This week, The Great British Sewing Bee managed to push the climate agenda into its otherwise harmless show in what was termed “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle Week”.
Sewers were given three tasks “focused on the environment and sustainability”: first to create underpants from old t-shirts; second to transform material intended for landfill into “a garment with drama at the back”; and third to make outfits with an environmental message.
The third challenge was by far the most ideologically heavy-handed. “Throughout history, fashion has been used as a tool for protest, a statement for resistance and a spark for social change,” began presenter Sophie Willan, introducing the task to contestants. “So the judges want you to create an outfit with an environmental message that’s close to your heart.”
When quizzed later about the impetus for the challenge, Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant told Willan: “Fashion designers have always been people that are kind of very socially engaged, and a big part of that is them having strong views on all sorts of things, and they want to put those forward through the clothes that they make.”
Luckily the designers didn’t seem to mind having their “strong views” decided for them by the judges and programme creators. “It is incredibly important to be environmentally conscious. Because we’re killing the planet,” one sewer was filmed saying. Another making a “Save Our Seas” protest dress was asked by Grant: “Why is the plastic thing so important to you?” She replied: “It’s so detrimental to the animals and the beauty of the sea.”
The show also featured a segment with a fashion historian on how “fashion has been at the heart of many protest movements”, from the Suffragettes and the Women’s Social and Political Union, to Black Lives Matter and environment activists. The message was clear: environmental activism makes you anti-Establishment, rather than utterly conformist and useful to the extremely wealthy eco industry.
As if that wasn’t enough indoctrination, this same week the BBC streamed The Rapture, a psychological thriller based on the book by self-described “climate and ecological fiction writer” Liz Jensen. It follows Bethany Krall, a 17 year-old locked in a high-security psychiatric hospital who can predict the future – including adverse weather events. “As temperatures rise, a convicted murderer foretells apocalyptic disaster – is she a manipulative psychopath or does she know the truth? High-stakes thriller crackling with danger,” reads the BBC description of the show.
The Rapture is packed with references to climate change, and it soon becomes obvious who the goodies and baddies are meant to be – the latter often being people who say the UK needs a mixed energy portfolio including oil (how evil!) In one scene, a goodie character explains how a baddie organisation was “lobbying to overturn Net Zero” (the horror!)
Viewers will have no idea that the show was informed by climate consultants from the organisation Climate Spring, whose funders include the Wellcome Trust (which received £105,998,100 from taxpayers between 2020-24), Unbound Philanthropy (based in the US), and Luminate, the philanthropic arm of Pierre Omidyar, a French-born Iranian-American who founded eBay. Why are these foreign funders helping to promote climate narratives on British TV, you might quite reasonably wonder.
Climate Spring works with ITV, Channel 4 and many others (such as Mammoth Screen, which produced The Rapture) to embed climate narratives into film and TV. It is a partner of the Climate Playwriting Prize, in which a winner will be optioned for Shakespeare’s Globe, among other initiatives.
Unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ‘Edutainment’: entertainment that tries to ‘educate’ viewers into political positions, in this case on the climate. Shockingly, for years the taxpayer- and National-Lottery-funded Arts Council England (ACE) has been asking artists to show their commitment to “Environmental Responsibility” when applying for grants. This is listed as one of ACE’s four “Investment Principles”, which also include “Inclusivity and Relevance”.
Personally, I find it very hard to make sense of the science on climate change: it’s an enormously complex subject that I am not an expert on. What I do know is that using drama to promote climate narratives is a quick way to suggest your side deals in fiction.
Charlotte Gill regularly publishes about the use of taxpayers’ money to fund Left-wing causes and Left-wing researchers in Woke Waste, her Substack. You can subscribe here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
A massive SCAM requires a massive effort to convince us all it isn’t a SCAM.
Once the seed is planted that humans are destroying the climate a framework starts to be built. It eventually becomes totally immune to any questioning or scrutiny. This enables the seed to grow and spread all across the globe. It becomes entrenched in the minds of the public who are subjected to the 24 hr news cycle bombarding them with endless tales of climatic doom, so that everything that occurs in the world is all due to them.
Certainty is claimed where there is none. Any scientists daring to question the narrative is branded “contrarian”, or “dangerous”. Once the SCAM became morally certain it became untouchable. It is now reinforced through every institution, Drama, TV Ad and in my local paper in a small town in the East of Scotland we are regularly told to eg “Don’t buy a new lawnmower, borrow one from a neighbour down the street to save the planet”—–I can just imagine Mr Whoever 4 doors down looking at me in astonishment at such absurdity. But that is where we are now and it is very hard for ordinary people busy… Read more »
this sort of propaganda is in almost every TV show
And notice how the Miscegenation Propaganda includes never, ever pairing an Ethnic African female character with an Ethnic African male, or an Ethnic Indian female with an Ethnic Indian male, etc,, but each must always be paired with an Ethnic European.
It is the Third World Ethnic characters themselves who are the most “racist” towards their own fellow Ethnics, but none of them, nor anyone else connected with these propaganda productions, ever seems to notice the hypocrisy.
You only open yourself to the BBC’s relentless propaganda if you watch it.
Don’t.
We don’t, and therefore no longer pay for a TV licence.We hardly watched it anyway, as we were sick to death of the sanctimonious, patronising lecturing and biased Left wing reporting. To pay for this adds insult to injury.
I don’t suppose anyone put the following quote from Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC’s 4th report in 2007, on a T-Shirt:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy … climate change policy is about how we redistribute the world’s wealth.”
An arrogant statement that was a lie anyway because climate policies ensure that the poorest stay poor. In fact they impoverish everyone.
I stopped watching any kind of drama on tv in the late nineties.
I’ve never regretted it, especially after reading about the codswallop put out nowadays.
It seems to be getting worse not better.
I’d fully endorse Tasks 1 and 2 if they hadn’t stuck Task 3 on the end. The amount of stuff we waste today is criminal – food, packaging (which does indeed end up hurting ‘the animals and the beauty of the sea’), clothes, cheap goods that come with unnecessary transportation costs and are designed with a limited lifespan so we buy another one which we will also soon throw away… Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was a good idea for a slogan, but everyone ignores the reducing and reusing parts.
Another unintended consequence of de-industrialising the West for the benefit of ‘developing’ countries, aka redistribution of wealth.
No evidence as far as I know of successfully recycling solar panels and l-ion batteries. A man was reported smashing up a solar panel in a car park to get the aluminium from it. Will we see more of that? What is going to happen to all the batteries?
Who decides which organisations / spongers are going to be allocated tax payers money?
Liz Jensen, of Danish & Moroccan heritage, was also a founder member of Extinction Rebellion’s “Writers Rebel”: “a literary movement using words and actions to highlight the climate and ecological emergency”.
You remember, they’re the ones gluing themselves to roads. “Extinction Rebellion uses mass arrest as a tactic to generate attention to their cause by wasting police time and disrupting others.”
The “baddies” in “The Rapture” series are, of course, Christians, and notice the Ethnic African heroine’s name “Bethany”. Are they going to turn her into a Christ figure, or a Magdalene type, like that other Hollywood movie that turned God into an African woman? The propaganda is relentless.
Isn’t it against the rules to place sponsored products into UK TV? Why is a religious message any different?
self-described “climate and ecological fiction writer” Liz Jensen
Don’t know why, just made me chuckle…
“climate and ecological fiction writer”
So she’s a “journalist” with the bbc
Shot herself in the foot to some fine tune…
Sounds like they’re killing two ideological birds with one stone from the title and logo: Evil Destroyers = Climate Deniers = Evangelical Christians. Do you suppose all the villains will be dressed a la Handmaid’s Tale?
I may be doing Charlotte an injustice but this reads as if she doesn’t know about BAFTA Albert. Under the umbrella of this organisation the BBC and all other mainstream TV channels are signed up to a Climate Content Pledge under which they agree to include standard alarmist climate messaging in all types of content. I’m sure those working for this organisation see it as being on the side of the angels; I regard it as being downright sinister.
I’m glad you mentioned Albert. Every one I talk to is ignorant of this propaganda used day in and day out. A perfect propaganda tool when nobody realises it’s happening.
Once you know about “Albert” you realise why almost every drama made after 2020 contains a view of the landscape covered in WindFarms which has nothing to do with the plot. I no longer pay the TV licence because of so called “dramas” like The Rapture.
A quote from Albert,
“We’re facing a climate crisis and need to take action now as a society before it’s too late. Every industry needs to undergo great transformation to reduce carbon emissions and our impact on the environment in order to halt the speed of climate change. The screen industries have a dual role to play in transforming our productions and supply chains and inspiring societal change through the content we produce”.
BAFTA albert created a dedicated editorial toolkit for creative teams. Writers and producers can select their project’s genre and answer a series of prompts to evaluate how “planet-friendly” their script is.
Overt Storylines: Characters dealing directly with environmental challenges, such as a storyline about sewage pollution or climate activism.
Subtle “Planet Placement”: Normalising sustainable habits in the background of casual scenes. This includes writing in characters who eat plant-based meals, use public transit, drive electric vehicles, carry reusable coffee cups, or recycle without the plot explicitly drawing attention to the action. (From Google AI)
This all gets more Big Brother by the minute!
Do you remember when dramas and game shows were simply designed as entertainment? If you wanted to be educated, you watched a documentary, a debate or the news, all of which aimed at being impartial. Now that woke messaging has leached across into every area of the main broadcasters’ output, and the News is more like an indoctrination session, it’s hard to find pure entertainment. We have to be “challenged” all the time, made to feel uncomfortable about our unconscious bias and “privilege”. What is wrong with a bit of escapism now and then?
People still watch TV?
I’ve not watched tv for nearly a year. Admittedly, the volume kept being annoyingly erratic so I just stopped watching. I don’t miss it.
Have you seen the new BBC advert? It reminds me of all the irritating and rubbish programmes it makes and reminds me why I do not watch it.
“an environmental message that’s close to your heart” – I dont suppose “drill baby drill” was anyone’s message?
Or “stop the bird choppers”.
How about “Carbon Dioxide is plant food. The more you give them the better they do”