Bishop Hill EU funds climate propaganda
Aug 31, 2015 Media 
John WebsterHot on the heels of the story about the BBC's accepting paid-for programming (aka propaganda) from environmental groups comes the news that the EU has been paying for programmes too. Chief among these were a piece extolling the virtues of...the European Union, which was faithfully aired by the BBC back in March, and a forthcoming show about climate change entitled Little Yellow Boots. A demo reel for the latter can be seen here.
As these things go it's pretty run of the mill, but fairly nauseating and you may prefer just to cast your eyes over the blurb:
Filmmaker John Webster has become ever more concerned about climate change. Together with his imaginary great-granddaughter he sets out to find a solution that will both cure him of the demons that haunt him, but also help her in the very different world she will inherit from us.
The driving force of the story is one ordinary person’s desire to do something for his future great-grandchildren in a world that he believes will be significantly worse for them. John’s quest is not easy: he has to find something today that will help a person in the future, long after he himself is dead. But who, if anybody has an answer to this quest? Is his quest irrational, bordering on the absurd? Or, in a world seemingly racing towards catastrophic changes in the climate, are his actions the only reasonable thing to do?
Through this character-driven human-interest story we come to understand some of the unexpected and little thought of consequences of climate change, and perhaps give us pause to think about our own lives and the future lives of those around us.
This is a documentary film with humouristic overtones about a fundamental question: what is our responsibility to future generations?
Play it again, John.
Bishop Hill
Whoops! It seems that the BBC press office has previously denied absolutely that EU funds were used in the making of the programme.
So the BBC lied when it denied The Great European Disaster propaganda film was EU-funded (h/t @roxley @the_tpa) pic.twitter.com/LkNU0ae6vm
— Mark Wallace (@wallaceme) August 31, 2015Unbelievable!
Interesting. When I described it as swivel-eyed pro-EU propaganda in the Telegraph, the producer complained to IPSO https://t.co/37pjAgAmfR
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) August 31, 2015
Reader Comments (42)
'Is his quest irrational, bordering on the absurd?'
Was that a trick question?
What a gripping story line! It is almost as exiting as the film version of the EU directive on the permitted degree of curvature in bananas would be.
?What is our responsibility to future generations??
I would say -- not leaving them an ever enlarging national debt.
But that is not watermelon thinking.
In Socialist ideology the means ARE the ends. Poverty and social chaos are the means to power and the means of keeping it.
Eugene WR Gallun
Why don't they disinter Leni Riefenstahl to do the job?
Why is it that some people question what they are fed whereas others lie back, mouth wide open, ready to accept all the crap with never a protest? That would be a worthwhile study.
'Humouristic" as in :- "We miss the odeur du sang which taints the parfum du harem; also the humouristic tale and Rabelaisian outbreak which relieve and throw out into strong relief the splendour of Empire and the havoc of Time".
(Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night) - presumably ?
Imaginary Climate Change, imaginary Great-Granddaughter and a fight against imaginary Demons. Very imaginative.
If a changing climate - a warming climate - can only bring us "a world seemingly racing towards catastrophic changes", what the hell would a cooling climate bring, the one for which people like John Webster crave? How come warming is 'bad'; cooling is 'good'?
This isn't 'bordering on the absurd' - unless absurd is new-speak for 'insane'.
"....together with his imaginary great-granddaughter he sets out to find a solution that will both cure him of the demons that haunt him..."
His best bet would be exorcism. I understand Pope Francis is particularly sympathetic these days.
President Obama trying to escape from Racial Tensions at home and an National Security Dodgy Email Scandal involving his Secretary of State (and preferred successor ) is jetting off to Alaska to survey the damage from "Climate Change" yawn.
Plenty of ice melting in the polar summer in 24 hour daylight.
Lets see if Alaska still loves Obama after he shuts down their Oil and Gas Industry.
Bloody morons. The things which will damage our grandchildren's generation is the impoverishment of this one and the demolishment of the industrial age. Good luck in those yurts, grandkids...
I am reminded of the question asked by Peter Allitt:
“Few people have paused to ask: How would we benefit now if our grandparents and great-grandparents had exercised more self-restraint and self-denial? Would we live better if they had exercised greater prudence and self-control.” p241
[Patrick Allitt: “A climate of crisis: America in the age of environmentalism” Penguin, NY 2014]
While I am at it, here are three more from the same source:
“The future seemed to them bright so long as environmental pessimism did not lead to the creation of misguided policies” p 178
“It was certainly a good idea – now as always – not to be wasteful or profligate with resources. It was a good idea to continue seeking alternative energy sources and to make existing energy sources more efficient. On the other hand it is not a good idea to devote massive resources to cutting carbon dioxide emissions if, in doing so, other worthwhile ends could no longer be pursued. The great paradox of the 1990s and 2000s was that poor people in developing countries continued to suffer from malnutrition, smoke inhalation, and remediable diseases and to die from drinking contaminated water, while developed nations discussed astronomically expensive carbon dioxide abatement schemes whose benefits were highly conjectural and could only be realised – if at all – in the distant future.” p241
“The rising carbon dioxide footprint may be troublesome, but it is a side effect of the creation of immense benefits.” p242
Sadly as MOST of the performing arts is totally dependent on government funding of one sort or another, most of its output has to conform to the political expectations of its paymasters.
Like academic research, you ain't gonna get a balanced view from it.
This is of course the direct result of everybody taking the taxpayers coin, modulated by the political bias of those in power at the time.
Anybody know a good trick-cyclist he could be referred to before it is too late?
EU propaganda is negligible compared with the BBC's own brand, such as the gradual conversion of Countryfile and the Archers from farmer loving to farmer hating, wildlife documentaries painting Man as the enemy, and the one-sided views of so-called scientists turned into green activists.
Watch C-span for better balance, yesterdays dose on BBC Parliament had a good session on climate change, after a long party-line rant from a caller the excellent presenter asked "What is your background" ... "I'm in sales" was the answer.
MJK: Pace P Allitt:
Exactly. But then, our forefathers' leaders thought WWI was going to be the war to end all wars; and that WWII was to stop the evil of Nazism. Just those two conflagrations really managed to f*ck up the gene pool for future generations. And now the Greens are determined to repeat history in their own undeniably stupid and arrogant way: Their attitude seems to be: "Let's make a climate to end all climate - that'll make our grand-children secure. (and make us rich at the same time)"There has been this sort of 'what if' tale for as long as mankind has told stories. Their ability to predict is almost zero. Hollywood loves this kind of thing except they can't portray AGW in any meaningful way.
First off, the times scales are very hard to make any sense of. I'm sure if 25 years ago if we'd asked film makers to imagine 2015, the result would have been laughable... Oh hang on they did. The predictions for my location range from boiling heat. sea inundation or a mile of ice over my head. None of these have befallen me, you will be glad to hear. How do you honestly portray a few tenths of a degree warmer? Or no warming at all if we use the CET.
The other thing that film makers rarely get to grips with is the boring nature of saving the planet from CO2. There’s no mad 20 mins at the end of the film where the plucky scientist come muscle man saves the planet. Cutting CO2 is just masses of taxes, eyesores and having a lot less of those things we aspire to. So even if this guy’s granddaughter could ever afford to get on the property ladder she might be condemned to a life in a tiny flat. I imagine she’ll be very smug that she’s saved the elephant and the polar bear as she watches endless BBC repeats of Attenborough extolling the wonders of stuff she’ll never see for herself.
The BBC dresses up Climate Science Fiction, to make it into a story of morality.
It worked alright for the original TV series Star Trek. The BBC is determined to boldy go into oblivion, and beyond.
The only good news is that this sounds like it will sink without trace in the ratings.
What these eejits never get is that people don't like to be preached at by goody-goodies.
Good job there is a glut of cheap Oil and Gas helping EU members rebuild their Economies after the Recession.
This modern mania of trying to forecast or worse still assuming responsibility for future generations is ridiculous. Could the world of 1815 or 1915 imagine what the substantially richer world of today would look like. It would be a very short film if you looked out at 2115 and saw a climate not very much different to today, life going on as normal and many of today's problems solved. Malthusians are a contemporary plague.
This is a documentary film with humouristic overtones about a fundamental question: what is our responsibility to future generations?
===================================================
Humouristic? I guess he means "humourous"? Education, education, education...
I wonder what responsibility the John Websters of this world feel about preventing their imaginary great-granddaughters from being forced to live in the totalitarian hell of a bureaucratic state immune from democratic controls that they are steadily marching us towards?
This subject features here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/08/weekend-unthreaded-90/
I like this comment:
You can always tell how desperate they are when they keep coming up with new “crises”.
As always – CAGW is a “middle class calamaity”…..
Most tradies will tell you its a pile of horse hooey.
Most wealthy are busy making money off it.
The middle class however drive priuses and fret over nothing and then pay huge taxes to fund the nonsense…..
The middle class is living proff a little bit of knowledge is dangerous and can lead to mental slavery ad infinitum…..
Emotional blackmail has always ben the primary tool of your archetyple insurance salesperson and that is
exactly what this is.
The way things are going, this gentlemans great grandchildren will not be able to voice their opinions,
regardless of the situation they may find themselves in.
I guess moralistic and scientistic are a given, so humouristic is a bonus.
I wonder if our ancestors worried about their descendants (us). I don't think so. They took advantage of every resource available to them to make the world a better place. We now live longer than ever before, with better health, and better technology that our ancestors could never have dreamed of. Greenies want to wind the clock back to the Middle Ages as if that was some utopian dream. Little do they realise that people of those times had short lives racked with ill health and had to do many things by hand because of the lack of technology. That's why I say #GreeniesAreStupid
I have 3 children- if I thought for a moment Climate Change was a problem, I'd be jumping up and down & shouting with John Webster.
Fortunately, I am of rational mind, so I'm not jumping up and down & shouting with the clearly unhinged, John Webster.
PS his holier than thou attitude also makes me want to puke.
The film industry is one of the most carbon intense industries to be working in. The irony is almost funny.
The economy must be crushed so that John Webster feels better about himself.
That is a scary photo. Arthur Daley looked more trustworthy.
I may be the only one on here already with three great-grandkids. And another on the way.
There isn't a doubt in my mind that their lives and their hopes will be blighted by the antics of the likes of "Filmmaker" John Webster. And if he is in fact as much of a 'W' anchor is his utterances suggest, he may never have to worry about kids, let alone the great-grand variety.
I never was lucky enough to know my own granddads, let alone great granddads. Mostly killed in defending the UK from real threats (or all too shortly after surviving and returning home to a temporary 'peace')
But I hope that my real and extant grandkids will remember the daft old buffer who devoted most of his working life to giving technical assistance to producing coal from the bowels of the earth. This weird and, no doubt evil black stuff provided affordable and reliable energy which transformed life in this Country from a short, unpleasant and endless drudgery, to providing a life where even the lowliest minimum-wage earner now, might be the envy of a King 500 years ago.
And now, in my dotage, I have to put up with "Filmmaker" John Webster spouting utter drivel - and being paid by the anti-democratic, incompetent and corrupt EU to broadcast to the taxpayers, courtesy of the BBC, also paid by the taxpayers. Great.
How sad that for John, his likely putative great granddaughter might in some future TV ' find my ancestors' show, discover him, his worthless life, and that mental disorder may run in the family.
Collectively, our primary responsibility to future generations is to have successful sex, not imagine nightmares about what the weather will be like.
You know these enviro-activists/programme-makers are a couple of 'A'-levels short of a full UCAS form when they need help with Biology 101.
The best thing we can do with the BBC is to sell it off and use to repay some of the national debt - much of which was caused because the BBC promoting reckless debt-led voodoo economics.
"we come to understand some of the unexpected and little thought of consequences of climate change"
I'd much sooner it addressed "the little thought of consequences of climate change alarmism".
A lot more to chew on, too.
If we really want to compare what our Great-Grandchildren will have compared to us (even without More's Law), we only have to look back at our Great Grandfathers' generation. I have just finished reading the "The Dillen: Memories of a Stratford Upon Avon Man". Born in 1880, lived off his wits, eight children, WWI vet, lived 'til he was 98: We have a lot to thank men like him for. I doubt he worried about climate change - then again, ask him about mustard gas - and having his b*lls blown off by the Hun....
Just going in for my tea.
When my wife asks how was the curry, I shall congratulate her on its humouristic overtones.
She will accuse me of being irrational, bordering on the absurd.
There ya go, my bit of recycling for today.
The simple solution for John Webster would be to keep it in his trousers and make sure he does not have any grand children. My grand children will appreciate the extra space I am sure.
"but also help her in the very different world she will inherit from us"
There are couple of philosophical points to make. The first being, looking so far [iv generations] into the future:
a. will the earth still be spinning on its axis - as it is today?
b. Four generations off, I think back to my great grandfather. And speculating if I were to have been able to visit him back in time - after he picked himself up off the floor......... would he believe me about the computing power of a latest generation iphone, let alone my being able to contact anyone in the world connected to a cell phone satellite network? Afterwards, we could muse and discuss the relative merits of, whether his generation knew more and whether future generations of kids - from 2015 = will be allowed to know anything of merit at all?
c. Webster, thinking of his great grand kids - should be more concerned about a technological regression* and thus to extinguishing those 'progressive' policies which are progressively shunting the western world back to a dystopian social model and something very much along the lines of Orwells' - 1984.
*iphones are fine but can we say that, in the last 30 years that mankind has made any great leap forwards - technologically speaking and here, I'm reasoning, that, we should be on the cusp of interstellar space travel not still just space walking. Hell we walked on the Lunar surface way back - in the Sixties!
Hold on a minute - we have not been told what this character's solutions are to his angst and to his descendant's prospects .
Perhaps he takes his anxious mind to the South of France , enjoys the warm sun (courtesy of CO2) , the healthy fresh fruit and vegetables ( thanks to CO2) the lovely wine (provided by sun and CO2) and returns home cleansed of all worries .
And since no carbon tax destroys his and the UK's prosperity his great grand child inherits a comfortable life and the financial freedom to pick any career she wishes .
The answer to John's quest is obvious, once he puts all doubts aside. Subsidy money - and who knows, maybe an honour or two if he follows the official line religiously - will help his family long after he himself is dead. His actions are clearly the only reasonable thing to do - his responsibility to future generations. Snouts in the trough!!!