Professor John Robertson OBA
Headlining the BBC Scotland website this morning, the above and:
The future of nuclear power in Scotland is shaping up to be a battleground at next year’s Holyrood election – and Torness, on the banks of the Forth, is on the frontline.
The Labour government at Westminster has declared its intention to usher in a new “golden age” of nuclear.
But the SNP government at Holyrood opposes new nuclear power stations and can use planning laws to prevent them being built – even though energy policy is reserved to the UK Parliament.
No one seems to have told the newspapers. Not one has this on its front page. How/why did BBC Scotland decide to promote this?
In East Lothian, council leader Norman Hampshire has asked UK ministers to draw up a “characterisation” of the Torness power station site in the hope that it could still be considered for a replacement.
The well-named Hampshire is interviewed in the broadcasts too.
So, it’s just a Labour Party ‘election flyer’ and not news that has happened somewhere in Scotland.
Were you able to ask everyone across Scotland, how many do you think were talking about this, thinking it was a big election issue?
Ipsos, yesterday did not even bother to ask:
It is part of ‘Energy policy’ but they don’t mention it specifically and even then it’s in 8th place and well behind the big three which are undoubtedly on the front line. BBC Scotland have unilaterally promoted it to construct a different reality for their audiences.
So, what are they doing? At editorial level there ‘s been a deliberate decision to promote this narrative and where it has come from, Scottish Labour and nuclear industry interests, is buried in the text.
Talking-up Scotland used to be called Thought Control Scotland but readers often said the title seemed paranoid such that they were averse to sharing posts from it. Pragmatically, I gave in and changed it but I haven’t changed my mind.
The title comes from this:
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies is a 1989 book by United States academic Noam Chomsky concerning political power using propaganda to distort and distract from major issues to maintain confusion and complicity, preventing real democracy from becoming effective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions
I did my PhD on Chomsky’s Propaganda Model theory and still use it to this day but few academics do, for fear of being jumped on as ‘commies’ or conspiracy theorists.
It’s difficult for people to embrace because in democracies, thought control is not in-you-face as it is in totalitarian states. Few in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia believed the media. They knew it was propaganda. In democracies there is the constant media message that we have freedom of speech but little reference to the fact that 99% of us have no access to media dissemination of our views and that corporations and government have almost complete control over what is reported and how it is reported especially in terms of what sources are used.
The BBC Report is balanced in that local opposition has a say but it’s neutered. There’s absolutely none of this:
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Spot on. I have always admired Noam Chomsky’s ability to explain the malign methods of the political class and their assets in the media. His calm debunking of the youthful Andrew Marr, completely out of his depth, is hilarious (it’s on YouTube). I fear AI will take the media ability to fool people to a new level.
We all need educated in how to see through the web of deception.
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When I was teaching at the University of Glasgow we always knew when a student had copied and pasted text from the Internet into their essays – the standard of English was better in the copied section than in the bit they had written themselves.
I suspect that there will be a similar giveaway when it comes to AI. We will just have to study the output more closely in the early days of AI to find those giveaways.
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Two of us! Let’s form a party. The Scottish Anarcho-Syndicalists (SAS)!
I’ve got an NC t-shirt.
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However tempting it is to lambast a Norman from Hampshire, it’s a tad unfair to single him out over his concerns over effects on local business in 5 years time.
It’s pretty much a cut and paste garbage article from Kevin Keane https://archive.ph/7VrHg, and par for the course from HMS James Cook, be seen to support HMG in hopes of a gong, calling in support from such nuclear experts as Russel Findlay as he once ‘worked’ for the Sun.
The SMR the Tories were attempting to foist on an energy replete Scotland, is now being pushed by Labour’s WC Shanks, into the enormous gap left by Ian Murray with his inconsequential successor Douglas Alexander slithering back and forth amid total indifference for the next 4 years.
Pop Quiz –
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‘However tempting it is to lambast a Norman from Hampshire, it’s a tad unfair to single him out over his concerns over effects on local business in 5 years time?’
True. It wasn’t even ad hominem, more ad facies.
Careful, what you’re thinking would be ad excrementum,
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Labour will be voted out. Before any nuclear stations are built. A total waste of money. Westminster spends £13Billion a year decommissioning nuclear. Hickley Point years late and over budget. £Billions wasted. Finland nuclear project years late and over budget. France cancelled.
Labour cancelled two tidal projects, one at Hull. Renewables. £10Billion each. Would have been cheaper. France has had tidal wave renewable plants, since the 1960’s. Dinan.
Scottish hydro schemes. Pitlochry etc. wind, sun, water, wave. Scotland is the best place in the world for renewables.
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