James Delingpole's Blog, page 40

Happy Climate Fools' Day

Today is Climate Fools' Day. To celebrate, here is an essay courtesy of Simon Barnett to show how your money is being squandered by the Coalition on "Climate Change".

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When you hear the word 'Biodiversity' reach for your Browning

This column comes to you from sunny Rajasthan, India, where I have taken my family to look for leopards (and crocodiles and monkeys and black buck…).

As you can imagine taking the kids somewhere so exotic at half term is costing me an arm and a leg I can ill afford. But I want them to share with me the almost matchless pleasure of seeing big cats (or big anything else: sharks are good too; and bears; and elephants…) in their native habitat.

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I'm sure Richard Curtis doesn't really want to kill my children. Well, I say that …

For some time now I've had this idea for a running gag in a comedy sketch series. It would star a character called Unfunny Observational Comic. Each week we'd see him dying a death with his 'Have you ever noticed…?' comedy of recognition before an appalled audience. He'd say things like: 'You know how it is, when you've broken into your neighbour's house to rummage through her knicker drawer…?' and 'Gerbils. Just what is it about gerbils that makes us all want to shag 'em?' The humour would lie, of course, in the Observational Comic's tragic inability to apprehend the gulf between what he thinks is normal and what everybody else does.

Unfortunately, it's not going to work any more, a) because I've explained the joke, and b) because Richard Curtis has beaten me to it…

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Back to Basics

One of the few professional stand-up comics I've met who wasn't bitter, twisted, malign, graceless, grumpy, chippy, egomaniacal and slightly to the left of Stalin is Mark Billingham. We bonded at the Dubai literary festival earlier this year, and I liked him so much that I very nearly bought one of his bestselling crime thrillers.

The reason I didn't in the end was that I decided a) if I liked it, it would make me jealous and hate him, b) if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be able to look him in the eye and c) I don't really do bestselling crime thrillers because when you've read one series about a detective with a rackety personal life investigating a serial killer with an unusually vile and pervy modus operandi you've pretty much read them all, haven't you?

So, imagine my surprise when I watched the first episode of Thorne: Sleepyhead (Sunday, Sky 1), starring Billingham's creation DCI Thorne…

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'Biodiversity': the new Big Lie

And so it begins. With all the shamelessness of a Goldman Sachser trading in his middle-aged wife for a hot, pouting twentysomething called Ivanka, the green movement is ditching "Climate Change". The newer, younger, sexier model's name? Biodiversity. (Mega hat tips to: Hilary Ostrov and Ozboy at Libertygibbet)

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Chris Huhne's favourite yoghurt ingredient

Let me explain the analogy, which I first introduced to a nauseated world in a Spectator column penned in bile in the aftermath the Eton Grocer's spectacular general election non-victory. Here's the relevant passage:

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Rod Liddle knows even less about Climate Change than I do about Millwall FC

In a shameless attempt to win some readers for his little known Spectator blog, Rod Liddle has thrown together a desperate post with the highly offensive and almost certainly libellous headline The Politically Correct James Delingpole.

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Climategate: the Fox connection

A strange story in Bishop Hill about Fiona Fox. You may remember she's the director of the Science Media Centre who claimed earlier this year that the way BBC could improve its science coverage was to give less space to sceptics.

She said: "To have a sceptic or contrarian in every interview is really misleading the public."

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Professor Hal Lewis is not an irrelevant, senile, old fool

When Professor Hal Lewis wrote his now-famous letter of resignation to the American Physical Society earlier this week, climate change alarmists were quick to respond with their usual wit, aplomb and generosity. Here were some of the excuses they offered as to why this terrible man must at all costs not be taken seriously.

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Royal Society: doh!

Of the many pseudoscientific institutions responsible for pushing the pseudoscientific fraud of Man Made Global Warming in recent years, few have been quite so assiduous in promulgating the great lie as our own Royal Society. (H/T John O'Sullivan at Suite 101)

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