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Kyoto Protocol: BBC Continues to Flog a Dead Parrot
Clamour
Of The Times
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008
Dominic Lawson has consistently been a voice for
sanity over the debacles that are ‘global warming’
and the Kyoto Protocol. Today, Lawson excels himself in a splendid
set of ripostes in The Independent. The whole piece is an exemplary
attack on nearly every nonsensical aspect of policy with regards
to climate change, but especially noteworthy is his scathing denunciation
of the BBC, a topic on which, reluctantly, I have had myself to
comment recently. Here he is on the BBC’s Environment Analyst,
Roger Harrabin:
“I tuned in to the BBC's Today programme yesterday morning
to hear someone expostulating passionately on this general issue.
He exclaimed: ‘I really can not believe that the EU will
not come up with a deal [in Poznan]. The EU can not afford to
fail on this. Our credibility will be absolutely nil.’ I
wondered which member of Plane Stupid was talking; but then the
presenter said: ‘Thank you, Roger Harrabin,’ and I
realised that I had been listening to the BBC's ‘Environment
Analyst’.
Mr Harrabin's evident panic at the idea that the EU might appear
to fail to keep the ‘Kyoto process’ alive is, in a
way, understandable: the Corporation's coverage of this issue
has been at all times based on the idea that the Kyoto Treaty
is A Good Thing: as that rare subversive, Jeremy Paxman, said
last year, ‘The BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the
pretence of impartiality long ago.’ This is why you won't
be hearing Prof Prins being interviewed by Mr Harrabin.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Never mind. As with Monty Python's rigid Norwegian Blue, it doesn't
matter how desperately convincing the salesman is: in the end,
the public knows a dead parrot when it sees one.”
Serious Issue For The BBC
Quite so. Nevertheless, this is a serious matter. It is the role
of the BBC to report objectively, and it is the role of a BBC
analyst to comment critically as an independent, non-committed
journalist. It is not the place of either to adopt an uncritical,
proselytizing role. We are surely nearing the point where formal
complaints to the BBC might well be in order. Millions of people
believe that the EU would be entirely correct to row back on its
climate-change policies. It is vital that the BBC acknowledges
this, and that it reports fairly all sides of so highly-contentious
an issue.
At the moment, however, it appears that the BBC is actually frightened
of the ‘Green’ lobby.
“Prof. Prins”, by the way, is Professor Gwyn Prins,
Director of the LSE's Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave
Events. He has been a seminal critic of the Kyoto Protocol:
“The Kyoto Protocol seeks to square a circle. It seeks
to articulate a market-driven trading mechanism, with a top-down
detailed specification of how it will work. It is an example of
a form of output target-setting that seeks to prevail by institutional
fiat, based on over-confident assertion of fragile knowledge,
through the sanction of tax and associated punishment. It has
been applied to an entirely novel, indeed, a fabricated market."
What I personally don’t understand is why anybody thinks
that the Kyoto Protocol has been a good thing. From every single
point of view, it has been an unmitigated crock.
Flogging The Dead Parrot
Above all, however, Lawson is painfully apposite with his telling
‘Norwegian Blue’ analogy. I fear that poor old Roger
sounds increasingly like the shopkeeper in the famous ‘Dead
Parrot Sketch’ (‘The Pet Shop’) from the 8th
Episode of the First Season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus,
originally shown in 1969, with the Kyoto Protocol as the eponymous
‘Dead Parrot’ [here ‘O’ stands for ‘Owner’
(the shopkeeper, played by Michael Palin), and ‘C’
for ‘the Customer’, played by John Cleese]:
O: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's,uh...What's wrong
with it?
C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's
what's wrong with it!
O: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
C: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm
looking at one right now.
O: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird,
the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
C: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
O: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
C: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up! (shouting
at the cage) 'Ello, Mister Polly Parrot! I've got a lovely fresh
cuttle fish for you if you show...(owner hits the cage)
O: There, he moved!
C: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!
O: I never!!
C: Yes, you did!
O: I never, never did anything...
C: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO POLLY!!!!!
Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock
alarm call!
(Takes parrot out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter.
Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
C: Now that's what I call a dead parrot.
O: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
And so on ...
I am likewise stunned by the increasingly-dreadful, and biased,
reporting of the climate-change issue by the BBC.
I do not pay my Licence Fee for them to flog me a Dead Parrot
- except, of course, in satire.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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