Two BBC Complaints Resubmitted

By Paul Homewood

The BBC obviously think the general public are something beneath contempt, and any complaints should be fobbed off and ignored!

I filed two complaints last week, which have now had the usual disdainful first stage replies.

The first was on this article, which claimed that Storm Arwen was unprecedented, even though there have been other, much stronger storms in Scotland in the past:

 

 

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20231219012205/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67752167

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This is their response:

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I have therefore resubmitted this complaint:

Storm Arwen
Your response states "we have amended the wording to make it clearer. The article now states:
“Scientists have warned that climate change is making extreme storms more common.”
Scientists say no such thing.
The Met Office’s State of the UK Climate 2022 report [page 42] states "As a measure of storminess Figure 51 counts the number of days each year on which at least 20 stations recorded gusts exceeding 40/50/60 Kt (46/58/69 mph). Most winter storms have widespread effects, so this metric will reasonably capture fairly widespread strong wind events. The metric will consider large-scale storm systems rather than localized convective gusts.- The most recent two decades have seen fewer occurrences of max gust speeds above these thresholds than during the previous decades, particularly comparing the period before and after 2000.
This earlier period [before 2000] also included among the most severe storms experienced in the UK in the observational records including the ‘Burns’ Day Storm’ of 25 January 1990, the ‘Boxing Day Storm’ of 26 December 1998 and the ‘Great Storm’ of 16 October 1987. Any comparison of storms is complex as it depends on severity, spatial extent and duration. Storm Eunice was the most severe storm to affect England and Wales since February 2014, but even so, these storms of the 1980s and 1990s were very much more severe."
The same page includes Figure 51, which clearly shows extreme storms being much less frequent and intense in recent years
The link to the report is here:
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/joc.8167
Your article needs to be corrected to show that Storm Arwen was not in any way "unprecedented" or "unusual"

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The second complaint was about this article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082

It is simple arithmetic to work out that £590m divided by 27m households is a lot less than £40! And when you factor in that domestic users only consume a third of UK electricity, the actual cost is £7 a year.

Evidently the BBC are not capable of simple maths, and believe that Carbon Tracker must be right!!

Again, I have resubmitted my complaint:

Your response fails to address my complaint, which is that claims that wasted wind power is adding £40 a year to household bills, are factually incorrect.
The fact that they were made by a lobby group for renewable energy, Carbon Tracker, is irrelevant. It is the BBC’s duty to report factually correct information.
It is difficult to see how this transparently false claim ever passed the BBC’s editorial checks, as it iis so blatantly and obviously fake.
Nevertheless the BBC must now publish a correction.

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Both of these BBC falsehoods fit into the same narrative. The first is part of their ongoing agenda to indoctrinate the public into thinking that weather is becoming more extreme.

In the second example, they are peddling propaganda for the renewable lobby. If the public think wasted wind is costing them so much, they might put pressure on the government to spend billions on more transmission lines.