James Delingpole's Blog, page 19

CO2 is good for you

Imagine a world where CO2 was not a deadly poison in need of urgent regulation by the European Union and the Environmental Protection Agency but a hugely beneficial trace gas which helped plants to thrive…

If you've read Watermelons – or indeed hung around this column for any length of time – you'll know that that world already exists. What you might not know, as I certainly didn't until a few months back, is that CO2 can also make you healthier. I learned this from reader Christopher Drake wrote in to ask whether I'd heard of the Buteyko Method.

Konstantin Buteyko was a high-level Soviet physician who came up with the novel theory that what he called "Diseases of Civilisation" – by which he meant everything from asthma to depression to…

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'Let's commit suicide more slowly,' suggests Osborne

One and a half cheers for George Osborne. As the UK economy prepares to hurl itself off a cliff, he has decided it should do so with a parachute with lots of holes in it. Which is an improvement on his Plan A, which was to do so with no parachute at all: (H/T Benny Peiser/Global Warming Policy Foundation)

George Osborne has vowed that the UK will not lead the rest of Europe in its efforts to cut carbon emissions, raising the prospect that the country's carbon targets could be watered down if the EU does not agree to more ambitious emission reduction goals.

In a potentially explosive intervention, Osborne insisted the government will only cut emissions in…

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A rude shock for fake Tories

In case you wondered, I'm not at the Tory Party Conference this week. Really, what would be the point? I'm with Richard North on this one: our political class exists in a bubble so remote from reality there is just no point taking their witterings seriously any more.

I'll give you one example: Theresa May's tough talk on the Human Rights Act. (Which, presumably, was agreed on after anxious consultation with the Lib Dem Coalition partners: "It's OK, Vince, Chicken-Man, Nicksy-poo, Theresa doesn't really mean it. We've just decided its time for our Token Woman to play our Token Red Meat Tory for the week. So she can regain her credibility after her crap performance during the riots").

As May must surely have known…

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Stung into stupidity – or heroism

I know lots of second world war veterans who rather enjoyed their war against the Germans. But I've never met one who enjoyed his war against the Japanese. As the Eastern Front was to the Western Front, so the Far Eastern front was to the European/North African front: the fighting was more implacably brutal, the conditions more ferociously grim, the chances of coming out in one piece notably slimmer.

That's why, in dark times like these, I find it of such great comfort to read a novel like Harold James's The Scorpion Trap (Janus). It's a brilliant fictionalised account by a former Gurkha officer of…

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Living to 100 is a blessing and we should celebrate

UNDER a tall tree in the garden of the holiday home we rent in Wales every summer is a swing so high and dangerous that the slightest mishap would mean, at the very least, a broken arm or leg. It terrifies me. It terrifies my children.

The one person it doesn't terrify, unfortunately, is my 97-year-old grandmother Nanny Nancy (as she's known to all) who begs to have her annual go every time she comes to visit. She might not find it scary. But those of us who had to stand either side and hoick her frail, brittle body on to that narrow wooden seat, then push her higher and higher as she squealed with delight, found the whole experience more nerve-racking than we could bear.

That's why, when she hit 95, our family made a tough decision. It was all very well Nanny Nancy thinking she could go on for ever. But we mere mortals had had enough: the swinging had to stop.

All over the country now there are thousands of people just like Nanny Nancy – game old birds and lively old boys proving that 90 is the new 70, that 80 is the beginning of your second youth and that living long enough to get your telegram from the Queen is fast becoming not the exception but the norm.

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The iPod has cheapened pop music

Can you remember where you were when you saw your first iPod? I can, for two reasons. The first is that the location was so bizarre: Africa's remotest safari camp, on the Namibian/Angolan border. And the second is that it was the only thing at dinner that evening capable of supplanting the newly launched War on Terror as the main conversational topic.

It's easy to be blasé about something that has grown so ubiquitous in the decade since it was launched. But at the time, the iPod felt really special.

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Monbiot bares all

Top environmental campaigner George Monbiot has publicly disclosed his laundry list in order to show how transparent he is.

This is a comprehensive list of my sources of income, and any hospitality or gifts I receive (except from family and friends), beginning in September 2011.

I have opened this registry because I believe that journalists should live by the standards they demand of others, among which are accountability and transparency. One of the most important questions in public life, which is asked less often than it should be, is "who pays?".

Until members of parliament were obliged to reveal their external earnings, we had no means of knowing whether the positions they took were influenced by the money they made: whether, in other words, they were acting on our behalf or acting…

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Never mind the global economic collapse: what about plastic bags???

"This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine… We regard the agreement signed last night as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to have to pay more than is necessary for our chocolate confectionary. That is why our new Anglo-German Treaty on Maximum Permissable Prices For Mars Bars And Other Chocolate Confectionary will guarantee now and forever more what I can confidently declare is Peace In Our Time." Neville Chamberlain, Heston Airport, September 1938.

Not so long from now, distinguished, elderly historians such as Lord (Andrew) Roberts of Manhattan OM and Sir Niall…

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Freedom of speech is dead in Australia

For my money probably the best political blogger in the world is Australia's Andrew Bolt. He was one of the first journalists onto Climategate (he got there before me) and his takedown earlier this year on his radio show of an EU Climate Commissioner spouting nonsense was magisterial. But he's by no means a single issue commentator: he has strength in depth. His war, like mine, is against those who would constrain our liberty by imposing on us more tax, more regulation, more control. He's firm but fair: one of the good guys.

This is why we should all worry greatly about the latest bizarre ruling from the Australian federal court, which has found Bolt in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Ozboy has the details:

Newspaper columnist and blogger Andrew Bolt wa…

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ManBearPig, Climategate and Watermelons: a conversation with James Delingpole