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    Today's Radio Times bulletin Archived Message

    Posted by scrabb on March 4, 2020, 4:25 pm

    I like reading and reporting on the Radio Times. It's the perfect establishment weather-vane. Even though it's not owned and run by the BBC any more, the two are hand-in-glove on so many things.

    Regular readers to this column will know of my irritating and obsessional reminders of the famous Radio Times double-spread of 12? 15? years ago showing a contented couple in the Home Counties growing mangoes and bananas in their back garden -- he lounging back in a deckchair while wifey trundles a wheelbarrow laden with exotic tropical fruits (hey -- the RT catching up with them new-fangled gender issues -- wife with wheelbarrow, geddit?)

    I wrote a letter ridiculing this scenario which you'll be surprised to learn, they didn't acknowledge never mind publish.

    Even as recently as last August they had a piece by Bill Giles, the former BBC weatherman. I know this will seem incredible, and you'll have to rub your eyes, but I'm not making it up. This is what he wrote:

    “By 2050 the British climate will be among the best in the world.” He then says that UK seaside resorts should be preparing for visitors from Europe and all over the world “as our climate becomes more acceptable and their own becomes unbearably hot.”

    I wrote again to the RT in my usual conciliatory manner:

    "What are Mr Giles’s forecasts for 2060? Iceland as being the ideal holiday destination? Or what about 2070? The Arctic Circle?"

    And again they ignored me! Who'd have thought?

    But reality must be slowly creeping up on the BBC/Radio Times crew (instructions from above -- "let's get with the programme, guys) because in next week's issue there's a "Viewpoint" by Francis Wilson, who used to be the weatherman on the ITV morning show wearing colourful and "amusing" knitted pullovers. The highlighted text reads: "It's time for our weather forecasters to get serious" and "Weather presenters should know what they're talking about". The rest of the piece is highly critical of TV companies in their "rush to get the most attractive face overlook the fact that he or she doesn't actually know what he or she is talking about." Wow!

    Wilson draws attention to the fact that he is a chartered meteorologist and a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society while by comparison today's lot don't know jacksh1t about the weather or anything else come to that. But Wilson isn't done with these dunces yet:

    " ..... we need presenters with the authority that comes with real knowledge and understanding of what is happening to the climate. We need presenters who can state that these life-threatening events [he's already mentioned storms, floods, droughts, wild fires] are caused by global warming. [Not climate change, note -- global warming] That such things are happening because we have a much warmer atmosphere than we did before the industrial revolution and the subsequent increase in carbon dioxide.

    "I'd go further and say that there is a moral obligation for weather presenters, when there is a serious and significant weather event, to say that this kind of intensity is entirely consistent with what we expected to happen -- because of the man-made rise in temperatures. We need to tell people to stop warming the atmosphere, to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That way, viewers won't lose sight of the fact that they can actually do something about it."

    Leaving aside the obvious and glaring incredibility hole that it's precisely the kind of article by a weather forecaster that should have been appearing 15 to 20 years ago, this is still a very important and amazing landmark in that most conservative of establishment publications, the Radio Times.

    First, to have switched from the Bill Giles propaganda fantasyland viewpoint that was, quite frankly, ever to see light of day in a national publication a disgrace and an outrage, to this one by Francis Wilson in SEVEN MONTHS is .... well, it's astounding. I'm genuinely gobsmacked.

    Second, for the RT to allow Wilson to speak of a "moral obligation" on weather presenters to state the facts, and for him to call them out as basically ill-informed, unqualified and incompetent is a watershed moment.

    Perhaps my decades of (unpublished) letters have had an effect after all. Who'd have thought?






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