Post by Teddy Bear on Aug 29, 2015 21:15:44 GMT
I must admit I was surprised to read that the BBC were replacing the Met Office as their weather forecasters. I didn't buy the money excuse which most were reporting as the reason, as it's never stopped the BBC before. Christopher Booker offers his take on it for the time being, and shows that whatever new contract the BBC engages upon, it will still be using the Met Office.
If there are other things going on I dare say it will come out eventually.
If there are other things going on I dare say it will come out eventually.
Met Office sacked by the BBC – but the truth is even odder
The bulk of the data used by the winning bidder will still have to be supplied by the UK Met Office anyway...
By Christopher Booker
The media were certainly caught out by the shock news that the Met Office has, after 93 years, lost its contract to supply the BBC with its weather forecasts. It should not have taken long to establish that this is because, under an EU directive on public service contracts (2004/18/EC), the BBC is obliged to put its contracts for weather services out to tender. The tender documents were there for all to see on the EU’s TED (Tender Electronic Documents) website.
The preferred bidders, it seems, are Metra, a commercial arm of the New Zealand Met Office, and Meteo, originally launched by a Dutch weather presenter back in 1986, but now headquartered in London as part of a group owned by an equity investment fund.
One odd thing about this new arrangement is that the bulk of the data used by the winning bidder will still have to be supplied by the UK Met Office, derived from its unrivalled network of data sources, ranging from its 330 UK weather stations and 16 weather radars to information from 300 ships, airliners etc, providing 106 million weather observations a day.
Sources say tensions have been mounting between the Met Office and the BBC over broadcasts Photo: ANNABEL MAY OAKLEY-WATSON/REX FEATURES
Even though the Met Office may have lost its £3 million-a-year BBC contract mainly on grounds of cost (under rules which in fact do not even originate from the EU, but from a higher global level, through the General Agreement on Trade in Services), the BBC’s new provider will still have to pay the Met Office for most of its information.
Also odd is that we have almost been here before. Back in 2010 it was widely reported that the Met Office might be about to lose its BBC contract to the New Zealanders, amid speculation that the BBC was unhappy with the accuracy of its forecasting. Even the Met Office admitted that its global temperature predictions had been wrong in nine of the previous 10 years.
But the chief reason why the Met Office has been getting so many forecasts spectacularly wrong, as reported here ad nauseam, is that all its short, medium and long-term forecasts ultimately derive from the same huge computer model, which is programmed to believe in manmade global warming. Hence the fun we’ve all had with those “barbecue summers” when rain never stopped, and “warmer than average” winters, which promptly saw Britain freezing under piles of snow.
This goes back to the time when the Met Office was headed by that fanatical evangelist for global warming, Sir John Houghton, the man who did more than anyone to set up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, of course, no one has shared his enthusiasm more than the BBC, which for years has been one of the Met Office’s most fervent allies in propagandising for the cause. Last Monday this provoked incredulous laughter, when the Today programme’s Justin Webb speculated that one reason for the Met Office losing its contract might have been that it was so “vocal about climate change”, on which Mr Webb normally follows the BBC party line just as faithfully as any of his colleagues.
But the ultimate irony is that, when the BBC’s new weather provider takes over, we shall still apparently have most of the same presenters. Their “visuals” are already provided by Metra. And, above all, virtually all the information behind its forecasts will still come from the Met Office, just as now. So, if the BBC got it wrong in the past, there is little guarantee that we can expect anything more reliable in the future.
The bulk of the data used by the winning bidder will still have to be supplied by the UK Met Office anyway...
By Christopher Booker
The media were certainly caught out by the shock news that the Met Office has, after 93 years, lost its contract to supply the BBC with its weather forecasts. It should not have taken long to establish that this is because, under an EU directive on public service contracts (2004/18/EC), the BBC is obliged to put its contracts for weather services out to tender. The tender documents were there for all to see on the EU’s TED (Tender Electronic Documents) website.
The preferred bidders, it seems, are Metra, a commercial arm of the New Zealand Met Office, and Meteo, originally launched by a Dutch weather presenter back in 1986, but now headquartered in London as part of a group owned by an equity investment fund.
One odd thing about this new arrangement is that the bulk of the data used by the winning bidder will still have to be supplied by the UK Met Office, derived from its unrivalled network of data sources, ranging from its 330 UK weather stations and 16 weather radars to information from 300 ships, airliners etc, providing 106 million weather observations a day.
Sources say tensions have been mounting between the Met Office and the BBC over broadcasts Photo: ANNABEL MAY OAKLEY-WATSON/REX FEATURES
Even though the Met Office may have lost its £3 million-a-year BBC contract mainly on grounds of cost (under rules which in fact do not even originate from the EU, but from a higher global level, through the General Agreement on Trade in Services), the BBC’s new provider will still have to pay the Met Office for most of its information.
Also odd is that we have almost been here before. Back in 2010 it was widely reported that the Met Office might be about to lose its BBC contract to the New Zealanders, amid speculation that the BBC was unhappy with the accuracy of its forecasting. Even the Met Office admitted that its global temperature predictions had been wrong in nine of the previous 10 years.
But the chief reason why the Met Office has been getting so many forecasts spectacularly wrong, as reported here ad nauseam, is that all its short, medium and long-term forecasts ultimately derive from the same huge computer model, which is programmed to believe in manmade global warming. Hence the fun we’ve all had with those “barbecue summers” when rain never stopped, and “warmer than average” winters, which promptly saw Britain freezing under piles of snow.
This goes back to the time when the Met Office was headed by that fanatical evangelist for global warming, Sir John Houghton, the man who did more than anyone to set up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, of course, no one has shared his enthusiasm more than the BBC, which for years has been one of the Met Office’s most fervent allies in propagandising for the cause. Last Monday this provoked incredulous laughter, when the Today programme’s Justin Webb speculated that one reason for the Met Office losing its contract might have been that it was so “vocal about climate change”, on which Mr Webb normally follows the BBC party line just as faithfully as any of his colleagues.
But the ultimate irony is that, when the BBC’s new weather provider takes over, we shall still apparently have most of the same presenters. Their “visuals” are already provided by Metra. And, above all, virtually all the information behind its forecasts will still come from the Met Office, just as now. So, if the BBC got it wrong in the past, there is little guarantee that we can expect anything more reliable in the future.