Picking the mic back up, I wonder how exactly it was that the wind had blown mine and Piers’ conversation away from the subject of the weather to where we had now arrived: the BBC’s attempt to “disparage” and “denounce” the Corbyn brothers.
I tentatively ventured an opinion. “See, I watched your interview and I thought that it was an honest interview.”
“Oh it was – Andrew Neil was asking fair questions, I’m not saying that – but the reason I was there was that they hoped they would make me look ridiculous, stupid, try and start an argument with my brother and then denounce me and my brother as being completely out of touch… now that programme ended half an hour before it was scheduled to do so. I ask you: what was going on? I don’t know, but this is my idea: I think that Hilary Benn would have been brought on [to the programme] had Jeremy lost – they had already boosted Hilary Benn in the trailer before!”
My eyebrows jag upwards at this slightly unsubstantive claim.
“90 per cent of physics now is probably secret and run by the military.”
“That was the first time I had been on the BBC since 2009. Gordon Brown [had] made a speech calling people like me flat-earthers, so the BBC for balance phones me up and says: ‘Mr. Corbyn, to be fair, we should interview you’. Now, I give the interview with the BBC and at the end the interviewer said: ‘Mr. Corbyn, that was a fantastic interview – no doubt it is going to go on the six o’clock news.’
“Six o’clock news came along and I wasn’t there. They had cut it out! And I was never on the BBC from 2009 until this year. And the most significant thing about being blocked, and it was blocked, was that in 2010 we predicted that supercold December – coldest December in a hundred years – and in the middle of that they phoned me up and said: ‘Would you care to come to the breakfast show?’
‘Great!’
‘Because you predicted this stuff.’
‘Yeah, I’ll come.’
They never rang me back. I phoned them up and asked them what’s going on. I said: ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We’ve got someone else.’
‘Who have you got?’
She didn’t want to tell me, because only we forecast it. She said: ‘Oh, we’ve got the government’s chief scientific advisor.’
I said: ‘He knows f**k all’ – not the words I used. Since then I haven’t really been invited on the BBC at all.”
Remembering one of the questions asked in the BBC interview, I asked Piers whether his work has ever been submitted for peer review. Piers did not like this question. “That mobile phone you’re using has never been peer-reviewed, flying aeroplanes has never been peer-reviewed, in Formula One that stuff is all secret. That is complete nonsense and red herring raised by fools. 90 per cent of physics now is probably secret and run by the military.
“In the few weeks after [Corbyn] got elected, more people joined the party than the Liberal Democrats.”
“The people that are saying this are despicable liars because the same people from the UEA specify explicitly in their emails that they are going to do their very best to prevent the likes of Corbyn ever getting published in any respectable journals. That’s their mission and at the same they are calling on me to publish – well, they are just calling on me to waste my time, submit stuff which then they can s**t on.”
Piers told me he has decided to publish everything at the “right time”, because of overwhelming opposition from the political and scientific and business establishment. Despite me asking, he wouldn’t tell me when he planned to release his discoveries.
Before a younger Piers went to Imperial College, his father advised him to not “spend too much time on women and politics”. Although Piers says that he took his advice, he also became the president of the Student Union in 1969 – it is not only family ties which link Piers to politics. In the early stages of our interview, he told me that he stood by Jeremy’s leadership, stating: “In the few weeks after he got elected more people joined the party than the Liberal Democrats.” I compared Corbyn with Trump (in that they both offer voters real change). Piers rightly corrected my unfair comparison: “No … more like the other one … the left-wing one.” He was of course talking about Bernie Sanders, but one gets the feeling that Piers is more assured when talking about hot air and other such scientific matters. When Piers starts to wrestle with the BBC’s devils horns, he does himself a disservice.
Many claim that Piers cannot accurately predict the weather. As we finished up our interview, Piers did give me one predication: snow would hit the English mainland in March. As early as 4 March, England saw heavy snow. We should at least entertain the possibility that this very likeable man’s snowstorm research may well generate an establishment storm. If his report is ever released we should take it seriously. Until then, however, August itself will have to experience snow before he is ever going to be considered an august figure within the scientific community.
You can read part one here.
