You will have seen the reports from the latest Pakistan floods, and you’ll have likely heard the repeated claims that these floods are “unprecedented” and the “worst in history”, as declared by the country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
And we’re told yet again that the floods are so devastating because of man-made climate change.
I am not denying that the Pakistan floods are terrible and I’m not denying that they have caused misery and death. I also acknowledge that this year’s monsoon season is currently being reported as the wettest since records began in 1961. But I do feel it’s worth testing the claim that the floods are ‘unprecedented’ and the ‘worst in history’.
What does ‘worst in history’ mean? What do politicians and the media mean when they claim these floods are ‘unprecedented’ and the ‘worst in history’? I imagine there could be three explanations:
- Most people killed by floods.
- Highest percentage of the population affected.
- Largest area of the country affected.
I looked up the data on the numbers of people killed in Pakistan in floods for the last 72 years.
Just in the last 72 years Pakistan has seen many floods. These include:
- The flood of 1950, which killed 2,910 people.
- On July 1st 1977 heavy rains and flooding in Karachi killed 248 people; according to the Pakistan meteorological department 207mm (8.1″) of rain fell in 24 hours.
- In 1992, flooding during the Monsoon season killed 1,834 people across the country.
- In 1993, flooding during Monsoon rains killed 3,084 people.
- In 2003, Sindh province was badly affected due to monsoon rains causing damages in billions and killing 178 people.
- In 2007, Cyclone Yemyin submerged the lower part of Balochistan Province in sea water, killing 380 people. Before that it killed 213 people in Karachi on its way to Balochistan.
- In 2010, almost all of Pakistan was affected when massive flooding, caused by record-breaking rains, hit Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. At least 2,000 people died in the flood and almost 20 million people were affected by it.
The death toll from the current floods is estimated at just over 1,000 people. The two-minutes research I did found four Pakistan floods – 1950, 1992, 1993 and 2010 – which killed more than that. So ‘unprecedented’ and ‘worst in history’ cannot mean that this year’s floods have killed more people than previous floods. That leaves two possible explanations of ‘unprecedented’ and ‘worst in history: either this year’s floods have affected the highest percentage of the population (estimated at 15%) or they have affected the largest area of the country (estimated at over a third). Failing this, the claim this year’s floods are ‘unprecedented’ and the ‘worst in history’ are just the usual nonsense spouted by our climate-catastrophist journalists in order to advance their own careers and to terrify us into obedience to the next series of Net Zero measures and restrictions which will be imposed on us in order to supposedly ‘save the planet’.
I’ll leave it up to you to choose which of these three possibilities is the most likely.
What about the trees? One issue none of the climate catastrophists have mentioned when reporting the floods is the massive scale of deforestation in Pakistan largely due to the country’s rapidly-expanding population. Trees are obviously important in countries which have seasons with heavy rainfall as they help the earth absorb rain, meaning heavy rain doesn’t result in torrents of water, landslides and floods.
The population of Pakistan is increasing at an astonishing rate. At the time of the 2010 floods, which killed around 2,000 people, the population of Pakistan was about 180 million. By 2022, this had reached 230 million – a rise of 50 million (28%) in just 12 years. Probably linked to the rise in population is the rate of deforestation. Just between 2013 and 2020 Pakistan’s tree coverage fell from 5.2% to 4.8%:
The World Wildlife Fund estimated that Pakistan’s deforestation rate was the second highest in Asia (after Afghanistan) and forest coverage was well below the recommended level of 25%. To put this into context, the world average in 2020 based on 193 countries is 32.2%. Pakistan comes in at 164 out of 193 countries in levels of tree cover. Pakistan’s neighbour, India, has 24.3% tree cover – almost six times as much as Pakistan. So, it’s hardly surprising that, with so little tree cover, when the monsoons hit Pakistan, the result is inevitably rushing torrents of water, floods and destruction of property and agricultural land.
A 2012 U.S. Kent State University study of flooding in Pakistan reported:
Pakistan is a developing nation that has historically been subjected to high flooding fatality events due to its socioeconomic characteristics, population, geography and landscape attributes.
Since 1950, floods have been historically the second deadliest natural disaster to affect Pakistan, behind only earthquakes. Recent disasters continue to expose Pakistan’s great vulnerability to natural hazards, as the nation remains highly susceptible to large losses of human life that may transpire from a single event.
Yet with leaden inevitability, our media claim that the floods are all the result of climate change.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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The BBC is part of the communist Trojan horse pushing net zero. It’s to the eternal shame of the fake conservatives they didn’t put it out of its misery.
Corrupt little sh*tbags like Hancock told them to push the Save Granny narrative or get cancelled, so he could take a tidy profit from Midazolam sales at the start of ThePandemic™
I liked ‘the Blood Donor’ though
Not THAT Hancock! Tony was very funny, unlike the MP.
it is to the eternal shame of any self respecting white Briton who still pays the BBC propaganda tax.
I suppose this fits into the Reithian pattern, a upper-middle class paternalist BBC offering ‘education’ at every opportunity and shuddering slightly at the base tastes of its own audience. The education on offer today is just rather different from that of Lord Reith’s time.
And the “Reithian pattern” was developed in a foreign country, in effect, in which there were only three broadcast channels for much of the time, then four. The audience has grown up alongside the technology we’re using today.
The BBC’s primary purpose is to brainwash its audience into a certain type of thinking. Entertaining is just one of the approaches, but entertaining will never be prioritised over the primary objective, which is brainwashing.
I’d like to see an explanation from your downticker of where you’ve erred with your statement.
It’s not just the BBC either. I suspect certain other organizations have also been transformed in this way – advertising agencies, for sure, but also quite a few large corporations. I get the impression that many of their leaders and employees go into certain professions not to pursue those professions but to use them as a vehicle for “doing good” or “fixing the world”.
The ones not doing it are reported the OfCom, such as GB News, who are not telling the “right” (leftie) story.
Does that mean they won’t be showing reruns of In Sickness and in Health, then?? Haha Pigs will fly first.
I loved this show and Alf Garnett was ace. Even the theme tune brings back happy memories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrpVs0G5BWA&ab_channel=MarkKiernan
Did you laugh like me at:
“Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books”
If it takes over 10 books for a journalist to come up with the term for a BBC “shitcom” then all journalists need to write over 10 books.
However, the author and lead of ‘Fleabag‘ does look good in a short skirt – and f-me if she doesn’t have a penis – what is the BBC coming to putting on a show without the lead being a chick-with-a-dick.
Of course I have nothing against chicks-with-dicks.
In fact I intend to keep it that way.
I could rant on like I usually do on Daily Sceptic, but I think on this occasion I would rather just recommend “BBC Brainwashing Britain” by David Sedgewick——-Cheers everyone
Yes, definitely worth a read.
Second hand, at Amazon from £3.56.
I wonder why you got 2 red thumbs down for that. ——weird.
Wot, only one down tick for your reply?
The down-tickers are slacking.
This comment deserves better.
Come on down-tickers – give this all you’ve got.
[Tossers].
I think the last BBC sitcom I watched was AbFab. In the ’90s.
It stopped being broadcast in 1996, so just before Blair was elected …. and carried out his mission to destroy the country.
That’s when comedy died on the BBC.
I think many people don’t realise just how much deliberate damage the Blair creature did to this country.
There have, in my opinion, been two very good sitcoms since then: Outnumbered, from 2008 to 2016, and W1A – ironically satirising the BBC – from 2014 to 2017, which was a follow-up to Twenty Twelve – which satirised the organisation of the Summer Olympics in London in 2012. I’m not aware of any sitcom worth watching in the last seven years.
To correct myself a bit, W1A/Twenty Twelve began in or before 2012, and Outnumbered began in 2008, so really there hasn’t been a new sitcom worth watching for more than 12 years.
But yes, both 2012 and W1A were very funny, even the small sketch for Comic Relief last week was streets ahead of much comic output of recent years.
AbFab AFAIAC was AbFlab or AbGab.
I cannot remember anything Jennifer Saunders [or Dawn French] ever said that was funny.
I could never bear more than a few seconds of their stuff.
Add Dinner Ladies to that.
In fact, unless it is a great movie, I cannot remember when I last spent time on stuff on the BBC other than things like Six Nations.
You can’t trust their factual stuff and as for comedy Steven Tucker’s “BBC Shitcom” sums it up most efficiently.
Add Mrs Brown’s Boys to my list of unfunny TV shows – and thank goodness Steven Tucker in his article agrees.
But it does have a chick-with-a-dick playing the lead so it must be funny.
I thought those days were over – making fun of trans-people is so un-BBC and I for one am totally in opposition to that. It is not being woke but empathy because it cannot be easy to be truly trans and getting on with life.
I believe the woke activists have made life a lot more difficult for transgender females.
They are what I euphemistically describe as “chicks-with-dicks” but only because of the work of the woke activists – and the efforts of Isla Bryson the transgender rapist. I would not have done so otherwise. I believe in and live by ‘live and let live‘. But these people are screwing the world up badly.
I would rename the BBC as the OWGC—–Can anyone guess what it refers to?
No one got it—OK. ——One World Government Corporation.
If the BBC were a dog a vet would have done the kind thing and put it out of its misery.
No the vet would have offered it insurance first
An interesting rant but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I just looked over the entire week’s TV on all the major channels. The only sitcoms were “Not Going Out” and repeats of old sitcoms on BBC 4. It is not the BBC cultural guardians that are killing them. They just aren’t fashionable at the moment. Popular TV has turned to endless formulaic reality TV, sport and, for some reason, cooking programmes, and the BBC does plenty of those (Strictly regularly gets twice the ratings of Not Going Out). The commercial channels, which have to chase ratings to survive, have pretty much given up on sitcoms.
Perhaps people stopped watching them because they stopped being funny. I watch very little and certainly almost nothing modern. The odd glimpse of modern stuff tells me it’s mainly unbearable left wing woke anti-white propaganda, and regardless of the exact reasons for the demise of the sitcom, the important point is that I don’t want to be forced to pay for this propaganda or for it to bear the stamp of state approval.
There are no new sitcoms other than “Not Going Out” (which is certainly not left wing woke anti-white propaganda) so you aren’t being forced to pay for them – right?
I don’t want to be forced to pay for any of it. The state has no business running a media empire (nor a left wing campaigning organisation masquerading as a media empire).
“The only “we” that counts now is that demographically defined by the term ‘the governing class’ – the ones who get to commission, make and broadcast the programmes that, increasingly, only people like they themselves actually want to watch.”
I doubt they even watch them. They’re just leaden social re-education packages for the stinky little people.
With any luck, the BBC will eventually all burn to death in their EVs.
They probably get a warm feeling of superiority from putting out trash that they themselves don’t watch but think the unwashed masses love.
Another fine article from Steven Tucker although ironically not the funniest he has written for DS.
Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width would never be made now. A red sea pedestrian and a bog trotter? Perish the thought.
As for Love Thy Neighbour and Till Death, they made fun of the racists so we could all see how foolish they were.
In a similar way to the very funny Blazing Saddles, the highly effective mockery of the racist viewpoint is entirely lost on today’s viewers.
David Stubbs’ head would surely explode if he saw an episode of ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’.
The object of the media is to make all White people believe they are in a diminishing minority, and we must accept the cultural superiority of every race but our own.
I think it’s more about must accept the self-serving misrule by political leaders.
Ironically, no mention of what to me is the best sitcom of the past 10 years – W1A, which is blisteringly funny by taking the micky unflinchingly out of the BBC itself.
Great article – so true. You forgot ‘Little Britain’ which would not get past the censors today, but was a big hit in our family – we still quote it. Also the ‘Detectorists’ was fantastic- it wasn’t really a comedy – so you can’t critique it within a review of sit coms. I loved it because it was soooo ‘English’.
Officer Crabtree was always my favourite
https://www.google.com/search?q=officer+crabtree+%22you%27re+our+bummers+are+farting+for+you%22+sketch%3F&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e0b1105b,vid:fYNXMWRdCx0,st:0
We plebs fund the whole damn BBC shooting match. I so wish everyone would follow the legal path and stop paying which would entail cancelling Sky, Virgin etc. since these are illegal to view without the licence. Live sport of course would need a visit to the pub, no bad thing.
That might galvanise a genuine campaign to rid us of this ransom.I dream of course, they’d shift it to being funded out of general taxation.
Come the time of the election, don’t forget who it was that appointed Shah as Chairman, it was this pathetic faux Conservative Government. The same people that brought us the tyranny of lockdowns.
I agree with a lot of this. But I would also say that there is a room for different types of comedy. I quite enjoy some comedy dramas (I like comedies like The Detectorists which are not laugh a minute). You could argue that Afterlife is in a similar vein.
Variety is what people want. Let’s have classicly stupid sitcoms which are pure escapism. I loved Reeves and Mortimer’s House of Fools – massively underrated imo. But sure, we can have more ‘serious’ ones too.
Atm, it feels like things are leaned a little too heavily to the tastes of ‘tastemakers’ and what I would call the ‘trend-setting classes’.