For such a trifling programme, Quentin Letts' What's the Point of the Met Office is really making waves. Booker reviews it over at the Mail and there's some interesting coverage by Damian Thompson at the Spectator.
Yesterday [Harrabin] went into overdrive. ‘Accusation’, he declared, as he linked to Black’s attack on Letts. The sceptics got ‘their’ programme when the BBC allowed Quentin Letts to raise an eyebrow at the Met Office’s alarmist and utterly false claim that thermometers would shoot up between 2004 and 2014.
Don’t get me wrong: Roger Harrabin is a highly respected science writer. He doesn’t set out to deceive his readers. But, as Letts might put it, What’s the Point of a supposedly impartial ‘environment analyst’ who – apparently – takes offence at his bosses allowing another journalist to offer views different to his own?
Thompson's allegation is based on Harrabin's tweets yesterday - the one saying that sceptics had now "had their programme" and the one entitled "Accusation", which linked to Richard Black's article declaring that the BBC had breached its guidelines by letting sceptics on air.
In fact I'm not sure that Thompson doesn't go too far here. I'm not sure Harrabin "exploded" or that he "trashed" Quentin Letts, or indeed that he implied that Letts was "a tool of the sceptics". Of the two Harrabin tweets yesterday, the first - the suggestion that due balance had now been achieved - was certainly prime evidence that he is so in hock to the greens that he has lost all sense of his duty to inform the public. Linking to Black, in a way he rarely links to anyone on the sceptical side of the debate, was confirmation of this.
I'm just not sure it amounted to an attack on Letts.