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Dear Mr. Tait

Re: Earth: The Climate Wars

This letter is written further to that sent by Mr. Bruce Vander on 2 October, and signed by Mr. Fadda, which accompanied briefing papers to be submitted to the Trustees on 5 November. In one way or another, the package from Mr. Vander extends to over fifty pages. This response is also likely to be long, for which I make no apology.

Allow me to begin it with some general observations. The BBC’s Complaints Procedure is tortuous and extended. There can be little doubt that this is precisely what it is intended to be. Make it hard for license fee payers to complain, and they probably won’t is the underlying stratagem - opaque and collusive, but probably quite effective at the morally degenerate level of expediency. There is, however, a potentially intractable problem, is there not, with employing deviously protracted tactics? It is that the process may become overtaken by events which are to the cause - well, unhelpful, shall we say? Precisely that has occurred on this occasion in spectacular fashion - twice! But of that, more in due course.
Secondly, in reading through the briefing notes prepared for the Trustees, it is quickly clear that, like Mr. Abrams’s letter rejecting my complaint, points to be addressed are meticulously selected. My letter of complaint was to be read as a whole, not mendaciously cherry picked to deprive individual sentences of contextual relevance. Of course, if the Trustees wish to conduct their proceedings along the lines of a Star chamber, there is little that I or anyone else can do about it - in the short run, at least. They should not, however, flatter themselves that their findings thereby will command either respect or moral authority. But, again, of that more in due course.

Click PDF file to read Letters from Rupert Wyndham to the BBC