A row has broken out over a question Richard Madeley asked Professor Susan Michie on Good Morning Britain. After she’d questioned the wisdom of lifting the mask mandate on July 19th, he asked her whether her judgment might be influenced by her membership of the Communist Party, given the top-down, big state authoritarianism of Communist regimes, or whether her views were purely based on “the science”. An excellent question, but she rather testily refused to answer, saying she’d been invited on to the programme in her capacity as a professor of psychology and wasn’t there to talk about politics.
You can watch the exchange on YouTube from the 14m 29s moment, but here is a transcript:
Richard Madeley: There’s a point I really have to put to you and you’ll be aware of this because there’s been a lot of commentary about this in the British media about you and it’s to do with your politics and you know what I’m going to ask you. You’ve been a member of the Communist Party for about 40 years now, you’re still a member, and we know that they’re statist. We look at Communist countries around the world and we see that they are tremendously top down dominant and controlled societies that they rule over. I just wonder – and I’m putting this question on behalf of those who wonder about your politics – if your politics actually informs your sense of control? It’s not just the medical arguments, but you have a kind of a political bent to want the state to tell people what to do?
Susan Michie: I’ve come on your programme as a scientist, as do all people who come on to your programme as scientists. They come on to talk about the evidence, relevant theories, how we approach our scientific disciplines, and you don’t ask other scientists about politics so I’m very happy to speak about science which is what my job is and to limit it to that.
RM: So you’re saying that your politics doesn’t inform your opinion on this subject?
SM: I’m saying that I agreed to come on this programme as a scientist and I’m very happy to talk to you about the issues that you’re raising as a scientist which is the same for other scientists that you invite on to the programme.
Madeleley moved on at that point, letting Michie wriggle off the hook, but good on him for asking the question. He’s been one of the few journalists in the mainstream media to ask tough questions of Government ministers and advisors about their management of the coronavirus crisis.
Needless to say, not everyone saw it that way. According to the Independent, Twitter users strongly disapproved.
Viewers of the show were unimpressed by Madeley’s line of questioning, accusing the presenter of taking “cheap shots” at Michie.
“If you missed Richard Madeley’s McCarthyite questioning of Professor Susan Michie, around 7.25am, do try to find it on catch up TV. It may scare the hell out of you,” one viewer commented.
“I try not to use profanity on here, struggling now as I have just witnessed the most pompous pathetic & rude Richard Madeley talking to a medical expert & equate her science knowledge with her politics,” another wrote.
One Twitter user posted: “That ‘question’ from Richard Madeley was basically to challenge Susan Michie’s scientific credentials and accuse her of wanting to live in a dictatorship, she put him in his place, he is a dangerous man.”
But my Twitter feed told a different story. Michael Senger, a longstanding lockdown sceptic, tweeted: “Susan Michie expresses outrage when asked if her 40-year membership in the Community Party might inform her policies. Apparently, it’s ok to be a communist, but not to ask if this migth be connected to her open endorsement of communist China’s policies.”
Tracey Follows then came up with an amusing reply to Michael’s tweet: “Well that’s the first psychologist/behavioural scientist I’ve heard not wanting to promote the notion of (unconscious bias) on the media for a very long time.”
The row rumbled on, with another “scientific expert” and masking zealot – Deepti Gurdasani – claiming it was “misogynistic” of Madeley to ask Michie about her politics – eh? – and demanding GMB issue an apology as a condition of her ever appearing on the programme again.
I really don’t get why it was “misogynistic” of Madeley to ask Susan Michie whether her hard left politics have affected her position on mask mandates. Of course they have! After all, forcing people to wear masks as a condition of participating in certain activities is a flagrant breach of their liberty and the reason Michie doesn’t care about that and thinks public health concerns should take priority (even though there’s precious little evidence that masks reduce transmission of the virus) must in part be because she’s a communist, who famously don’t put much value on individual freedom. And the reason Madeley hasn’t put the same question to other members of SAGE is not because Miche’s a woman, but because she’s the only one who’s been a member of the Communist Party for the past 40 years.
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Chris fighting the good fight. Well done. Keep it up.
CORRECTION:
INCORRECT.
CORRECT.
Words are important and should be used wisely.
I wonder what it would cost to privately fund a fleet of class one or two sites and start record keeping now.
The repeated adjustment of historic data is also worrying. It appears to be trying to match the recorded data to the hockey stick.
The NOAA in Amerca are doing something similar but it goes unreported. https://wattsupwiththat.com/u-s-surface-temperature/
Tony Heller is the master of identifying and calling out junk (adjusted) data, and the organisations doing it.
Ask any friend or family member, “Is it getting warmer”? I am pretty sure they will all say YES. Then ask them “Have you looked at any data? They will likely say “NO”. So how do they think they know it is getting warmer? The answer is that they don’t know at all. —Officialdom state that the global average temperature (whatever that is supposed to mean) has gone up by one degree centigrade since about 1860. No one can detect that in their lifetime. A 40-year-old person cannot detect a fraction of a degree rise in temperature over their life.
—–So no one knows it is getting warmer, they only think they do. There is only one reason they think it is warmer and that is because they are told that on their TV news nearly everyday. But even if it is slightly warmer over a period of time, that does not mean that humans caused that warming. They certainly could not have caused the similar warming that occurred in the 1920’s and 30’s as we were not emitting much in the way of CO2 from Industry, cars and aeroplanes back then.
—–So the global warming narrative goes something like this. From a dogs breakfast of a global temperature record that has been fiddled about with more than a prostitute’s knickers, government funded data adjusters have concluded that the temperature of the planet is warming and despite no human signal in the data they are determined that this alleged warming is all caused by humans. Then our governments have no choice but to “act now”.—–But bear in mind that the same solutions to the global warming scare are the very same solutions to the cooling scare back in the seventies. —-More government control over every aspect of our lives. ——This is all politics masquerading as science.
I am old enough to remember the Summer of 1959, now that was a Summer and a half, we have rarely had a summer that good, Global Warming?????????? bah humbug.
CO2 is not to blame in any way (now or in the 20/30’s), the whole “Carbon” theory is just meaningless drivel.
They can’t prove the link in a small rise of temperature over decades to increases in CO2 because the link does not exist, except in the opposite direction.
Increases in temperature over decades, slightly warm the worlds oceans which as they warm release increasing amounts of CO2 in solution. Cold water can hold more CO2 in solution than warmer water.
If the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere were 4% (as some uninformed zealots believe) and not the actual 0.042% things might be very different.
The IPCC itself have recently said that they see no human signal in the data. We can all argue about the “science” all day long but as you and I know this has nothing to do with science and never did.
The reason the Met Office won’t do anything about this issue, is if they do their whole support for dangerous heating will collapse. They need highly erroneous readings to maintain the narrative.
Yesterday (Monday 12th August) was apparently the warmest day of the year (yes it was warm, no doubting that), and the high was apparently measured somewhere in Cambridge, no idea where, or what the class of the device was, or the veracity of the actual siting!
Take away the context and the detail and that claim will be simply accepted by almost everyone, and their narrative survives intact, because only a Conspiracy theorist would challenge the MET right?
The MET spends increasing amounts on ever more powerful supercomputers so they can report how wrong they are to increasing numbers of decimal points.
Botanic gardens where the Met Orifice rushed to check the equipment – while totally ignoring the environment – a few years back to claim a new UK record which was then surpassed by 3 Typhoon fighters on the runway at RAF Coningsby. Most likely a 4 or 5 site with varying surroundings and noticeably warmer than another site nearby.
Thanks for the update, call me cynical (because I am), but I don’t expect this site to be a pristine Class 1 (or 2) site.
In fact I seem to recall in a previous Chris Morrison article the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge were mentioned!
Could be in a glasshouse!!
I read somewhere that the Botanical gardens station is read in the *morning*, so how they could quote “hottest” later on the same day is a mystery. Would need to check that ‘observation time’ though.
Warmest day of the year. In mid august? How unusual!
Well quite.
But it was probably the hottest August 12th at 16:24 since records began.
Actually it isn’t that unusual. The UK climate is extremely variable so you can tell the public anything you want and they are likely to believe it, which they mostly do. In 1995 we had blue skies here in Central Scotland all the way from April to September with not a cloud in sight. (This is easily checked). If that was to have happened this year the government, the Just Stop Oil imbeciles, the BBC and all the other climate activists would have a field day. The lunatics would be blocking us getting on planes and blocking every major City and Town by laying down in the street and gluing themselves to banks and businesses. Climate Change has become a pseudo scientific cult all because of the propaganda being spread by government and its bought and paid for media.
I was in central london yesterday – it was a bit warm at 32ish, but as you say – it’s august and summer – it’s supposed to be warm…
When will they be put in gaol for “misinformation”?
I wish I had the link to hand but at some point in the last few months someone posted a link to an essay on weather measuring which made the point that if the set of measuring stations has evolved over time so you are using MORE of them, comparisons with the past are not overly valid as you are not comparing like with like. All you can say is that we now MAY have a more accurate picture of the weather (or not as the case may be…). I think it might have been Marcus Aurelius Knew but I am not certain.
“I wish I had the link to hand”
I know DS has limited funds etc but it would be invaluable to me and I suspect other readers, to have some sort of searchable database of articles and comments.
Nothing fancy but better than the basic search function we have at the moment. So many gems get buried within a week or two and become impossible to find again.
There is a search function but no way I could see to filter it.
Mabel Cow late of these parts and now on Lockdown Sceptics subreddit was mirroring the site for a while and archiving it, but that’s long gone.
“The compliant media are uninterested” until they are implicated as the prime culprits of peddling mis/disinformation. Perhaps mass complaints to the police should be raised?