Take a chuckle at this advert:

Now have a listen to this

And a read of this

The world has gone mad

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In March 2007, Channel 4 screened a fake/hoax documentary (fokumentary?) called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

And a lot of people fell for it. Unfortunately, some of the more, shall we put it “cerebrally challenged” saw fit to embarrass themselves into using it as an argument.

In the style of Obie from Family Guy: “Well, uh….there’s uhhhh…this man I uhhh…know from the pub and …uhh.. he saw this uhhhh…documentary on … uhhhh … channel ummmm four …. uuuuhhhh … vote Republican!”.

UPDATE: 25th July - Marcus Brigstocke from The Now Show comments on the judgement (more at the bottom of the post)

Well, you get the idea. Anyhoo, they had their asses whipped by the regulator!

From The Times:

A Channel 4 documentary that argued that global warning was a fraud is to be criticised by the media regulator.

On Monday Ofcom is expected to publish a long-awaited report that upholds claims by some of the scientists who appeared in the programme last year that they were misrepresented.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired in March last year, has been accused of downplaying the threat in the public mind. It sparked an outcry among environmentalists and many campaigners argue that the programme has contributed to people believing that the threat is not real.

It is understood that complaints by Carl Wunsch, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be upheld

It misrepresented evidence about the threat of global warming and that it rehashed discredited arguments and skewed data and charts to make its arguments stand up. In the closing moments of the program a voiceover from the climate change sceptic Fred Singer claimed that the Chief Scientist of the UK had said that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the planet would be in the Antarctic and that “humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic”.

Sir David has never made such a statement. It is thought that Mr Singer confused the comments with those made by the scientist James Lovelock, who infuriated many colleagues in the science community when he publicly questioned global warming.

From The Guardian:

The detail of the ruling is expected to criticise Channel 4 over some aspects of the controversial programme, made by the director Martin Durkin.

The programme was criticised by scientists, who claimed it fundamentally misrepresented the evidence about global warming, that it rehashed discredited old arguments and manipulated data and charts to make its case.

I heard Durkin being interviewed once - what a complete cock! When they put one argument to him, he threw his toys out of the pram and started being abusive.

Here’s the mp3version:

And here it is on Youtube - but I disagree with him about China, though. China is by far the greatest threat and will overtake the USA as the world’s worst polluter (by country and capita) within a year or two.

More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/04/comment.comment

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/swindlewatch-07/

http://www.desmogblog.com/the-great-global-warming-swindle

http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.com/2007/03/ok-now-im-cross.html

Tags: green,marcus-brigstocke,mp3,the-now-show
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From The Telegraph (and many others)

Meaningless jargon and trendy buzzwords should be banned from town halls, it was claimed, after one council introduced the term “thought showers” to replace “brainstorming”.

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent ordered the change because they feared epilepsy sufferers may be offended by the term used to describe idea-generating sessions.

But charities representing epileptics said the ban was taking political correctness too far.

Once again, The Now Show have it nicely covered:

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ANOTHER huge stuff-up from American-based marking company, ETS Europe.

Just read the above - what a sorry story. And apparently, they use GCSE students to mark the papers!

Un-be-lievable. And I heard a bit about it Radio 4 this morning - NO-ONE from ETS or the government had the most basic decency to be interviewed - ETS pulled out at the last minute.

Isn’t ANYONE sick of the way the government treat our children with lowest common denominator, expensive poor quality marking companies?

Couple of bits of audio - here are a couple of young readers on Radio 4’s 6pm news, thurs 17th July:

I’d be more worried about not being able to understand “yoof speak” than anything else! As someone on the message boards said:

We have a Jamaican friend over here. He was telling us that the West Indian patois so common on the streets and schools of London and elsewhere, would not be tolerated in the West Indian schools. He says it beggars belief that in England it is allowed… and remember he IS Jamaican.

This interested me, because I was Headteacher for most of my career hundreds of miles north of London/Essex/the East End. On occasions, one of my RURAL pupils would begin talking with a kind of Estuary/Essex/West Indian patois accent!!!!

Well, that was easily solved in school, as I simply refused to acknowledge anything said in such a fabricated accent for that area.

However, have you noticed that anyone employed as a “Youth Worker” apparently needs as their number one top priority, just such an accent, and in all probability to dress down to the same standards as the “yoofs”.

Can we not be allowed to teach children to speak properly any more, to have role models who can speak English, and to have a media that doesn’t think it is “wiv i’ ” [that's a 't' missing by the way] if the actor/personality doesn’t put on the most awful, forced, incoherent accent?

Maybe we need a grown-up debate about standards in everyday language?

And here is the view from The Now Show

No-one sick of this government yet? Where are the protests? Where are the riots?

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You are really, really not going to believe this - here are a few brown pearls of wisdom from Tom Hampson of the Fabian Society (the people that brought you political correctness).

UPDATE: Jon Holmes covered this on The Now Show on BBC Radio 4 on 1st Aug 2008 - here’s the mp3

‘Chav’ is way above the threshold of acceptability. It is deeply offensive

In whose opinion?

to a largely voiceless group

HA! Voiceless?! If only! You really haven’t left your Islington flat in a while, have you?

and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred.

I’ll come back to this. Keep going before the coke hits….

The phenomenon of the word has grown over the last five years. Initially it was purely a term of abuse. (You only have to visit the website chavscum.com to see this – have a look at it and be appalled.)

Er, knock knock? Not noticed that it became chavtowns.co.uk a while back? Never mind, doesn’t seem you’re on the same planet anyway

You cannot consider yourself of the left and use the word.

Although I don’t consider myself on the left anyway, how patronising can you get? So, left = mental and unable to have an opinion?! I know several “people of the left” - their opinion is wrong, of course, but I haven’t even for one moment considered such nonsense as that last sentence.

It is sneering and patronising

A little like your article, Tom?

and – perhaps most dangerous – it is distancing, turning the ‘chav’ into the kind of feral beast that exists only in tabloid headlines.

There is nothing I would like more than distance from chavs, and nothing would please me more if they really DID exist only in tabloid headlines, but if I can just get you to pop your copy of Socialist Worker down and look in the real world for a moment, you’ll find they are very much feral, and very much out there.

But who does the white working class have?

WORKING class? If ignorance is bliss, you must be a very happy man, Tom. Chavs are not “working class”. You seem to think they are somehow forced into their position. You don’t have Burberry, prison-white trainers and a Renault Clio Turbo forced on you. You aspire to it. Chavs relish, embrace and cultivate the way they are.

You might think they would at least have the progressive left, but it would seem not.

Since when did “progressive” equate to “ignorant”?

The BBC should specify the word in its guidelines for programme makers and take class discrimination seriously. The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights should show that they understand class discrimination is an issue that can have effects as detrimental as racial or gender bias.

I’m really beginning to wonder if my clock is set wrong and it’s actually April Fool’s Day.

But more importantly, we must stop using it ourselves. From now on – embarrassingly PC though it may seem – I shall audibly ‘tut tut’ and wince whenever I hear it used. You should too.

Should I? Well, thanks for giving us the benefit of Comrade Hampson’s wisdom.

If you need an antidote by now, I suggest The Campaign Against Political Correctness.

If Tom is reading this, here’s something to keep him happy:

David Thompson has also blogged about this. Guardian Article. BBC article.

Tags: chavs,funnies,john holmes,mp3,political-correctness,the-now-show
Categories: chavs, political_correctness
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