In his column this week, Booker does a fairly comprehensive demolition job on the BBC Trust review of the impartiality and accuracy of the BBC's coverage of science. Writing the column was not easy, but it was not the labour of months. The basic theme was easy to establish, and relatively little work was needed to put the arguments together.

And that makes for an intriguing puzzle – another one. Why are the arguments adduced by the BBC are so shallow and implausible that they can so readily be demolished? You would have thought that, if the BBC wanted seriously to make its case, it would have done a far better job than it has done.

But then, the probability is that the BBC does not see the need to substantiate its case. Endowed with that mystical quality known as "prestige", massively supported by its hypothecated tax which relieves it of the burden of responding to customers who might otherwise exercise free choice, and endorsed by the Scumset classes, it need only to make an ex cathedra statement.

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Maybe, the beeb believes all it's EU hype, that we are all now, so dumbed down, that, simplistic BS will win the day, kinda like a version [if it were possible] of a intellectual docu-drama featuring Ant and Dec.

If you believe in AGW you must be a dummy.

I try to make factually correct statements (e.g no warming over the last decade, sea levels not doing anything unusual, no tropospheric hotspot, etc etc) and regularly get shouted down as a "denialist".

Never mind, Thursday week I get to listen to Monckton in Auckland. Should be entertaining if we get any hecklers.

The TV Licence evasion rate is 6 per cent and falling.

Perhaps there are people who feel strongly against the BBC, but they're not prepared to stop paying for it, even though advice about how to avoid paying it is easier to come by than ever before on the internet.

It is only when people become prepared to stop paying for it that anything will change, and there is no sign of that happening.

I don't pay my TV licence and have been taken to court and still don't pay.

I hope you don't pay yours Techno?

I stopped paying mine a few weeks ago. I am planning to just ignore the letters and the knocks at the door, that is the best advice I've seen.

I am disappointed at the low rate of evasion though, and the fact that it is actually declining. People like to complain about it, but still cough up the fee. Bonkers.

I have not paid my TV ripoff tax for 5/6 years. My basic argument is that I have no contract with a private corparation called the BBC.
The long and the short of it is that there is no compulsion to contract with the BBC without your consent. End of.

That 6% is a target-meeting lie. There is no way of estimating the figure, they're just guessing.

May I point out that having a TV in your domicile , even if plugged in for juice and to the arial , is not an offence .

It may show capability of recieving a signal ( thus capability of comitting an offence if not having a TV tax paper ), but that is not an offence .

Capability of committing a crime is not the same as carrying one out .
(All your vehicles are capable of exceeding the speed limit , and you may have mobile phones in your handbag / jacket pocket when driving in a car . You are capable of stabbing someone with your kitchen knives ) .

Dont pay the TV tax .

Perhaps I'm off topic here? But in using Prof Steve Jones as their messenger the BBC have also shone the light on UK academia, again. Yes it's true that Jones is from Imperial College but do remember the problems that recently came to light at that other London based establishment, the LSE.

In the eyes of the BBC Jones is a 'safe pair of hands'. But then so were the people taken in by the Gaddafi family so much so they awarded a higher degree to one of his sons.

Remember also the University of East Anglia. I was to offer advice to anyone contemplating being educated in the UK I'd say don't, consider being educated abroad.

What I don't understand is why ITV and Channel 4 are also afflicted with the same bias in the case of global warming. They all parrot the official line, while offering the odd crumb to sceptics, whereas the press gives a much more balanced view. - Discuss.

I saw this article in The Mail on Sunday.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... usted.html

C4 showed "The Great Global Warming Swindle". My impression, which may not be worth a lot because I hardly ever watch television, is that C4 and ITV may be going along with AGW but the BBC is leading the charge. Maybe all these broadcasters comprise the same sort of lefty luvvies, but C4 and the ITV have commercial disciplines rather than being funded by a tax. Newspapers, in general, seem to have fewer lefty luvvies. If you are funded by a tax, isn't there an incentive to put out a message the government wants to hear? I thought there was a change in the BBC after the Giligan/Kelly affair and Nu Labour nakedly threatened to get them in the playground afterwards.

As for the Mail article, the BBC's interest in this is nothing to do with science reporting; it's pursuing a political agenda. I do listen to BBC radio and as I've said before, it's not particularly science reporting, it's the background of assumption about AGW which they create by mentioning it in just about every other programme as a given.

What's worse an unelected Australian/American controlling part of the media and causing a certain amount of embarrassment for the Great and Good or an unelected State Broadcaster run by closet fascists and with their pensions very much tied up in preserving the status quo re man made climate change, EU etc?