Friday
Feb112011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Practising what you preach
Commenter Mike Post has enquired about whether the BBC buys carbon offsets when buying airline tickets for its journalists. Here is the response:
The BBC does not buy carbon offsets for its journalists' airline tickets because - "in considering such questions, the BBC must balance our environmental policies against our responsibility to our licence fee payers, and we do not believe buying offsets represents good use of licence fee income."
Reader Comments (67)
There is intelligent life in the BBC after all, even if it demonstrates hypocracy
Sanctimonious hypocrites! But then I guess we already knew that.
You people out there beyond the doors of the BBC should do as I say, not as I do.
So buying offsets does not offer value for money, but telling everyone else to does?
O/T: "Ruling Theory" is a widely-recognised obstacle to scientific progress.
http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/railsback_chamberlin.html
"Our premature explanation can become a tentative theory and then a ruling theory, and our research becomes focused on proving that ruling theory. The result is a blindness to evidence that disproves the ruling theory or supports an alternate explanation."
It appears to be very much in evidence in climate geomancy.
Perhaps Ethical Man, et al, at the BBC, are simply buying carbon offsets from their own pockets, from organizations such as this Carbon Fund. I would assume that this would be the case, or the BBC employees would be hypocrites, as well as the BBC itself being hypocritical.
'Carbon offsets' are a scam anyway. Feel-good indulgences for the delusional.
[And YET AGAIN, I cannot post. I wish Squarespace would sort this out. It's becoming a real PITA.]
"Some confusion there then!"
This should be outside the blockquote?
Shub
Thanks Fixed.
Offset the offsets with offsets.
I suspect that the cost of carbon offsets could be comfortably offset by reducing the numbers of senior BBC staff travelling business or first class. Surely a win-win solution.
Another win would be to reduce the numbers of journalists reporting on the same big event. Its well known that the BBC will often send someone from each of its new stations (from both radio and TV).
So just to confirm Andrew, if the BBC did practise carbon offsetting with your licence fee money, the header of this thread would be you applauding them for staying true to their values? If so, I can point you to plenty of ways in which the Beeb acts greenly, and you can have a different thread applauding them for each. If not, then what on Earth is your point?
You can't have it both ways.
"Why do you pay taxes to support this?"
Yeah, I know I said it many times before, but you don't seem to be thinking about the BBC and the Tele Tax.
"Its well known that the BBC will often send someone from each of its new stations (from both radio and TV)."
Feb 11, 2011 at 2:34 PM | oakwood
HI Oakwood. TV is an audio-visual medium and requires audio-visual recording/broadcasting equipment and a reporter who is skilled at working in this medium. These requirements are different from radio, which is purely an audio medium. Furthermore, Radio 1 is aimed at young people, and needs a reporter who will not alienate the targetted demographic, and can present the story in a way they can relate to. Radio 4 however, has an accross the board appeal, and needs reporter who can appeal to the whole spectrum, and focus on presenting that news item in the most informative way.
I hope this helps.
At the risk of feeding a troll, the answer to ZedsDeadBed's question ("[...] what on Earth is your point?") is simple. The BBC is caught in a dilemma.
Personally I'd like them to stop scolding me. Others might like them to offset. But it really must be one or the other. The BBC response presented should satisfy no one, not even ZedsDeadBed.
@ZedsDeadBed
I'd love to know where a radio 1 and radio 4 journalist would be at the same event?
Glastonbury, where the whole of the BBC go for there summer jolly?
I reckon ZDB is a BBC employee. Only their employees apologise for them quite so readily.
Roy
As I have just pointed out elsewhere on this blog, I've begun to notice most that I'm called a troll here as a back-handed compliment when I've just made a valid point.
This whole idea that anybody who takes on board what almost all climate science tells us, must lead a green life to the nth degree, is nonsense.
One man's hypocrisy is another's practicality. The BBC overwhelmingly reports on AGW as fact, because that's what an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists report. The trick being played here, is arbitrarily picking green criteria, applying them to the Beeg, and then claiming that not meeting these criteria is hypocrisy.
The title of this thread could equally be a criticism of the carbon cost of the move to Manchester for financial reasons, or a rumination on their use of cheaper non-renewable energy sources for powering studios and driving people about.
There is inevitably a cost/benefit calculation with all environmental decisions. A factor which I suspect drives many posters here. However, conflating the Beeb's honest reporting of environmental issues, with a cost/benefit decision in a harsh economic climate, is just a cheap shot by Andrew.
Sheyva
Are you joking? The news reporting on the two stations covers many of the same subjects. Your curiosity regarding this, belies more a lack of familiarity'imagination on your part, than any comment on the two channels.
Incidentally, Glastonbury is probably the biggest and most significant popular music festival in the World. The BBC makes money on it overall by selling its excellent coverage of the event. Why would anyone have a problem with that?
ZDB seems to me you are conflating the Beebs output with "honest reporting of environmental issues".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350206/BBC-propaganda-machine-climate-change-says-Peter-Sissons.html
Now tell me, how many reporters does the BBC curently have in Egypt? They must block book one of the major hotels. Still it must be nice to get away from the cold UK to somewhere wamer, at the licence fee payers' expense.
ZDB summary, in Met Office pseudo code:
bbc=practical
hypocritical=practical
bbc=hypocritical
Hence, bbc and all employees perfect and barbecue summer predicted, as usual.
Frosty
You must learn to assess the quality of sources a little better. This is a story about an old man who kept schtum about this for his entire career with the BBC until he had a book to sell, reported in a right-wing comic with an anti-AGW anti-BBC agenda, which relies entirely on anecdotal evidence.
Did you actually think your link had some representative worth? Says a lot about the people around here and bias-confirmation.
Bish, since I started this hare running, may I clarify my own position?
I am genuinely a huge fan of the BBC and, during a working life spent largely out of the country, I really appreciated the extraordinary quality of the BBC’s journalism and its reporting. I am utterly dismayed to see the cuts imposed on the World Service by the (complete?) removal of the Foreign Office subsidy. The BBC is an immensely powerful (and cheap) projection of British culture.
It has therefore been distressing to see this great institution failing to cope with the absurd climate scare. I am absolutely delighted that it does not squander licence fee money on the purchase of carbon offset indulgences. That would indeed be an improper use of licence payers’ funds.
However, just as the BBC does not buy offsets, does it not see that the panicky decarbonisation of our economy too is a grotesque and unacceptable mis-allocation of UK taxpayers’ capital and taxes?
Phillip Bratby
So you perhaps think that the BBC should not bother to have field reporters for the biggest story of the year, with international repercussions that could last generations?
What is your point?
Mike Post
Glad you're a Beeb fan, as am I. However, your last sentence is an extreme minority view unsupported by experts. You have the right to have that opinion, but to expect the BBC to echo it is always going to be in vain.
Seems like Moral Compensation to me. Perhaps they feel that by reporting the issue to the public, they are performing a valuable service so therefore won’t spend money on carbon offsets...’they're doing their bit’ (Gillian Anderson, 10:10).
There are deeper problems at the Beeb and what it spends its (our) money on. Having had personal experience with them through family working for Beeb to being involved in projects myself, they could be spending money better. Maybe to them, carbon offsets are small fry compared to the money they invest from the pension pot into green issues?
It is hypocrisy really. Vast sums of money spent on celebs to promote the issue, yet not spending money on simply showing they care about the issue they so strongly support. But maybe I'm wrong :)
how many reporters does it take to cover the story of whether Mubarak will or will not resign, zeds? To my mind, much of the reportage is just churning of gossip. The BBC reporting adds no value to that. You cpould report it just as well from my local pub - another bunch of under-informed people speculating about stuff happening behind closed doors.
And please do not try the appeal to authority on this blog - the "consensus" of scientists nonsense is just nonsense. The "consensus" is managed by a small cabal of not very skilful scientists who conspire to discredit the scientific process - as in Climategate and more recently Steig-gate.
@Feb 11, 2011 at 2:45 PM | Pablo de la Sierra
Quite simple really. Because we don't have any choice at all. If you want any television not just the BBC then you must pay the license fee or get nicked and fined big bucks. So its get rid of your TV's and indeed nowadays internet connected devices capable of playing live tv streams are supposedly covered eg computers or pay the license fee.
@ Phillip Bratby
See Matt cartoon in the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/?cartoon=8317589&cc=8295055
It's absolutely true that the Beeb needs many different reporters covering the same event to cater for different targeted demographics.
Just to clarify for overseas readers, this is how things work at the BBC:
Radio 1 is aimed at kids under the age of 16 and builders (construction workers).
Radio 2 is aimed at people who don't realise they're over the age of 16.
Radio 3 is for grown-up music lovers.
Radio 4 (also known as "radio interruptus", especially in the morning) is for middle-class listeners who are interested in current affairs and politics.
Radio 5 caters for sports fans.
There are also a few other stations to cater for any remaining minorities. Each station needs its own non-alienating coverage, so that it can engage with the widest possible cross-section of stakeholders.
Hope that helps.
ZDB, if the bbc is so wonderful, can I assume that you would support it being privatised and thus giving people like me the choice to not fund it?
John in Cheshire- is that the same BBC, part of whose remit is to provide programming that would not be sustainable in the private sector e.g. minority interests and programmes for deaf/disabled?
Anigel
Or you could have a satellite dish cleverly hidden so they can't see it and shield the cables and converter so the roaming trucks don't pick up the RF emissions. If you know someone with an RF field meter, you can find where the signals from your tele are going and put up a faraday shield. Just brass screening will do.
However, I was thinking of something radical like voting the MPs out who support this. Make it a political issue.
However, that is the Irish American in me.
ZDB we are talking about the biased broadcasting company state sponsored misinformation for the masses. If you actually listen to the BBC reporting of anything you actually fully understand then you will see just how biased and misinformed the information they give out is.
ZDB
So you actually acknowledge that CAGW programming is a minority interest and/or for the disabled? Who would have though that?
@Feb 11, 2011 at 5:12 PM | Pablo de la Sierra
Doesn't work. It isn't about the detector vans any more, and indeed hasn't been for 10+ years. it is about the database of unlicensed addresses and the compulsory reporting of sales of new tv equipment. If the address has no license they come knocking anyway. They used to have the right to enter property if they believed there was any devices present that would render the address liable to the license fee. I do not know if the right of entry has changed or not though.
ZedsDeadBed, the BBC is well known throughout the broadcasting industry for being overmanned, inefficient and treating money like it grew on trees.
Might we mention the million pounds that has just been spent on an art work in the newly refurbished Broadcasting House, which, not surprisingly for the BBC, is running well over its original obscene budget.
It is notorious for paying overinflated salaries for the so-called "talent" who are only employed so that it can compete in a race to the bottom with ITV and Sky. Lord Reith must be spinning in his grave - support for minority programmes pah, I see far more high quality art on Sky Arts than all the BBC channels put together.
It sends coachloads of staff to cover major events when pretty much every other media outlet sends far fewer, the Beijing Olympics springs to mind. As for Egypt, of course the BBC should have reporters in the field, just as other media groups have, but why so many - answer because it is only money extracted from often reluctant British taxpayers under threat of prison whcih can be spent with impunity.
Green policies at the BBC - show us some. I have had a long correspondence with the BBC trying to extract some cogent environmental policy out of them and all I got was greenwash.
ZDB
So your 'argument' is that Peter Sissons is not qualified to make such judgments, or if he is he is not honest about it?
Did you miss the parts where he describes the exact opposite of beeing 'schtum'!?
Purely anecdotal? Are you forgetting that the results, the lot of the BBC products, are there for everyone to see and hear!?
Did you really think that the DailyMail was the primary source? Then "You [really] must learn to assess the quality of sources a little better", not to speak of your armwaiving efficiency ...
"armwaiving efficiency ..."
Feb 11, 2011 at 6:21 PM | Jonas N
Which presumably entails foregoing one's arms for a streamlined profile. Bye bye Hilly Billies - I'm off to eat oysters and drink Chablis.
Funny how when something really substantive comes up - eg Steig - there's not a peep from Zed.
Nor did she appear AFAIK on the wind energy threads.
A soft targets girl, our Zed.
Anonemouse. Thanks for thatMatt cartoon, it says it all!
@Feb 11, 2011 at 5:17 PM Anigel
Ever think about buying in NI if you are in ROI and visa versa? Also invest in a large mastiff chained to the gate.
Me, I ship it in from the US. You can get what ever you want here. And for less. One of the advantages of having an address in the USA.
That's a cracking statement from the unspeakable BBC.
If it's not good value for them, why would it be for anyone?
Anigel
Sorry that I had to dash off a quick comment, but I had to do something:
Getting back to avoiding the tele tax, one does not really need a tele any more. A PC with a TV toner card will do just fine. And you can buy yourself a nice large LCD screen for your PC and enjoy watching the tele through the converter card as well as downloads. Indeed, I am watching more and more downloads as I find it much more convenient. And I can watch NETFLIX downloads for a year for about what the Tele Tax would be in ROI. While NETFLIX may not be in Europe (it may be or not) it WILL be there before long. Gotta happen.
The Tele Tax will go the way of the Buggy Whip tax -- nobody will be buying Teles. I am sure they would love to charge us all 150 quid a year for each PC, but where do you think that will go?
The big issue is cutting off the BBC funds, which sans the tele tax will come from somewhere. It is the British Government's propaganda machine and will survive all cuts thrown at it until killed by the vote.
We got rid of most of the NPR non-sense in the US years ago, although the Democrats still have the CPB in place. Still, NPR is now gutless and ignored. Good for Classical music and that is about all.
Vote with your vote. And if that don't work, take a lesson from the average Egyptian punter. They did good this week. There are a lot of "powerful politicians" changing their underwear today.
The telly tax is optional. Simply put an "implied right of access denied" notice to Capita (TV Licensing) outside your front door and that will stop the salesmen from bothering you.
Ignore the computer generated faux threatening letters. Apparently I am at the "final stages of the investigation". And according to the last 5 letters of being licence free for the last few years, I still am. They are fake, they are meaningless. Jason Hales is my best penpal.
Remember, you only need to purchase a TV licence if you watch live TV as it's being broadcast on ANY device. Buying a TV in itself does NOT require purchasing a licence - from the TV Licensing website:
"You need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, digital box, DVD or video recorder, PC, laptop or mobile phone to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV".
You do not require a licence when:
“a television set installed and used solely for some purpose other than watching or recording television programmes (e.g. closed-circuit TV monitor, DVD or video player or games console”
“watching BBC iPlayer when the programme is not live”
Plenty of stuff on the net about it. You can be an armchair critic about the Beeb all you like, you can pray a government will privatise the BBC, but they won't.
The only way to do it is to cancel your direct debit and make it too expensive for Capita to collect the licence fee, in the same way that happened in New Zealand to their own state broadcaster.
You really think they can detect you watching live BBC streamed on your laptop/TV/smartphone with their 25 (supposedly empty) detector vans? Of course not:
Telegraph
The licence fee is an anachronistic throwback to the 70's technology of noisy local oscillators in old TVs and quaint scare propaganda. The quicker the tax is removed, the quicker the BBC can work out economically which side of its political bread is better buttered like all the other TV companies.
You can do it with your own money.
Not petitions.
Not politicians.
Licence fees...what an archaic system!
In the developing country that I grew up it was abolished circa-1985. That's quarter of a century ago.
What I am curious is how many of those eco-loonies whose view the BBC propagates everyday are actually licence fee payers.
Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs
I believe you are absolutely correct, sir. But how do you know if I am watching television programs on my tele? Why because it was turned on an the RF meter in the van saw it.
How do you know if I am watching a BBC program on a video stream on my satellite link via my network?
You don't.
QED
The tele tax will go the way of the Buggy Whip tax.
That will happen in five years.
The question I ask is what does Whitehall do to pay for the BBC?
I leave that up to the interested reader to consider.
Don Pablo de la Sierra,
You are indeed correct sir, as I said the way we view media has moved beyond the legitimisation of the television tax and at some point in the near future, the tax will eventually diminish as more and more people stop paying it because the way we view media and the technology that supports it is changing rapidly.
TV detector devices cannot detect streaming packets on a computer. As "The Occupier", they cannot cross check your address with a dynamic IP. Read the Telegraph article – it speaks volumes.
And those detectors will not pick up any iPlayer signals, nor any PCs or laptops nor any TVs connected to streaming media. Nor will they pick up any websites that host live broadcasts. And to be honest, it's pretty difficult to single out an RF oscillator leakage in a block of flats packed full of modern devices.
Capita's business model does not support the mobilisation of thousands of salesmen running around with detector vans and hand-held detectors. And those detectors will get no further with an "implied right of access denied" notice outside your door.
It simply uses the low cost business model of a large database to crosscheck the addresses of everybody that has bought a device with an RF tuner from a store with those that have purchased the TV licence, plus threatening letters and ringing on the doorbell, which people will answer. If you have the notice, they leave you alone, it's that simple.
Addresses of those that haven't purchased a licence are presumed guilty, hence the faux threatening letters of prosecutions generated by their computer systems which they hope to bully people into coughing up for the tax.
They are idle threats from a private corporation and have no legal prerequisite.
If people knew how optional the telly tax was, there would be a mass cancellation tomorrow that would panic any government.
The next battle will be when the politicians scrap the telly tax but decide to keep the state broadcaster and use income tax to support it.
Now that will be an interesting dilemma...
The BBC has now said that 'climate change deniers' are like pedophiles.
Let that sink in for a while.
h/t Barry Woods.
How about that? A troll at bishophill. Zedsdeadbed. The first I have seen. I bet a troll finds these waters extremely frustrating.