One of the little tricks the BBC uses to suggest that supposedly rising global temperatures are baking Europe is to mark areas with normal temperatures in colours suggesting a heatwave on their weather maps. Another is simply to give out the wrong figures.
People have commented recently on the way that the colours used on BBC weather maps put Britain among European countries enduring very high temperatures when UK temperatures are below average at the moment.[i] Someone has pointed out that the figures given misrepresent reality by as much as sixteen degrees Fahrenheit.[ii]
But these are crude techniques compared with one used by the BBC twenty years ago for a different purpose: to attack the British way of life.
On Thursday April 17th 2003, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a news item about ozone. The harmful effects of the gas were explained. Scientists were quoted. The final point was that we could help by doing three things: keeping the car in the garage, remembering that certain fluids such as creosote and paint thinners created ozone, and “going easy on the barbecues”. Why did this item appear when there was no particular need for an ozone story?
April 17th was the day before Good Friday, and the weather that week had been glorious. On the Wednesday the temperature had reached 81 degrees, far above the average temperature for July, let alone April. Everyone was hoping the good weather would hold for the Easter weekend, when they would be planning to visit relatives or take short holidays. Those who would stay at home would be planning to catch up on DIY — painting a fence, perhaps — and enjoy the first meal of the year cooked out of doors. The story’s final line, appealing to our sense of planetary responsibility, was aimed at deterring us from engaging in precisely these activities. The only reason for the news item was to suppress these aspects of British culture.
The weather forecast was in on it as well. On the Wednesday, it stated that the heatwave would abruptly stop. Sadly, said the girl who cut my hair that day, by the weekend the temperature would be as low as 50. Wasn’t it typical? In fact the weekend was as lovely as the week had been. All those who had obediently cancelled their plans would have cursed their bad luck. Unless the weather forecasters were merely incompetent, they had sought to defeat people’s plans for Easter by predicting miserable weather.
This kind of detectable spite is what Michael Hoffman calls the revelation of method, where the controlled media do not just oppose us but draw attention to the fact that they are doing it so as to impress us with their power.[iii] Twenty years ago one had to be quite observant to notice it. Today it is blatant.
Footnotes
[i] Mail Online, July 23rd 2023, “Viewers see red over ‘misleading’ maps that appeared to include Britain among European countries experiencing scorching temperatures — despite poor weather in the UK”, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12327909/Viewers-red-misleading-maps-appeared-include-Britain-European-countries-experiencing-scorching-temperatures-despite-poor-weather-UK.html. … “Maps depicted UK in yellow and dark orange despite rain and cold temperatures.”
[ii] UK Column, 24th July 2023, “UK Column News – 24th July 2023”, https://www.bitchute.com/video/KwgFEOwjYNRG/.
[iii] Michael A. Hoffman II, 2001 (1989), Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: Independent History and Research.
