I once saw a pianist in concert doing a concerto, followed by the piano solo of Rhapsody in Blue after the interval. He changed from dinner jacket to roughly that suit for the latter. No tie, though.
Totally off topic, Martin Roscoe played the Goldberg Variations in Carlisle last year wearing a black tee shirt so that shirt sleeves wouldn't get in the way of hands and fingers. Fabulous performance too.
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
I do, we are a lucky generation. Every so often I read Hans Rosling and remind myself how lucky I am.
It can be like banging one's head off a brick wall, explaining to people that the pre-industrial world was not at all a nice place to live in, unless you were a king, sultan, raja, or great noble.
Most people think that the world c.1780 was The Shire.
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
Yes. No one seems to want to understand that we’re doing ok.
Thats because you spent years scaring the shit out of people and wont challenge the ultra shit scarers when they are wrong.
Who is the “you” in this? I have never made any effort to scare anyone on climate change. It was always, obviously, a fixable problem.
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
I do, we are a lucky generation. Every so often I read Hans Rosling and remind myself how lucky I am.
It can be like banging one's head off a brick wall, explaining to people that the pre-industrial world was not at all a nice place to live in, unless you were a king, sultan, raja, or great noble.
Most people think that the world c.1780 was The Shire.
I once saw a pianist in concert doing a concerto, followed by the piano solo of Rhapsody in Blue after the interval. He changed from dinner jacket to roughly that suit for the latter. No tie, though.
Additional fun fact: that famous clarinet glissando which opens the piece? Gershwin didn't write it. He wrote the piece for piano and sent it off to an orchestrator.
So it turns out that somewhere between 10 and 50 died or were injured during the hospital incident and independent European intelligence sources confirm that it was a rocket launched from within Gaza that failed and broke up near the hospital and then the debris which included the payload landed in the car park and exploded.
Every single media outlet that ran with the Hamas version of 500 dead in an Israeli air strike on a hospital needs to put out a front page retraction immediately. Israel should sue and force them into it so they learn their lesson and stop parroting Hamas.
If that is confirmed, news source should say that, and correct their past reporting. Reporting in wars is often difficult and numerous early reports turn out to be wrong. I think it would be ludicrous to imagine that Israel could sue over this or that front page retractions are always necessary.
I saw a lot of media sources reporting that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies. That does not appear to have been the case. I’ve not seen any front page retractions over that. I don’t think there needs to be, although I think some media sources should at least correct their earlier reporting.At the same ratio of reporting,
I think media sources should reflect on their mistakes over reporting the hospital incident. Learning from what happened and not doing it again is more important than front page retractions.
"I saw a lot of media sources reporting that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies."
- That was never the claim from any Israeli sources, it was 40 babies had been killed in one Kibbutz, including ones that had been beheaded, burned alive, etc.
Did any UK media organisations run a front page saying 40 beheadings? I don't think they did? It was mostly that is what became the claim on twitter, which was then used to dispute that Israel was telling the truth when they revealed photos of some of the dead babies, as in see, not all beheaded.
It’s a claim many here have repeated. Reviewing UK reporting, claims made often stopped just short. For example:
So that answer for UK, is no, then...they repeated exactly what the Israeli official said. And then of course with the conspiracy theory in full swing on social media, they showed the receipts. And you quickly descend into the well here is one with its throat slit, that isn't quite beheading, so not all of them were....
Certainly some US outlets did say 40 were beheaded. But what are you expecting from them?
I don’t know if any babies were beheaded. Regardless, Hamas definitely killed babies and what has been solidly confirmed is more atrocity than it bears thinking about.
I don’t know what happened outside the Anglican hospital, but it probably wasn’t an Israeli bomb. Regardless, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, a tragic loss of life.
I think much of the media do a great job, most of the time, but the Republican Senator who said, “The first casualty, when war comes, is truth” was right. I don’t understand those who think the most important thing to do in any crisis is to criticise the BBC’s reporting of it.
I'm not sure I even believe the 'thousands of civilians killed' in Gaza now. Clearly there have been many casualties, but where do the precise numbers come from? The same source as the 500?
Edit: Not that it should particularly be a numbers game, but still...
And yet every update of every fanciful figure is reported as fact by the BBC. Things really have to change.
That is not true. I have just reviewed multiple BBC articles on the conflict: not one quotes a figure from the Gaza Health Ministry or other source in an unqualified manner.
The BBC is being held to a ludicrously high standard and at the same time is being subjected to massive exaggeration and distortion. It is imperfect; perhaps in the context of the Middle East it could be described as the least imperfect actor on the entire scene. Are there any better candidates for that remarkable accolade?
Sorry this is total bollocks, when people question the licence fee we are constantly told the bbc is world class and totally impartial. When it is shown they are biassed slithey toads then we are told they are being held to an impossibly high standards. Pick one or the other but dont whinge when people point out the bbc are mostly staffed by people who can be described by words that rhyme with punts
Fascinating. I don't think a single word of what you claim is true. And there are plenty of legitimate criticisms that can be made of the BBC.
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
I do, we are a lucky generation. Every so often I read Hans Rosling and remind myself how lucky I am.
It can be like banging one's head off a brick wall, explaining to people that the pre-industrial world was not at all a nice place to live in, unless you were a king, sultan, raja, or great noble.
Most people think that the world c.1780 was The Shire.
That had me laughing!
Even if you were a King, we live in considerably more comfort than even the most pampered of them. I wouldn't go back to pissing in a pot, even if it was Sevre and there was someone holding it for me.
So it turns out that somewhere between 10 and 50 died or were injured during the hospital incident and independent European intelligence sources confirm that it was a rocket launched from within Gaza that failed and broke up near the hospital and then the debris which included the payload landed in the car park and exploded.
Every single media outlet that ran with the Hamas version of 500 dead in an Israeli air strike on a hospital needs to put out a front page retraction immediately. Israel should sue and force them into it so they learn their lesson and stop parroting Hamas.
BBC sneaking out not quite an apology. No mention of their headlines or their Twitter post that still says hundreds killed by Israeli strike.
I love the BBC. For most of my life I’ve loved their children’s programmes, comedy, drama, sports, news. The works. I would pay the licence fee purely for Radio 4. I listen to Today six mornings a week but I get so fucking angry with their de haut en bas decision making about what is partial and impartial and the bizarre ways they work out what “balance” really is.
Jeremy Bowen just could not bring himself to say “we might have jumped the gun” this morning on Today after Tugendhat calmly pointed out the errors over the hospital reporting. It’s a mix of arrogance, confusion, not understanding that the world doesn’t think the way they do. There is a thing called “BBC diversity” which is that the BBC are full of people of every colour and creed so they think they have diverse input but it’s not because those people of diverse colour and creed are largely from a similar social viewpoint or background. The groupthink will kill the bbc. Moving bits to Salford doesn’t make it diverse because they fill it with key people from the bbc in London with the same views so it can never change.
I just find it depressing that they consider themselves educated and superior but cannot also consider if the way they think might just be wrong occasionally.
They aren’t the only ones and it is a symptom of “quick news”. Pretty much every news outlet needs to make it big that they got it wrong over the hospital attack as do Arab governments if they want to lance the boil that’s growing.
This is very cogently argued and quite persuasive as to the reasons for the initial reporting, but I wonder if the BBC’s reluctance to admit fault today has another cause.
It seems to be that over the last decade the government have successfully delegitimised the BBC such that the corporation is constantly second guessing itself. A strong, confident organisation would take responsibility for its mistakes regardless of its biases, in my view. Instead, I think the BBC is fearful of what might happen if it does admit fault.
I think we are seeing the product of a concerted attack on the BBC over the past decade.
So it turns out that somewhere between 10 and 50 died or were injured during the hospital incident and independent European intelligence sources confirm that it was a rocket launched from within Gaza that failed and broke up near the hospital and then the debris which included the payload landed in the car park and exploded.
Every single media outlet that ran with the Hamas version of 500 dead in an Israeli air strike on a hospital needs to put out a front page retraction immediately. Israel should sue and force them into it so they learn their lesson and stop parroting Hamas.
If that is confirmed, news source should say that, and correct their past reporting. Reporting in wars is often difficult and numerous early reports turn out to be wrong. I think it would be ludicrous to imagine that Israel could sue over this or that front page retractions are always necessary.
I saw a lot of media sources reporting that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies. That does not appear to have been the case. I’ve not seen any front page retractions over that. I don’t think there needs to be, although I think some media sources should at least correct their earlier reporting.At the same ratio of reporting,
I think media sources should reflect on their mistakes over reporting the hospital incident. Learning from what happened and not doing it again is more important than front page retractions.
"I saw a lot of media sources reporting that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies."
- That was never the claim from any Israeli sources, it was 40 babies had been killed in one Kibbutz, including ones that had been beheaded, burned alive, etc.
Did any UK media organisations run a front page saying 40 beheadings? I don't think they did? It was mostly that is what became the claim on twitter, which was then used to dispute that Israel was telling the truth when they revealed photos of some of the dead babies, as in see, not all beheaded.
It’s a claim many here have repeated. Reviewing UK reporting, claims made often stopped just short. For example:
So that answer for UK, is no, then...they repeated exactly what the Israeli official said. And then of course with the conspiracy theory in full swing on social media, they showed the receipts. And you quickly descend into the well here is one with its throat slit, that isn't quite beheading, so not all of them were....
Certainly some US outlets did say 40 were beheaded. But what are you expecting from them?
I don’t know if any babies were beheaded. Regardless, Hamas definitely killed babies and what has been solidly confirmed is more atrocity than it bears thinking about.
I don’t know what happened outside the Anglican hospital, but it probably wasn’t an Israeli bomb. Regardless, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, a tragic loss of life.
I think much of the media do a great job, most of the time, but the Republican Senator who said, “The first casualty, when war comes, is truth” was right. I don’t understand those who think the most important thing to do in any crisis is to criticise the BBC’s reporting of it.
I'm not sure I even believe the 'thousands of civilians killed' in Gaza now. Clearly there have been many casualties, but where do the precise numbers come from? The same source as the 500?
Edit: Not that it should particularly be a numbers game, but still...
And yet every update of every fanciful figure is reported as fact by the BBC. Things really have to change.
That is not true. I have just reviewed multiple BBC articles on the conflict: not one quotes a figure from the Gaza Health Ministry or other source in an unqualified manner.
The BBC is being held to a ludicrously high standard and at the same time is being subjected to massive exaggeration and distortion. It is imperfect; perhaps in the context of the Middle East it could be described as the least imperfect actor on the entire scene. Are there any better candidates for that remarkable accolade?
Sorry this is total bollocks, when people question the licence fee we are constantly told the bbc is world class and totally impartial. When it is shown they are biassed slithey toads then we are told they are being held to an impossibly high standards. Pick one or the other but dont whinge when people point out the bbc are mostly staffed by people who can be described by words that rhyme with punts
Fascinating. I don't think a single word of what you claim is true. And there are plenty of legitimate criticisms that can be made of the BBC.
So you deny a bbc journalist claiming israel bombed a hospital and there recurring assertion of 500 dead?
Both these were lies as investigations have shown.....how is that impartial or factual...they are total dicks
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
I do, we are a lucky generation. Every so often I read Hans Rosling and remind myself how lucky I am.
It can be like banging one's head off a brick wall, explaining to people that the pre-industrial world was not at all a nice place to live in, unless you were a king, sultan, raja, or great noble.
Most people think that the world c.1780 was The Shire.
That had me laughing!
Even if you were a King, we live in considerably more comfort than even the most pampered of them. I wouldn't go back to pissing in a pot, even if it was Sevre and there was someone holding it for me.
Windsor Castle had privies in the 1370's, and Henry VIII built the Great House of Easement at Hampton Court. OTOH, they were using chamber pots at Versailles until 1776. It was a question of priorities.
So it turns out that somewhere between 10 and 50 died or were injured during the hospital incident and independent European intelligence sources confirm that it was a rocket launched from within Gaza that failed and broke up near the hospital and then the debris which included the payload landed in the car park and exploded.
Every single media outlet that ran with the Hamas version of 500 dead in an Israeli air strike on a hospital needs to put out a front page retraction immediately. Israel should sue and force them into it so they learn their lesson and stop parroting Hamas.
BBC sneaking out not quite an apology. No mention of their headlines or their Twitter post that still says hundreds killed by Israeli strike.
I love the BBC. For most of my life I’ve loved their children’s programmes, comedy, drama, sports, news. The works. I would pay the licence fee purely for Radio 4. I listen to Today six mornings a week but I get so fucking angry with their de haut en bas decision making about what is partial and impartial and the bizarre ways they work out what “balance” really is.
Jeremy Bowen just could not bring himself to say “we might have jumped the gun” this morning on Today after Tugendhat calmly pointed out the errors over the hospital reporting. It’s a mix of arrogance, confusion, not understanding that the world doesn’t think the way they do. There is a thing called “BBC diversity” which is that the BBC are full of people of every colour and creed so they think they have diverse input but it’s not because those people of diverse colour and creed are largely from a similar social viewpoint or background. The groupthink will kill the bbc. Moving bits to Salford doesn’t make it diverse because they fill it with key people from the bbc in London with the same views so it can never change.
I just find it depressing that they consider themselves educated and superior but cannot also consider if the way they think might just be wrong occasionally.
They aren’t the only ones and it is a symptom of “quick news”. Pretty much every news outlet needs to make it big that they got it wrong over the hospital attack as do Arab governments if they want to lance the boil that’s growing.
This is very cogently argued and quite persuasive as to the reasons for the initial reporting, but I wonder if the BBC’s reluctance to admit fault today has another cause.
It seems to be that over the last decade the government have successfully delegitimised the BBC such that the corporation is constantly second guessing itself. A strong, confident organisation would take responsibility for its mistakes regardless of its biases, in my view. Instead, I think the BBC is fearful of what might happen if it does admit fault.
I think we are seeing the product of a concerted attack on the BBC over the past decade.
The bbc has always been worthy of attack, they have always pushed a line of the correct way to think
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
Yes. No one seems to want to understand that we’re doing ok.
Thats because you spent years scaring the shit out of people and wont challenge the ultra shit scarers when they are wrong.
Who is the “you” in this? I have never made any effort to scare anyone on climate change. It was always, obviously, a fixable problem.
That's what always made me most upset about it. It was a problem we were able to foresee, and could do something about, but for a long time lots of people refused to take it seriously.
I'm not quite so optimistic as you about 2-2.5C warming - the survival of the Greenland Ice Sheet would be touch and go at that level, and it's about twice as much warming as we've already seen, so I think it could create plenty bad enough impacts. I think we could save ourselves a lot of bother if we made more of an effort over the next 5-10 years or so to speed up the pace of transition.
But all the same, I've never been as hopeful as I am now about the issue because it's clear that the energy transition has built up a lot of momentum now, and that closes off almost all of the worst-case scenario risks.
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
I do, we are a lucky generation. Every so often I read Hans Rosling and remind myself how lucky I am.
It can be like banging one's head off a brick wall, explaining to people that the pre-industrial world was not at all a nice place to live in, unless you were a king, sultan, raja, or great noble.
Most people think that the world c.1780 was The Shire.
That had me laughing!
Even if you were a King, we live in considerably more comfort than even the most pampered of them. I wouldn't go back to pissing in a pot, even if it was Sevre and there was someone holding it for me.
Windsor Castle had privies in the 1370's, and Henry VIII built the Great House of Easement at Hampton Court. OTOH, they were using chamber pots at Versailles until 1776. It was a question of priorities.
Sure, but it was still pretty much a hole suspended above a cesspit. The Romans were better for luxuries like plumbing, but I still wouldn't go back.
I normally don't get very excited by weather but we are now getting a clearer impression of what a red warning feels like. And its not very nice.
I was speaking to a pollster earlier and they reckon it is events like this which really batters the reputation of Sunak and the Tories.
The voters see extreme weather like this as evidence of climate change and Rishi telling us he is abolishing non existent green crap looks bad.
Right so he'll be stopping expansion of coal power stations in India or China. He might as well sit in front of the North and give orders to the waves like a Canute.
We have the wrong green crap
That's not how the voters see it.
Even if there is polling to show that (I’ve not seen any but it might be there), politicians (I’m looking at Starmer) need to actually lead. A section of the public have become neo-religious nutters who think if they flagellate themselves they can reverse the apocalypse. And bizarrely, that is the right word because many of them seem to think climate change will destroy life on earth despite none of the models showing that even in the worst case 3/4 degree increase scenarios, where technology doesn’t advance and we all go back to burning coal.
I despair. I’ve worked on some of the science here and I used to spend my days trying to convince people climate change was an issue and dispelling nonsense like the “hockey stick” graph. Now, because I will not get behind apocalyptic non-scientific forecasts or accept that whether the U.K. bans petrol in 2030 or 2035 will make the slightest difference, I get called the “denier”.
The world has been infantilised. People need to understand that a mix of declared policies and technology change means we’ve more or less fixed the problem. We’ve won. The global temperature will rise by 2-2.5 degrees and some islands will need to be relocated while some agriculture changes. But we’ve done it.
Starmer and his generation get to declare victory.
It's peculiar.
For all of the world's horrors, by any objective measure, there has actually never been a better time to be alive. But, what proportion of the world's population believe that? I'd be surprised if it was even as high as 5%.
Yes. No one seems to want to understand that we’re doing ok.
The telling statistic is that when I was born, in 1967, 55% of the world lived in absolute poverty (itself, a big improvement on 100 years previously). Now, the proportion is 8%.
One of the issues is that if they accepted that improvement, they would also have to see that it was driven by democracy, open markets, and technology. The spreading of westernised civilisation, in fact. But that can’t be right as all those things are imperialist….
What about the rise of China? That has had a huge negative impact on absolute poverty, and doesn’t fit your narrative of the spread of westernised civilisation (or at least the democracy part).
I've been idly looking at the profit margins of various luxury goods companies in a, so far futile, attempt to find a luxury goods* company with a higher profit margin than Games Workshop (>40% in their most recent quarter) and this evening, after yet another perfume ad, I alighted on the latest results for L'Oreal. A very healthy profit margin of ~20%, but what stood out is that they spend almost one-third of their revenue on advertising and promotion. A third! It's more than they spend on the products that they sell themselves. ~€32.3bn in revenue created by ~€10.6bn in advertising spend.
* Besides the obvious, like a diamond or gold miner.
Now take a look at how much the big pharma companies spend on marketing, compared to how much they spend on research...
So it turns out that somewhere between 10 and 50 died or were injured during the hospital incident and independent European intelligence sources confirm that it was a rocket launched from within Gaza that failed and broke up near the hospital and then the debris which included the payload landed in the car park and exploded.
Every single media outlet that ran with the Hamas version of 500 dead in an Israeli air strike on a hospital needs to put out a front page retraction immediately. Israel should sue and force them into it so they learn their lesson and stop parroting Hamas.
BBC sneaking out not quite an apology. No mention of their headlines or their Twitter post that still says hundreds killed by Israeli strike.
I love the BBC. For most of my life I’ve loved their children’s programmes, comedy, drama, sports, news. The works. I would pay the licence fee purely for Radio 4. I listen to Today six mornings a week but I get so fucking angry with their de haut en bas decision making about what is partial and impartial and the bizarre ways they work out what “balance” really is.
Jeremy Bowen just could not bring himself to say “we might have jumped the gun” this morning on Today after Tugendhat calmly pointed out the errors over the hospital reporting. It’s a mix of arrogance, confusion, not understanding that the world doesn’t think the way they do. There is a thing called “BBC diversity” which is that the BBC are full of people of every colour and creed so they think they have diverse input but it’s not because those people of diverse colour and creed are largely from a similar social viewpoint or background. The groupthink will kill the bbc. Moving bits to Salford doesn’t make it diverse because they fill it with key people from the bbc in London with the same views so it can never change.
I just find it depressing that they consider themselves educated and superior but cannot also consider if the way they think might just be wrong occasionally.
They aren’t the only ones and it is a symptom of “quick news”. Pretty much every news outlet needs to make it big that they got it wrong over the hospital attack as do Arab governments if they want to lance the boil that’s growing.
This is very cogently argued and quite persuasive as to the reasons for the initial reporting, but I wonder if the BBC’s reluctance to admit fault today has another cause.
It seems to be that over the last decade the government have successfully delegitimised the BBC such that the corporation is constantly second guessing itself. A strong, confident organisation would take responsibility for its mistakes regardless of its biases, in my view. Instead, I think the BBC is fearful of what might happen if it does admit fault.
I think we are seeing the product of a concerted attack on the BBC over the past decade.
Perhaps. More though I think it's a lack of realisation of the seriousness of the error in the age of misinformation - and how badly they compounded it by not immediately and unequivocally rowing it back, particularly keeping social media posts up that heavily suggested one conclusion. Obviously reporting from a warzone is difficult - and Gaza even more so than most given the 'government' is a vile terrorist organisation. Reporters will make honest mistakes. But they failed to realise, and still do I think, the gravity of the news beyond the initial horror, that they announced and that therefore it should have been initially shared with a much greater health warning, because the lie they repeated as relative fact, has now been shared by millions who will probably never believe the eventual truth of the matter, and caused major geopolitical ructions and put others in harm's way. Bowen et al have taken a "these things happen" approach, which is in a sense true, but which really isn't good enough with a conflict this fraught - and which has been so ripe for disinformation because lots of people really want to to turn it into a football match and inflame tensions, and any report that gets its emphasis this wrong is a God-send to those for whom this is their aim. There's also undoubtedly some groupthink there in terms of no one going "hang on a minute" quite early on and realising how important their failure was. Plenty of internet users without a particular 'side' they favour realised early on that the initial information didn't seem 100% trustworthy.
It is not primarily the desk jockeys in their warm studios with their liberal groupthink who are having a bad war, but the gnarled masses of world weary war correspondents in Gaza itself.
Is it that Gaza has a uniquely repressive government? I'd suggest a lot of the places with wars have government handlers and guards and the correspondents should have familiarity with that. And the editorial tricks to deal with the idea that, for example, Steve Rosenberg in Moscow has to say his piece in a slightly guarded way, so we'll also talk to someone else, somewhere else is pretty textbook.
A couple of thoughts on my part:
Maybe Gaza is a pressure cooker like no other. In a standard war you may not be located under fire all the time, you go back to the hotel away from the front line and, yes, you need to know where the bomb shelter is. So, that fraught trip to Bucha is a harrowing but discrete event.
In the tight space of Gaza is there any respite from the internal refugees, from the strikes, from the populace, from the suffering. Or perhaps the situation they see is different. Anna Notting just wasn't quite right in that interview the other day. Is Gaza a more PTSD inducing place than more normal war zones.
My other thought sort of mirrors LuckyGuy's point, though I wouldn't put it the same way. There is not one single clear UK editorial line here, and both the Palestinian and Israeli stories are being told. That is not the norm, so could they really be struggling with that?
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Most people think that the world c.1780 was The Shire.
NEW THREAD
It seems to be that over the last decade the government have successfully delegitimised the BBC such that the corporation is constantly second guessing itself. A strong, confident organisation would take responsibility for its mistakes regardless of its biases, in my view. Instead, I think the BBC is fearful of what might happen if it does admit fault.
I think we are seeing the product of a concerted attack on the BBC over the past decade.
Both these were lies as investigations have shown.....how is that impartial or factual...they are total dicks
I'm not quite so optimistic as you about 2-2.5C warming - the survival of the Greenland Ice Sheet would be touch and go at that level, and it's about twice as much warming as we've already seen, so I think it could create plenty bad enough impacts. I think we could save ourselves a lot of bother if we made more of an effort over the next 5-10 years or so to speed up the pace of transition.
But all the same, I've never been as hopeful as I am now about the issue because it's clear that the energy transition has built up a lot of momentum now, and that closes off almost all of the worst-case scenario risks.
Spoiler alert, as it saves you googling... https://www.csrxp.org/icymi-new-study-finds-big-pharma-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-rd-during-pandemic/
It is not primarily the desk jockeys in their warm studios with their liberal groupthink who are having a bad war, but the gnarled masses of world weary war correspondents in Gaza itself.
Is it that Gaza has a uniquely repressive government? I'd suggest a lot of the places with wars have government handlers and guards and the correspondents should have familiarity with that. And the editorial tricks to deal with the idea that, for example, Steve Rosenberg in Moscow has to say his piece in a slightly guarded way, so we'll also talk to someone else, somewhere else is pretty textbook.
A couple of thoughts on my part:
Maybe Gaza is a pressure cooker like no other. In a standard war you may not be located under fire all the time, you go back to the hotel away from the front line and, yes, you need to know where the bomb shelter is. So, that fraught trip to Bucha is a harrowing but discrete event.
In the tight space of Gaza is there any respite from the internal refugees, from the strikes, from the populace, from the suffering. Or perhaps the situation they see is different. Anna Notting just wasn't quite right in that interview the other day. Is Gaza a more PTSD inducing place than more normal war zones.
My other thought sort of mirrors LuckyGuy's point, though I wouldn't put it the same way. There is not one single clear UK editorial line here, and both the Palestinian and Israeli stories are being told. That is not the norm, so could they really be struggling with that?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/20/terrorist-attack-in-uk-linked-to-gaza/