April 24, 2013 10:39 am - author: James Delingpole

‘Global warming’ was always far too important to be left to the scientists

Now that global warming is completely unravelling, I want to elaborate on a point I made a few blogposts back about the role of humanities graduates in this great debate.

On the face of it, their record isn’t good. Some of the most influential promulgators of climate nonsense have been arts graduates – among them Bryony Worthington (the FoE activist turned peer responsible for the Climate Change Act), the BBC’s Roger Harrabin and a fair few of the Guardian’s 2,800-strong Environment Department. I think future historians – looking back on this period of mass hysteria in which so many people were persuaded by and so much expensive, damaging policy was based on the largest confection of lies in junk science history – could put together a reasonably persuasive thesis that it was mainly the fault of scientist-manque arts graduate…

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April 24, 2013 10:37 am - author: James Delingpole

Lilley sticks it to ‘Trougher’ Yeo

Tim Yeo’s carbon-free future (Alamy)

Not everything in the Tory party is rotten and irredeemable. There was good old Owen Paterson in the papers yesterday with his squirrel traps. There’s Gove, sticking it to the eco-loons by removing global warming junk science teaching from the curriculum. And then there’s this utterly magnificent performance by Peter Lilley in a climate change debate at Westminster Hall last week, up against two of his more bubonic colleagues Tim “Trougher” Yeo and Greg “so utterly crap he doesn’t even merit a nickname” Barker. Lilley was participating in his new role as a member of the Climate Change Committee, which he was able to infiltrate by means of a secret ballot. I recommend you read the full Hansard transcript. It is, as they say, *popcorn*.

Here is Lilley…

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April 10, 2013 4:58 am - author: James Delingpole

Margaret Thatcher dies; Dave basks in the limelight

David Cameron was all over BBC’s Six O’Clock News in his sombre tie, pronouncing prime ministerially about how Margaret Thatcher was a “great leader and a great Briton.” He added: “She didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country.”

Nice sentiments, Dave, with which many of us agree; but what sticks in our craw, rather, is the way – just like you did at the Olympics – you will insist on jemmying your way into the limelight in order to bathe in the reflected glory of a much greater talent’s achievements. If you were doing a half way decent job of running the country just now it might be different. We’d consider it one of the perks of your station to enjoy the occasional moment of national significance…

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April 10, 2013 4:52 am - author: James Delingpole

Lady Thatcher was a statesman. Blair and Cameron are mere politicians

Cometh the hour cometh the man. (Or woman).

Except it’s not always true, is it?

In 1940 we had Winston Churchill. In 1979 we had Margaret Thatcher. But I’m not sure even the most generous apologists for our current Prime Minister would bracket David Cameron in quite the same category.

What did Mrs Thatcher have that Cameron doesn’t?

For me the essential distinction is that between being a statesman and being a politician. Maggie was the former, Dave is evidently the latter – as, I think was Tony Blair. One of the key differences between the two lies in their attitude to personal popularity. To the politician it matters greatly, for the primary aim of the politician is to gain and maintain power at regardless of what cost to his principles. To the statesman, however, the political process is little more than…

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April 3, 2013 6:05 am - author: James Delingpole

Hayes, Fallon, deckchairs, Titanic

You know what? There was a time – perhaps as recently as six or twelve months ago – when I would have been seriously heartened by the news of Cameron’s latest mini reshuffle. I’m a massive fan of the tough, free-market-minded Michael Fallon. Appointing him as the minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change is a bit like sending in King Herod to shake up the Judaean Child Services Unit. But it’s a symbolic gesture, nothing more. Fallon’s predecessor in the job – John Hayes – was just as old school Tory, just as much a conviction politician, just as opposed to the insanity of wind – and look where it got him: absolutely nowhere.

While DECC’s departmental boss Ed Davey may not be quite as sinister a machiavel as his predecessor Chris Huhne (whatever…

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March 1, 2013 8:02 am - author: James Delingpole

Toby, mate, it’s not often these days we disagree but…

There is barely a cigarette paper’s difference between my own and Toby Young’s opinion on most – if not all – political and social issues. I like and admire him hugely. But where he and I differ is in our interest in the political process: he finds it fascinating, I don’t. So while he has been following the Eastleigh by election assiduously, I really haven’t. I’m not interested in the politics, I’m not interested in the personalities. This is because like many classical liberals of a certain bent, I happen to think politics is the problem. The petty backbiting, the jockeying for power, the horse-trading, the sordid alliances of convenience, the factions, the malleable principles, the moral cowardice, the favoured interests – not that I’m…

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