wrapped up as 'science'. Cue film library footage of a sun-dried/bleached Saharan goat skeleton, and a swimming polar bear, and it is highly dramatic stuff without any outside broadcast costs (or CO2)

The BBC can include it as part of their public information and education service.

Alan, sustained by the licence-fee system and implicit government support, the reach of the BBC is still greater than that of most, if all, global media empires. I certainly don't assert that it is all bad, but with it's privileged position comes extra responsibilities. The requirement to try and be impartial etc etc is laid down in its charter. When it comes to global warming they have espoused a believe and a cause and political support for actions in support in support of that cause.

Respected senior employees were utterly ignored:
Helen Boaden, former Director of BBC News:

"It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet."

Jeremy Paxman, the BBC presenter who made all British politicians quake in their boots:

"People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago"

The BBC's transgression of its charter is political, flagrant, disgraceful, and ongoing. They do not care. Their budget needs to be cut until they do care.

Re: the Panama Papers, follow the money following the money. Many tortuous turns descending into maelstroms of paranoia. There are many avenues of selection for investigation and revelation, some with motives obvious, many with motives unknown, unintended or unconscious. Certainly 'twill be so with the consequences.
==================

I knew whatever pleasure existed in provoking you all wouldn't last long. It's like stirring a stick in an ants nest, eventually there are too many stings and you have to retreat.

I do hope your wishes go unfilled. To me selling off the BBC, or drastically reducing its budget would be cultural suicide. If you got your way you would destroy what millions of us value and enjoy.

You join with others who wish to do the BBC harm, and I don't think you really should consort with them. They are the politicians (all parties) who accuse the BBC of bias, and the commercial interests who would dearly like to hobble it and acquire its more commercial assets.

You seem to blissfully ignore what the BBC does for the arts, much of it completely unprofitable but which keeps our culture alive. Without the BBC, the commercial media would be able to reduce this element to almost nothing. I would not wish to live in such a country.

I repeat my mantra, unless you have been forced to live without the BBC you cannot really appreciate it. I will support you in most things here, but not in this.

It's not pleasant to be a lone voice (I am surprised that no other BH contributor offers any support). I'll take my stick and poke it somewhere else for a time. But "I'll be back".

Alan Kendall, unless the BBC admits it has a problem, it can never address what is going wrong.

A bit like the EU "debate". The EU does not recognise it's own failings. Rather than the EU having a Europe wide consultation about what needs to be done to improve/correct the EU, it is destroying itself with arrogance, such that the UK and others, are forced into voting either Yes or No. There is no middle ground option to choose a 'reformed' EU.

Climate Science on the other hand, is completely the same. Incapable of self regulating, and too arrogant to accept criticism.

golf Charlie, the BBC does not believe it has a problem, and is reassured by those in power. It is concerned by those Tory MPs who threaten it at licence renewal. But it sees those as died in the wool capitalists who would dispatch the BBC for the profit of others. It believes it can see those off without suffering significant damage.

The BBC doesn't see you as a threat, it doesn't even recognize you. Frustrated you would tear it down, the good with the bad and in so doing join those with whom I suspect you would dispise even more.