James Delingpole's Blog, page 75

Why are we still feeding our soldiers into the Taliban mincing machine?

The type of warfare all soldiers most loathe and fear is the type where you can't shoot back. Every "Tom" relishes a firefight. It's why he (or she) joined up. What takes its toll - as it did in Vietnam, and is now doing in Afghanistan - is the nerve-shredding anxiety of going out day after day on patrol knowing with near-certainty that somewhere on your route is the IED which is going to kill or maim you or one of your mates.

Talk to any politician who supports our Afghan engagement, and they're

No. 6 in Total Politics Media Blogs? Moi???

To my enormous surprise I've been voted number six most popular journalist blogger by the Total Politics website. Blimey! I thought to do well in these things you had to send round-robins to everyone on your internet mailing list urging them to vote - which I didn't - so I can honestly say I'm gobsmacked. And delighted. And very proud to be part of such a winning team.

I think I'm right in saying (and I'm not going to double check in case it turns out not to be true) that we Telegraph bloggers ha

'Dark Energy' reminds us: consensus has no place in real science

So Dark Energy might not exist after all? Good. I'm delighted to hear it. Not that I have anything personal against this mysterious substance which until very recently scientists believed made up three quarters of the universe. (In fact if it does exist, I want some in a jar in my office. It sounds pretty cool).

No, the reason I'm pleased is because it shows the healthy, normal process of science in action.

Dark Energy was invented by cosmologists "to fit Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relati

Why I'm richer for being poorer

Who'd have thought that scrimping and saving and eating leftovers could be rewarding? James Delingpole explains why he doesn't miss his old, affluent lifestyle as much as he thought he would

 

The best fishcakes I've ever eaten were the ones I had the other night. This had less to do with their culinary sophistication – just a bit of leftover cod, some mash, a little parsley from the garden, a sprinkling of flour and some salt and black pepper – than with how they made me feel. With each mouthful,

How The West Was Lost (ctd): the Burkini

The Burkini. You'd think it was a joke invention: a bit like the grotesque "Mankini" so hilariously sported by Sacha Baron Cohen on all those posters for Borat. What, after all, could be more absurd than melding the not-notably-sexy Muslim dress - the Burka - with the kind of achingly seductive kit worn by Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman?

But no, the Burkini is for real. It was designed by an Lebanese Australian Aheda Zanetti to enable women in thrall to extreme Saudi-style dress codes t

Stephen Hawking would not have been left to die by the NHS

Gosh, I'm not half enjoying all the horror stories American Conservatives are using to try to sabotage President Obama's plans for universal healthcare. I particularly like the one about the Death Committee (do they mean NICE?) which sits to decide whether or not our elderly are to get life-saving treatment. But I fear the one about Stephen Hawking was pushing it a bit.

Don't get me wrong. I think the Land of Freedom needs NHS-style universal healthcare like it needs an Ebola pandemic or Al Gore.

Reason no 12867 why not to vote Tory: the NHS

Britain's National Health Service is an embarrassment to the Western world and the only thing that puzzles me more than President Obama's admiration for this creaking, archaic, quasi-Stalinist, state-health-allocation relic is our future Prime Minister Dave Cameron's.

At least President Obama has the excuse of being a Socialist. Dave Cameron is a Conservative. Supposedly. Yet listening to the Today programme this morning as his dreary, Pooterish Health Spokesman Andrew Lansley officially and emph

In the swim

I do hope you'll forgive me for writing about rivers twice in two columns. It's just that when I got back from Wales, turned on a TV for the first time in a fortnight, and saw Griff Rhys Jones voyaging down the Wye and the Severn I found myself instantly transfixed. This is what happens when you've been cast out of paradise (aka been on holiday): you want to prolong the experience for as long as possible, even if only by artificial means.

Rivers. If I see one — unless it's totally crocodile-infes

Bloody marvellous Aussies kill carbon emissions bill

Hurrah, hurrah and thrice hurrah for Aussie common sense.

Australia's Senate - the Government's upper house - has just voted by 42 to 30 to defeat the cap and trade legislation bill proposed by their premier Kevin Rudd.

Why did those Senators reject Rudd's scheme, despite their prolonged drought and their bush fires? Well some - the green ones - did so because they didn't think its emissions cutting targets went far enough. But the majority did so - duh - because they didn't want their coal-depend

Lockerbie: did we jail the wrong man?

Lockerbie was the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in Great Britain and I fully agree with the many who feel that whichever fiend was responsible for murdering those 270 people should be banged up for life. But was that man Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi - the Libyan being freed by the Government on "compassionate grounds" next week so that he can be home with his family in time Ramadan? (Hat Tip: Tom Gross)

I'm not sure I believe it was. Nor, more to the point, do many in the CIA and in Israel