Thursday
Jul172014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill GWPF- Harrabin late with the news
I missed this yesterday. As someone pointed out in the Breitbart comments, why are campaigns from Greenpeace WWF and FoE not similarly targeted for spending charitable money on political causes?
H/T Biased BBC.
[Link fixed]
Reader Comments (29)
I presume you are referring to this:
Harrabin reports on GWPF split
Your link is broken. I did mention it in Unthreaded yesterday, with precisely the thought that it gives open season on attacking fake charities that are in fact political campaigns - environmental or otherwise.
Hi Bishop
Link does not work at the moment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28321641
The double standards of the environmental movement and its activist reporters is just awful and galling to say the least. I don't see an end to this type of rubbish any time soon.
Prof Forster: "" They also criticise our scientific integrity and myself and my scientific colleagues do not really like their approach." Ahhhh Diddums.
GWPF are splitting their operation in the same vein that greenpeace currently are.
Bob Ward is everywhere. The BBC listened to his complaint about the Lawson vs. Sir Brian program, and now the charity commission listens to his complaint about the GWPF.
Bob Ward must not have anything positive to say about climate alarmism.
In Canada and New Zealand, Greenpeace has already lost its charitable status, for engaging in political activity. Not split, as GWPF has done, but been out right denied charitable status.
I would suggest that governments go further, and lay RICO style charges against GP and its members.
AFAIK it is not the case that charities can't do politics. It is more that if they choose to do politics it must be relevant to their stated purpose.
Following a brief look at the relevant charity legislation I wonder if GWPF could have avoided this if they had elected to be a charity for "the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science" rather than an educational charity.
From the article:
If there is uncertainty it should be admitted and used to inform the policy debate. Otherwise you are making policy decisions without being well informed.
Rat snake Bob Ward is a vexatious chancer. His are no more legitimate 'complaints' than those of a politician attacking an opponent. He is as partisan as it's possible to get, and what's more is paid to be partisan. It's about time someone with clout turned the tables on him for a change.
In fact GWPF is being treated identically to Greenpeace, as the article points out:
It is about time Greenpeace, FOE, WWF and RSPB had the charity status investigated!
Given their very political stances they have why are they allowed to be charities anyway?
Perhaps the BBC might like to answer why they are only reporting on this now when the GWPF first made it known what was happening back on May?
Dare I suggest that this is the BBC's way of supporting its position on removing sceptics off the air? Look at them nasty and untrustworthy sceptics from the political action GWPF who don't have scientists worthy of us listening to!
There is a problem here and the BBC is the problem.
Mailman
I wonder. Is it the charitable arm of Greenpeace that assaults oil rigs with fossil-fuel powered boats and disrupts other people going about their lawful business? I don't expect either arm of the GWPF will be engaging in any such grandstanding.
Why it was broadcast this week is because Harrabin hates the GWPF and is behaving in his usual unprofessional manner. He is often late with stories but he couldn't pass up the chance to bash the GWPF with this.
Shame it will backfire - the publicity will be very good for the GWPF.
I imagine it's being reported now because of Bob's piece here: www.newscientist.com/article/dn25910-watchdog-must-be-tougher-on-climate-sceptic-charity.html
I expect Bob's sent out a circular to all the usual propagandists, which I guess is where Harrabin picked it up. Although the timing is still a bit of a mystery - the latest delay hardly seems to justify it being news. Perhaps it took this long to get the latest campaign ready to go? Bob's fingers are apparently not as fast as they once were.
Or come to think of it, perhaps the organised campaign was timed to start with the setting up of the GWPF new lobbying arm, articles written and distributed, with embargoes on their release and so forth, and when that was delayed, they had to go ahead anyway with this lame effort. It's tricky running a propaganda operation when you have to predict the news months in advance.
Harrabin's next 'scoop' will be, "Germany invades Poland."
Talking of the GWPF, they've found a "replacement" for Lennard Bengtsson :
http://notrickszone.com/2014/07/17/eading-climate-science-critic-fritz-vahrenholt-joins-gwpf-sees-faulty-conclusions-in-science/
I admit I am a sheep warmish chill
This looks quite good - it provides a precedent for us to hammer any FOE/Green 'charity'.
Greenpeace in NZ has lost it's Charitable status. They have appealed the decision in the Courts. However they seem to have shot themselves in the foot because their latest campaign is called Climate Voter, which is aimed at getting voters to only support those Political Parties who want a Carbon Tax. Ironically they are now being prosecuted by the Electoral commission for not complying with the disclosure requirements.
The campaign is supported by the usual B list celebrities, notably Lucy Lawless who has been delightfully nicknamed Lucy Clueless.
There's now a transcript of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, where they reported about this yesterday - it's not much different to Roger Harrabin's article:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20140716_r4
There's this at the end, though:
Maybe someone could have a quiet word with that nice Mr. McKibben about the LSE's ties with an organisation funded by dividends from Exxon Mobil and Suncor - what's that I hear about "It's best to divest!" and "Fossil free!"?
The resulting kerfuffle might keep Bob busy on non-GWPF matters for a while.
Time someone took Harrabin to task for posing as a journalist.
Plenty of BBC presenters and executives will be wearing Poppies on Remembrance Sunday.
Shame that Climate Skeptics are still fighting for their right to Democratic Free Speech.
The BBC and UFOs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qgr7s
Cockney actor Danny Dyre (top dude) stereotype gangster ,drug dealer in many a forgettable B grade Brit Flicks finally settled in Albert Square as Mick Carter Patriarchal family man and affable community spirited Landlord of The Queen Vic in Eastenders was given an hour slot on BBC 3 to explain why he genuinely believed in UFOs and Extraterrestrials fair enough nothing wrong with that Although i dont believe in UFOs personally.
So why cant Dellingpole at Briebart TV or Martin Durkin at Wagg TV or Christopher Monkton at GWPF TV be given an hour to explain why they dont believe in Climate Change .
Danny Dyre and everyone else is entitled to their opinions no mater how strange they appear to other people.
Australia is enacting "policy" decisions that the GWPF would support. This article from Reuters shows how one country (and others like Canada) can start a chain reaction that degrades the value of the EU carbon credits market :-))
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL4N0PK2I720140717
"They do essentially have quite a simple message," he [James Painter] told BBC News. "We don't know enough about climate science; there's lots of uncertainties - so we shouldn't take action to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."
Much simpler to misrepresent it seems! The real message is that we shouldn't cripple our economy and cause widespread fuel poverty on the basis of pessimistic speculations and deeply flawed models.
If it was easy to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels there would be no issue. By contrast, the policies so far are criminally irresponsible and someone, somewhere needs to remind the faux-green idealists in charge of energy policy of this fact because they seem to have lost all reason.
jamspid
"Poppies"
I wonder if you've hit on something? A wearable symbol, something discreet, that identifies the wearer as a GWPF supporter, or just a GW sceptic, would be a useful weapon, IMO. For one thing, it would annoy warmists and be hard to suppress from accidental TV appearances; it would turn away chuggers, demonstrate to Greens that they're not as popular as they think and make it easy spot fellow unbelievers in the pub.
Any thoughts? Broken windmill, broken hockey stick, broken Mann.. :-)
Oh, boy - pot.... kettle.... black....
Perhaps the same attention could be brought to bear on the Grantham Institutes and their spokesman?