BBC armageddon bollocks

Apparently, the Buttered New Potato told Nick Robinson that he was going to close down the BBC.

Mr Robinson said that while travelling on the bus, Mr Cameron dismissed a BBC story claiming that he had told Nick Clegg that the Tories would not win a majority as "rubbish" before adding: "I’m going to close them down after the election."

Mr Robinson yesterday told The Guardian: "What really matters is the impact it has on other people. Some people on the bus regarded it as funny but they generally didn’t work for the BBC. The people who did [work for the BBC] regarded it as yet another bit of pressure...

Oh, diddums.

... and a sort of sense of 'don’t forget who’s boss here'."

Hey, Nick—you know how you could really ensure that Dave couldn't say 'don’t forget who’s boss here'?

Yeah, that's right—by not using the law to force people to pay the Licence Fee. In this way, the government need not be your boss at all. Do you see?

So, unless you're going to do the decent thing and stop stealing people's money by force, might I recommend that you shut your hole?

Cheers.

Clarkson again...

And so Spiked! weighs in again on Clarkson, pointing out that this so-called offensive, racist oaf helped to propel Top Gear to be the most watched factual programme in the entire world.

When Clarkson’s suspension was announced, one of the first to express sadness was his Farsi voiceover, Mozaffar Shafeie, who helps to translate Top Gear for the benefit of the show’s multitude of viewers in Iran. As much as it might grate on the tender sensibilities of Clarkson’s detractors in the UK, his oafish, crass manner is actually fundamental to his popularity in the Islamic Republic. ‘His humour is so inappropriate and not at all what you hear on state TV’, said the BBC’s Darius Bazargan, who made a documentary in 2008 about motor racing in Tehran, before adding, ‘that must account for some of [Top Gear’s] appeal’.

Oddly enough^*, that's pretty much why I enjoyed Top Gear too.

This jolly, life-affirming show about risk-taking and camaraderie, one only superficially devoted to automobiles, has done more than any other TV show to spread happiness and bring people together on a global scale.

Quite.

^* I don't, of course, mean "oddly": I am drawing a direct comparison between the legal and religious authoritarianism of the disgusting Iranian regime, and the social fascism of the bien pensant media classes in this country—and the tacit support given to them by our cowardly politicos.

Boycott!

So, the BBC has finally sacked Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear.

Given how much money the programme makes for the Beeb, I would say that decision might be described as "courageous".

However...

Your humble Devil has sod all interest in cars^*, but I did rather enjoy watching Top Gear. I think, basically, because it was three chaps—mercifully free from the aching right-on-ness of most people these days—arse-ing about in colossally brilliant machines built by very clever human beings.

It seems that the other May and Hammond—in a decent British show of solidarity with a mate—will probably not continue with the programme. Good for them.

So, the upshot is that I think that the BBC are totally wrong to sack Clarkson. Totally and utterly wrong.

Thank goodness that I can boycott their output, withhold my payments and cancel my contract. And that's why I am calling for a...

I'm sorry—what?

Prison? For not wanting to pay for a service that I not only don't want, but morally disagree with?

Oh.

FFS.

^* I got banned some years ago, and have never bothered to apply for my licence back—despite the ban having expired two years ago (or more).

Murdoch is not a libertarian

According to the BBC...

Rupert Murdoch is a libertarian—against too much state control, and in favour of individuals taking responsibility.

For the record, I agree with everything that The Appalling Strangeness has to say on this—Murdoch may be an economic liberal but that is not the same as being a libertarian.

Economic liberalism is, in fact, only one half of the equation: a libertarian is also socially liberal and I have yet to see The Scum, for instance, backing the legalisation of drugs.

But worse than that—Murdoch is a corporatist. His rags back whichever party Murdoch thinks will enable his News Corporation to wield the most power. Further, he deliberately backs parties in a way that makes them grateful and thus more likely to serve his agenda.

In other words, Murdoch gains legal advantage for himself and his businesses through effectively buying the legislators—he is, as I have said, a corporatist.

And there is nothing libertarian about corporatism.

Fewtril on the BBC

When tin-pot foreign governments curtail civil liberties and then fund a pro-government media channel through extortion and theft, we call it an outrage.

In Britain we call it "an institution".

Ugly, bald, thieving, jug-eared media whore attacks noble, fearless bloggers

Nightmarish Fraggle, Andrew Marr. Pot, kettle, black.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Andrew Marr—NuLabour slut and moron du jour—and his delightfully broad attack on bloggers and other such unworthy people.

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting.

Your humble Devil lives in a third-floor flat many miles from his mother, has a full head of hair, distinctly unpimpled skin, finely-hewn aquiline features and is most firmly attached to a similarly prepossessing wife (whose opinion may or may not have been sought in the previous description).

Andrew Marr, however, is a bald, jug-eared, media whore whose pathetic and slavish devotion to NuLabour may or may not be influenced by his employment by the extortion-funded BBC and his marriage to Jackie Ashley, the raddled-looking harridan daughter of a life peer who writes for both The New Statesman and The Grauniad.

But, Andrew Marr is at least correct when he accuses bloggers of ranting. After all, whilst many of us are very angry about how our country has been systematically destroyed and our futures mortgaged by his favourite party, we are—alas—unable to use taxpayers' cash to get our points across. This leads to a certain amount of frustration and, inevitably, more than a soupcon of cathartic ranting.

But, as Anna Raccoon shows, we in the blogosphere can do some genuine good by providing crowd-sourcing and expertise to those oppressed by Andrew Marr's favourite little technocrats.

Furthermore, many blogs provide an invaluable insight into certain professions because they are written by people at the sharp end—people who genuinely know what is happening on the ground, or have a specialist knowledge of the subjects that they write about.

Which, for me, provide far more useful information about the true state of affairs than Andrew Marr reading some generalised crap—written by some underpaid graduate with a 2:2 in English Literature—off a fucking autocue. No amount of ridiculous arm-waving, Andrew, can substitute for a coherent piece written by someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

Those people are far more often found on blogs than on the BBC: after all, it wasn't so long ago that we angry, ranting bloggers were pointing out that no one in the BBC's environmental science team actually had anything approaching a science degree.

That said, Andrew Marr is reported as making one valid point.

The so-called "citizen journalists" will never offer a real replacement to newspapers and television news, he told Cheltenham Literature Festival.

He said: "Most citizen journalism strikes me as nothing to do with journalism at all.

This is true: most bloggers and citizen journalists do not (currently) have the resources to go and chase stories, nor do they have the connections (or the lawyers) to verify a great deal of stuff.

However, a large part of what many "journalists" do is not journalism either. These people do not unearth stories, dig them out and research them. No, a great many of these so-called journalists—including Jackie Ashley—are commentators.

And their jobs are, I believe, under threat from bloggers.

After all, in most media organisations, it is the journalists who are paid bugger all—whilst those (like Jackie and darling Polly) who combine ignorance and stupidity with piss-poor writing are the people who rake in six figure salaries.

If I were a cash-strapped media business, I would be looking to dispense with the services of these very expensive commenters (whose output is offered for free elsewhere) and concentrate on the area in which bloggers cannot truly compete—the area of news reporting.

Naturally, the fact that Mrs Marr's job is threatened by those who, often, have fewer constraints, more clearly declared prejudices, better knowledge of their specialist areas and, frankly, a more accessible and enjoyable writing style is—of course—nothing to do with little Andrew's sweeping comments about people that he does not, and cannot, know.

"Terrible things are said on line because they are anonymous. People say things on line that they wouldn't dream of saying in person."

Indeed, Andrew. Perhaps, when we meet, you can repeat your assertions about bloggers and I shall read this post back to you. And then we can all get back to doing what we do best: I can return to insulting media whores like yourself, and you can go back to licking Ed Miliband's bumhole.

In the meantime, how about you try to shut the fuck up...?

The Devil rides out (on the BBC)

Your humble Devil is in Peckham tomorrow, to take part in a debate on drink-driving, as part of BBC1's The Big Question. They are focusing on the North review of drink-driving laws—which is looking at dropping the alcohol limit—and whether this would be a "good" thing. As such, your humble Devil is spending some time researching current figures...

On Wednesday (hopefully—I've just about managed to clear my diary), I shall be having a five minute interview with The Daily Politics, as Andrew Neil does a short piece on the Libertarian Party as part of the BBC's focus on smaller political parties.

Provided I can stop myself from swearing, can a starring role in a major Hollywood blockbuster be far away...?

"Warming rates are not statistically significantly different"—Phil Jones, CRU

There is a very interesting BBC Q&A; between Roger "the Dodger" Harrabin and Phil "deceitful bastard" Jones. It's worth reading the whole thing, but the most significant section is the first answer. [Emphasis mine (other than on the question).]

A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.

Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).

I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.

So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.

Here are the trends and significances for each period:

This is pretty significant because Jones is admitting that—over the timescale for which we have actual measurements (rather than proxies)—the current warming trend is not unprecedented—an aspect that the whole alarmist argument depends on.

Watt's Up With That summarises the relevant points from the interview in this way.

• Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional.


• There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade.


• The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both.


• This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.


• The logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty.


• The science is not settled, however unsettling that might be.


• There is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers.

Now, some of these conclusions might be slight leaps, as Climate Skeptic opines.

I think some of these conclusions are a bit of a reach from the Q&A.; I don’t get the sense that Jones is abandoning the basic hypothesis that climate sensitivity to manmade CO₂ is high (e.g. 3+ degrees per doubling, rather than <=1 degrees as many skeptics would hypothesize). In particular, I think the writing has been on the wall for a while that alarmists were bailing on the hockey stick / MWP-related arguments as indicative of high sensitivities.

The new news for me was the admission that the warming rate from 1979-present is in no way unprecedented. This is important as the lead argument (beyond black box “the models say so” justifications) for blaming anthropogenic factors for recent warming is that the rate of warming was somehow unprecedented. However, Jones admits (as all rational skeptics have said for some time) that the warming rate from 1979 to today is really no different than we have measured in other periods decidedly unaffected by CO₂.

However, there was one of Phil Jones's answers that left me absolutely gob-smacked, and it is this one:

H - If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?

The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D [where he referenced Chapter 9 of the IPCC AR4].

You what? So, since you are unable to account for the warming in terms of volcanos or solar warming, then it must be human induced? What the hell?

What about this mysterious decadal Pacific oscillation that is now, apparently, "masking the warming"? What about cloud formation, or albedo or... or... so many other bloody things, many of which we may not be aware of? The climate is a pretty Chaotic system and we have, really, very little idea of all of the factors involved. Yes, it may be man-made forcings but, ultimately, it could be something else entirely. Or a mixture of both natural and human, of course.

Still, we are constantly told that the debate is over, aren't we, Phil?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

Ah. So the debate isn't over? And the "vast majority of climate scientists think this"? Right.

Well, thank you for indulging us poor climate "deniers"—or, in the words of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, we "anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics"—and admitting that there is a debate to be had: that's tremendously kind of you, Phil.

This is very far from being a smoking gun interview and Jones is obviously still of the opinion that man is the cause of the world's warming but, nonetheless, this climate scientist obviously feels that there is still a debate to be had.

So, after many long years of vilifying sceptics and shutting down any comment, perhaps we can have a grown-up debate.

Could someone tell that renowned climate scientist, Sunny Hundal?

Hain, the BNP and lack of distinction

Apparently, some people have been agonising about whether the BNP should be allowed on Question Time. And that perma-tanned moron Peter Hain has decided that, when the BNP appear, he will boycott the programme.

Mr Hain – a veteran of the anti-fascist campaigns of the 1970s – insisted the “no platform” policy should remain in place.

He said: “I was horrified when I heard about this, because it makes them [the BNP] appear as if they are another political party sitting on a panel along with democratically-elected parties.”

Look, you orange moron, the BNP are a "democratically-elected" party—they have councillors and even a couple of MEPs. They may be a repulsive bunch of knuckle-dragging, national socialist fuckwits but they are, nevertheless, democratically-elected.

Furthermore, the refusal of the three main parties to engage with the BNP gives the impression that there is—and can be—no refutation of their idiot policies. Trying to no-platform the BNP has not worked so far—so why the bloody hell would you continue with this policy?

Why indeed? The Appalling Strangeness puts it down to cowardice.

In fact, I'd argue that the rise of the BNP is in part down to the failure of the Labour party - and every other party in this country - to make the case against the BNP, and to offer people in this country a real alternative to the status quo. Hain is following the old strategy in relation to the BNP of sticking his head in the sand in the hope that they will go away. Unfortunately, the strategy didn't work. The main party policy of silence on the BNP allows them to get away with their unthinking ignorance without being called on it. And guess what? It helped them to win those seats on local councils, and helped them get those MEPs.

No doubt Hain sees his boycott as a chance for him to champion himself as a progressive politician refusing to give the cowardly and ignorant BNP a real platform in this country. Unfortunately, he comes across as the coward. He comes across as a man who won't debate the BNP because he is afraid of making his case.

Well, this may be so—but it may not be cowardice that is driving this motive. I think that the lovely Bella nails the real reason why all of the main parties are afraid to engage with the BNP...

But given what the ASI lists as some of the BNP’s policies, I suspect Hain doesn’t think them idiotic at all:

• The protection of British companies from unfair foreign imports


• The renationalisation of monopoly utilities and services

Bring hospital cleaning back in-house and make high cleanliness a top priority

• More emphasis must be placed on healthy living with greater understanding of sickness prevention through physical exercise, a healthier environment and improved diets


• Develop renewable energy sources such as off-shore wind farms, wave, tidal and solar energy


• The introduction of a system of workfare for those in unemployment benefit for more than six months with compulsory work and training in return for decent payment


• Take all privatised social housing stock back under local democratically controlled council ownership

Perhaps Hain sees, as do the rest of us who are not blinded by polemic, that the only thing that separates the BNP from its more traditional rivals is its racism. And if the BNP refuse to be engaged on their racism, and want to talk about their platform of social justice instead, Hain and everybody else are going to find themselves in the unenviable position of agreeing with the BNP but not wishing to admit it. And so the BNP will come across as being quite firm in their ideas, whilst the three main parties flail about trying to show that their sort of social justice is somehow demonstrably different from the BNP’s.

It isn’t.

Quite so. And this rather excellent post does rather paint a stark picture of the political discourse in this country: we have two basic options—Social Democracy (of varying flavours but all, effectively, offering more of the same) and libertarian.

The choice is between political parties that believe that your desires should be subordinate to that of "society" (as personified by the state), and a political party that believe that the freedom of the individual is paramount.

The choice is between politicos who believe that it is not only possible but actually desirable to shape society—that's you and me—according to their own personal prejudices, and the Libertarian Party.

Just saying...

They do that there though don't they though?

(DK is away)

As has been widely reported, the jokers at Liverpool City Council are proposing to ban under-18s from watching films that depict people smoking, in case it warps their fragile little minds.

The logic underpinning this proposal is that if it is illegal to do something, it should be illegal to see it. The implications of such thinking scarcely need underlining. If you really can't see a massive slippery slope here, then you should know that the 'evidence' required to extend this policy to drinking is already waiting in the wings:

Rutger Engels, professor in developmental psychopathology at the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), said: "This is the first experimental study to show a direct effect of exposure to alcohol portrayals on TV on viewers' immediate drinking behaviour."

"If other research confirms the findings of this study, then there will be implications for policy..."

"Implications of these findings may be that, if moderation of alcohol consumption in certain groups is strived for, it may be sensible to cut down on the portrayal of alcohol in programmes aimed at these groups and the commercials shown in between."

Leg-iron has done a fine job of examining the book-burning mentality of the Righteous in the once proud city of Liverpool. I will only add that the City Council has put its public consultation online. Why not pop over there and tell them to get a grip?

On an only slightly different topic, if you want to see what a pub will look like when the puritans are in total control, check this out.

It's the way she tells 'em

Deborah Arnott: She might have a face like a rentboy's ringpiece but she's got a marvellous sense of humour

(nb. I am not the Devil's Kitchen)

Honestly, you wait weeks for a barking mad quote from Action on Smoking and Health and then two come along at once. 

On smoking in cars:

"Cars are small tin boxes, with not much air in them. Smoking just one cigarette, even with the window open, creates a greater concentration of second-hand smoke than a whole evening's smoking in a pub or a bar."

Really? That sounds rather, erm, implausible. Is there any evidence for this, or is it a case of - as The Daily Mash might put it:

"What study? Fuck you, that's what study."

On a roll, Arnott then responded to a survey showing that a large majority of shopkeepers feared that having to piss two grand away on pointlessly hiding their tobacco products was a threat to their business:

“All this survey shows is that the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, a tobacco industry-funded body, has managed to frighten small shopkeepers into thinking that putting tobacco out of sight will kill their businesses.

“Yet again the tobacco industry is crying wolf, just as it did with smoke free legislation, which it said would destroy our pubs.”

You fucking what?!?!

Weekly pub closures in the UK

2005: 2

2006: 4

2007: 27

2008: 39

2009: 52

See if you can guess which year the smoking ban came in...

(H/T F2C blog)

Incidentally, the whole 'let's ban smoking in cars' debate was entirely engineered by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, who not only invited some authoritarian quack to hold forth on the issue but gave the bugger his own webpage and then invited two fake charities - ASH and Brake - to support it. They then ran the "story" under the headline:

Call to ban child-in-car smoking

Nice lobbying, Auntie. Within hours, thanks to heavy coverage across radios 2, 4 and 5, the Beeb had turned an issue about which no normal person had ever given a moment's thought into something that the type of pitchfork-wielding mouth-breather who calls up Jeremy Vine thinks requires drastic action. 

And just in case the 'debate' wasn't unbalanced enough, the Beeb then cancelled an interview with the Forest spokesman - the only person invited to provide a counter-argument. 

Beneath the 'think of the chiiiildren' window-dressing is a more serious purpose: to redefine cars, and then homes, as 'public places'. It also paths the way for banning smoking around adults, an aim which, as Dick Puddlecote has spotted, Arnott didn't even bother to conceal:

It must have caught the fake charities as cold as it caught Forest though, as they were all wibbling at cross purposes.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said the charity was in favour of a ban on smoking in cars.

The risks were not just to children but to adults suffering from conditions like heart disease, she said.

That's the problem with being caught off-guard, Debs wasn't able to tailor her junk science quickly enough to the nonsense in hand so had to just grab what she was working on at the time - the total ban on smoking in cars, with or without children present. An interesting view into the future, I thought.

There's not much to add to Dick's analysis. Go have a ganders at the whole thing.

Cheesy control

Samizdata's quote of the day is, frankly, rather entertaining...

They want to manage and control every aspect of daily life. That is not the role of the EU. It is the role of local government.

—A French euroskeptic cheese merchant, interview broadcast on BBC World Service this morning.

Very revealing, non...?

Submitted as a complaint to the BBC

As I saw yet another fucking BBC article uncritically citing the limits on alcohol, your humble and incensed Devil decided to submit an official complaint.

Dear Sir,

I notice, once again, that you have quoted the government's statistics on alcohol consumption limits in the attached story. In fact, you uncritically quote them in almost every story about alcohol consumption.

What I have never seen mentioned on BBC News is the fact that these limits have no basis in science whatsoever. This was admitted by Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced the 1987 report on which these limits are based. This was revealed in a Times article in October 2007, in which Smith is quoted:

"... it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t ... we don’t really have any data whatsoever ... Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee".

The article also pointed out...

One [report] found that men drinking between 21 and 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest mortality rate in Britain. Another concluded that a man would have to drink 63 units a week, or a bottle of wine a day, to face the same risk of death as a teetotaller.

Why do we never see this fact reported on the BBC? Why does the BBC parrot the government's entirely arbitrary alcohol unit limits without criticism?

This is very far from being impartial reporting and is, instead, quite obvious bias towards government propaganda.

DK

It pisses me right off every single fucking time that I see it. Let us see what their pathetic justification for this piss-poor level of reporting is, shall we?

Vanity

Wow—fame at last! Your humble Devil is mentioned on the BBC website... [Emphasis mine.]

The first, big group are those blogs that are "truly awful". Second are the blogs such as Burning Our Money - which analyses in detail how taxes are spent - which are thoughtful and well written, but only of interest to a small, technically-minded community.

Then there are sites that cater for a more general audience, which operate more like the comment pages in newspapers, giving a forum for debate and finding the most interesting arguments from the more technical blogs.

Finally, there are the "attack blogs" such as Devil's Kitchen, which are out there to snap at the heels of everyone else and fight for a particular political view.

I have to say that I suspect Mister Shane Greer might have had something to do with this, but it's welcome all the same.

It would have been even more welcome had your humble Devil actually got any traffic out of it...

Alan Maryon-Davis: libertarian. Not.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis: this man is a total fucking cunt who should be strung up by his testicles and beaten like a pinata until his brains fall onto the floor.

As an addendum to my colleague's post on the Faculty of Public Health's interfering shitheap President, Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, I would like to point you in the direction of the original Today interview*.

I would particularly like you to pay attention to this hideous fucknuts as he kicks off his interview; at about 22 seconds in, this nannying statist shitehawk actually says...

I am a libertarian by nature...

Oh really? You're one of those supporters of "libertarian paternalism", I suppose? Fucking hell, I wish you cunting medicos would stop perverting the word "libertarian", you disgusting totalitarian: why don't you fuck off and die? Or, at the very fucking least, shut your fucking face and get on with your job, i.e. patching people up. You shit.

What is it about doctors and their "I know better than you attitude"? I think, were I Grand High Benevolent Dictator of Britain, that I might be tempted to ban doctors from ever speaking in public. That's not very libertarian, I know, but I feel that it would do us all the world of good.

To be fair to whichever Humphries it is hosting the programme, he does quite a good job of defending liberty; he quotes John Stuart Mill's harm principle at the idiot professor, and also lets the egregious turd tie himself into knots over his plan to ban smoking in cars. It's worth listening to just to hear Maryon-Davis trying to defend his specious logic. The cunt.

As is usual with these pontificating popinjays, it's worth looking at the charity's accounts. The full name of the "charity" is, in fact, registered as "Joint Faculty Of Public Health Of The Royal Colleges Of Physicians Of The United Kingdom and by far the biggest chunk of their £3,007,920 income is £1,599,374 of "Grant Income". It doesn't go into more specifics (well, it might, but I am not going to read the entire report cover to cover), but that usually means that it's state cash.

The second biggest item—£859,010—is listed as "Membership fees and
subscriptions", so tell me: what kind of a cunt is actually a member of this disgusting organisation?

And why the fuck is Professor Alan Maryon-Davis allowed to pollute my airwaves? Shut the fuck up, you authoritarian cunt.

UPDATE: it seems that I was right. A commenter has looked more closely at the report and discovered that the grants came from various public bodies, including £1 million from the Teaching Public Health Network—which is entirely funded by the Department of Health.

So, I think that we can take it as read that what Maryon-Davis is advocating will pretty soon be government policy. And given that he is describing himself as "a libertarian by nature", I'd lay evens on it becoming Tory policy too. It's just the kind of wrong-headed, fluffy arsehole policy position that Call Me Dave would love.

* I have an MP3 recording of this, which I shall post up if the Beeb remove the Today interview.

Give 'em an inch...

The Englishman has brought to my attention a fellow by the name of Dr. Alan Maryon-Davis. Alan is one of the many unelected quacks who want to run your life. In a more enlightened age men like him would be shot like dogs, instead they are writing articles for the BBC:

'Why we need more nannying'

A worrying start.

It seems that not a day goes past without the government launching yet another health campaign, issuing another lifestyle guideline or passing some new law banning this or that threat to our safety or well-being.

Yes, we've noticed that, Alan, and quite frankly it's starting to get on our tit-end.

Is the government 'nannying' us too much? Is it trying too hard to micro-manage our health?

Surely the only sane answer to that question is a firm 'yes'?

I say firmly - no. I see an increasing acceptance that we, all of us, need not only more information and guidance from government, but also more legislation to save us from ourselves.

And that, Alan, is what sets authoritarian fuck-nuts like you apart from decent society. You believe a perfect society can be created if only we make enough things illegal. You are a dangerous idiot.

We accept the laws on seat-belts, crash helmets and drink-driving because we know they reduce road injuries and deaths.

Speak for yourself, sunshine. I "accept" the law on seat-belts insofar as I obey it. What I find morally "unacceptable" is that a person can be stopped, ticketed, fined and ultimately incarcerated for doing something that does not harm another living being. In fact, there is a damn good case for pin-pointing the passing of the crash-helmet law as being the first step down the slippery slope, something that MPs pointed out when it was debated in 1979:

"Why should anyone be forced by criminal sanction not to hurt himself? That was never, at least until the crash helmet legislation, a principle of our criminal law. Where will it end? Why make driving without a seat belt a crime because it could save a thousand lives, when we could stop cigarette smoking by the criminal law and save 20,000 lives a year? Why not stop by making it criminal the drinking of alcohol, which would save hundreds of thousands of lives?

In the end we shall find that our liberties have all but disappeared. It might be possible to save more lives in Britain by this measure—and by countless other measures. But I do not see the virtue in saving more lives by legislation which will produce in the end a Britain where nobody wants to live."

You see Alan, those who opposed the seat-belt legilsation said it would set a dangerous precedent because cranks, fanatics and totalitarians would use it to say "we forced to people to wear seat-belts, therefore we can force people to [fill in the blank]". Most people thought that no reasonable person would ever do such a thing, but of course they did, and you're doing it right now.

And, by the way, drink-driving laws do not even belong in the same sentence as seat-belt and crash helmet laws. Drink driving laws exist not to protect the driver but to protect other people - the only legitimate reason for any law to ever be made.

We are happy to see bans on tobacco advertising and the selling of alcohol and tobacco to minors because we understand the dangers for young people.

Fallacious reasoning again. Laws against underage consumption have fuck all to do with banning tobacco advertising.

And to my mind the really shining example of how far the public have come in accepting laws to help protect us from self-harm is the huge support for smoke-free public spaces and workplaces throughout the UK.

Huge support when employees of ASH conduct phone surveys, maybe. Not such huge support when it comes to people voting with their feet and wallet.

Weekly pub closures before the ban: 4. Weekly pub closures after the ban: 39.

This has already saved many lives...

Got any evidence for that, you lying quack bastard? Perhaps you were thinking of the rise in heart attacks in Scotland? Or maybe the fact that there are now more smokers in England than there were before the ban? And in Scotland. And in Ireland.

...and will, I believe, prove to be the greatest step forward in public health since the birth of the NHS.

A greater step forward than the eradication of polio? A greater step forward than water flouridation, the prevention of spina bifida, open-heart surgery, wiping out small-pox or developing vaccines for rubella and cervical cancer? 

This is what years of fanaticism does to the fragile mind of the true believer: a total loss of perspective.

But it was ordinary people who really tipped the balance to change the law. It was the steady shift in public opinion that gave legislators the courage.

Bullshit. It was an assortment of fake charities and bigoted politicians.

It proved that we, the people, can have a powerful influence on the way laws can be made on our behalf.

No. It proved that you, the doctors - when you're not murdering Mancunians and driving cars into airports - can pressurise a corrupt and spineless government into overturning a manifesto commitment.

We need to press for more legislation to improve and protect health and well-being. We need a big stick to curb the worst excesses of the various commercial interests who shape our lifestyle.

A big stick? Good God man, at least try not to sound like a fascist bully. And you can fuck off with your "commercial interests shaping our lifestyles" as well. Why do you medicos always assume that "industry" is to blame for people choosing not to subsist on broccoli and tap water? Has it never occurred to you that people buy things because they want to? Businesses respond to demand. Unlike you and your Parliamentarian pig-fucking mates, they can't force anyone to do anything.

So if you want me to choose between big government and big business, give me big business every time. A quick, back-of-an-envelope list of crimes committed by big government would include genocide, torture, oppression, war, extortion, murder, surveillance, censorship and theft. The crimes of big business are pretty much limited to (1) making things and (2) advertising them.

We've been largely successful with the tobacco industry, and now it's time to shift the focus onto alcohol and junk-food.

And then the meat industry, then the dairy industry, then the motor industry... etc. But that would never happen now, would it? Because we all know that the slippery slope is a fallacy.

What next? I would like to see a ban on smoking in cars with a child on board and a ban on displays of cigarettes in shops.

Try and keep up, Alan. You cunts have already succeeded in convincing the government to do the latter, and in the most corrupt way imaginable.

I would like to see a real hike in tax on alcohol and a ban on deep price-cuts for booze.

Why not, eh? It's your fucking world. Don't mind us.

I would like to see a wider ban on junk-food adverts around TV programmes watched largely by children.

There is already a ban on 'junk-food' advertising before the watershed. Tell me, which programmes on after 9pm are "largely watched by children"?

I would like to see a whole raft of other legislation for health.

I can't even imagine what the fucker has in mind here. Rationing? Fat camps? The ducking stool?

We need more laws to ensure that the world in which we live, work and play will help promote and protect our health.

Listen dipshit, if you're so desperate to make more laws, why don't you put yourself up as a political candidate? After you've won your landslide victory with a manifesto of jacking up taxes and hassling everyone except vegans, we'll talk about this "whole raft" of legislation. Until then, shut the fuck up and mind your own business.

This is not 'nannying'.

You say that, Alan, but, your article is titled 'Why we need more nannying'.

This is responsible government acting on behalf of a consenting public.

Really? Because judging by the comments left on the Beeb's website, the public - though they have no choice but to "consent" - think you're an evil little cunt. Like this gentleman, for instance:

Only an 'expert' who's got rich off the taxpayer's teat could write such a self-congratulatory, self-aggrandizing puff for himself and his fellow bureacrats. Only the BBC, a self-appointed quango paid for by a compulsory tax would print it as 'serious news'.

I can only concur.

BBC: the sound of unbelievably biased bollocks

Yes, yes; your humble Devil knows that he tends to bang on about Apple, but then I do like to witter on about things that I am enthusiastic (and sometimes even knowledgeable) about. But this particular rant is not so much about Apple as the BBC's ludicrously biased and piss-poor reporting.

Apple to end music restrictions

Apple Inc has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software.

"So, what's wrong with that?" you may ask. Well, despite acknowledging, at the bottom of the article that...

... Steve Jobs, published an open letter called 'Thoughts on Music' in which he called on the three big record companies to ditch DRM...

... the Beeb is giving the erroneous—and very definite—impression that it was Apple that insisted on having DRM on songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS).

This is simply not the case: even if one didn't know anything about the negotiations between the music industry and Apple when iTMS was first set up, the fact that Apple have been selling EMI music without DRM for about a year—because EMI agreed to it—might have given an observer a pretty big fucking clue as to where the driver was coming from.

At present, most music downloaded from Apple's iTunes store can only be played through an iTunes interface or iPod.

Ooh, how evil! And, of course, Windows DRM'd files play on everything, don't they. Well, apart from Macs and iPods, of course. Oh, and Linux. Twats.

But it is this paragraph that really gripped my shit. [Emphasis mine.]

The move could potentially spell the end for DRM limited music, which was never popular with users or the record industry.

You fucking what? DRM was never popular with the music industry? Can you define "music industry" for me, you fuckwit? Do you mean "the artists" or are you referring—as I think most people would assume—to the music publishing companies?

Because the latter were really fucking keen on DRM and to try to claim that they weren't is just... well, it's just absolutely fucking barking. The music industry wasn't keen on DRM in the same way as the TV and film companies aren't currently keen on DRM, i.e. they were really fucking keen.

The fact that the music companies have finally fucking realised that DRM not only didn't work, but actively encouraged people to say, "fuck you, you music company shits: I'm going pirating" is a great move, but to try to claim that DRM was "never popular" with "the music industry" is just fucking ignorant.

To try to make it look as though it was Apple that insisted on everything in the iTMS having copy-protection on is stupid, wrong and unprofessional.

Fucking hellski...

More Brothers Faversham

I have plugged my friends, The Penny Dreadfuls, many times because they amuse me muchly. Now the Beeb has produced a short animation from one of their Brothers Faversham series that got deleted...


You can find the rest of the series on iPlayer: I highly recommend it if you enjoy having a giggle at high Victorian melodrama piss-take comedy. Er...

Top Gear: smoking!

I can't find it on BBC iPlayer and cannot thus show you the relevent clip, but on BBC2 they are currently showing a Best Of Top Gear episode. It is the episode in which the three are challenged to build amphibious cars that will cross the Channel.

However, when introducing the piece in the studio, the three are pretending—yes, that is pretending, mark you—to smoke pipes. And guess what...?

Yes, the Beeb have graciously showed the presenters holding their pipes but whenever one of them places the pipe in his mouth, the BBC has pixellated out the offending screen area and placed, in the bottom middle of the screen, a big notice saying...

CENSORED

I mean, seriously, what the fucking fuck? Can we expect the same in any programme that features smoking—any re-runs of Life On Mars, for instance?

Or is it merely pre-watershed that smoking is so evil that even the simulation of it must be hidden away from the innocent kiddies?

Absolutely un-fucking-believable.

UPDATE: In the comments, IanPJ says that there might be another motive behind this, a rather more noble motive.

I understand from a source that must remain nameless that this is the doing of Jeremy himself.

It is his way of taking the piss out of all the people who complained when the original episode went out.

Never one to miss an opportunity to take a pop at the bansturbators in our midst is our Jeremy.

If this is the case, apologies to the Beeb and many, many kudos to Clarkson (who, if this is true, might actually be on his way to becoming something of a hero of mine)...

UPDATE 2: I've found the clip...


Perhaps it's obvious that it's a joke but I think that the point could have been made a little more comprehensively, for those who do not follow the programme on a regular basis...

I tried, I really did

Via Matt Sinclair, here's A A Gill ripping into the Beeb's latest load of crap, Burn Up. [Emphasis mine.]

Imagine writing this: “It is my belief we are standing on the very edge of history.” Having written it, what would a normal, sensitive, moderately intelligent person do? Well, 99% of us wouldpush the delete button with a faint shiver or tear up the piece of paper so that the young and impressionable couldn’t read it. We understand that it’s utter bilge, but, you see, that’s why we’re not scriptwriters. It takes a very special person to write that sentence and think: “Yes, high five, nice job, really profound! What shall I do next?”
...

Watching it was a bit like being manacled to the table at a Notting Hill dinner party, or being lectured by a vegan vitamin salesman.

The finger-wagging about global warming was relentless and unabating, all couched in the comfy velour of the edge-of-history and watershed gibberish. The goodies were witty, brilliant, sensitive, imaginative, attractive, sexy and great dancers - rather, I suspect, like the scriptwriters. The baddies were, well,they were all American. This was film-making from the Soviet school of political subtlety, a childishly black-and-white premise, delivered with a patronising blog of a script, which overwhelmed the plot, pace, anything resembling a character and, finally, the audience’s sympathy.

I tried watching it this evening; believe me, it wasn't even that good. I only got half way through the first episode and had to switch it off before I tore out my eyes and stuck knitting-needles through my ear-drums.

Here's another good review of the piece of shit, and Matt Sinclair also destroys the fantasy.

Stephen Garrett, a spokesman for Kudos Film and Television who made Burn Up, was quoted in the BBC press release for the show describing it as "a potent cocktail of fiction and fact that we hope will enlighten as much as it will entertain". This programme can't be assessed just as harmless fiction. It is political propaganda and should be understood as such.

Indeed it is: and, like most propaganda, it was absolute bullshit, lies dressed up as pretty actors peddling plausibility.

Burn Up was unmitigated shite of the very first oil water...

UPDATE: Another good quote from Matt...

Burn Up isn't really trying to enlighten people but, like Al Gore's film, to create an emotional reaction. To scare people so that rational and measured debate over policy can safely be avoided, so that proper scrutiny of policy can be written off as irresponsible and immoral.

That pretty much sums up the entirety of the pro-catastrophic climate change lobby.