On telly Jeremy Paxman is a terrifying figure: combative, irascible, impatient, contemptuous and ungenerous. (For an example of the latter, do check out how he begins his interview with right wing US commentator Ann Coulter – who promptly wipes the floor with him). But in real life he is an absolutely sweetheart. On several occasions I’ve watched him compere charity quizzes and prove himself to be such a cuddly, good-natured, double-cheek-kissing, borderline luvvie I wondered whether perhaps he suffers from Jekyll/Hyde syndrome. Either that or the Paxman you see on TV is some kind of evil killer replicant version of the real Jezza, with all the human qualities removed.
It’s this nice, sensitive side of Paxman, I hope, which will ride to the rescue of his brother James – currently fighting a valiant campaign to prevent a wind farm blighting a beauteous stretch of Devon overlooking Dartmoor national park. Presumably the brothers get on (I’m way too scared to ring up and ask, in case the evil TV replicant answers the phone) and go to stay with one another. In which case, Jezza will surely have been to his brother’s Dartmoor pad, noticed the region’s rugged magnificence, and been struck by the fact that what the area really doesn’t need is nine wind turbines on 120 foot high sticks dominating the horizon and quite removing all sense of the natural from the landscape. And will thus be compelled to lend his weight, as a public figure, to this tremendously worthwhile cause.
Or will he? Paxman is an ostensibly bright man. But unfortunately there are an awful lot of ostensibly bright people who have been taken in by Al Gore’s Man Made Global Warming Myth, in much the same way as many global “intellectuals” were seduced in the Thirties (and Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties and Noughties if your name’s Professor EL Hobsbawm) by Josef Stalin. Even more unfortunately, Paxman works for the BBC where to question the Al Gore version of “climate change” is about as career safe as it would have been for an ambitious SD officer in Nazi Germany to start championing the human rights of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals.
A bit like the Queen, leading BBC interviewers have to adopt a guise of impartiality so it’s not always easy to know what they really think. (Actually I lie, it’s pimpsqueak: they’re tree-hugging pinkoes, every man Jack of them). When I Googled to find what Paxo’s views are on “climate change”, all I could find was a piece he wrote in the BBC’s in house magazine Ariel, in which he lambasted his employers for their ecological hypocrisy.
He wrote: “It strikes me as very odd indeed that an organisation which affects such a high moral tone cannot be more environmentally responsible.”
“The BBC’s environment correspondents, even the makers of series like Planet Earth, are trapped in a bizarre arrangement in which they travel the globe to tell the audience of the dangers of climate change while leaving a vapour trail which will make the problem even worse.”
How are we to interpet this? The charitable interpretation is that he is not taking a stance on “climate change” per se, merely on the inconsistency of the BBC’s attitude, viz: ‘If you really believe all this green drivel you’re spouting, at least show some kind of intellectual and moral consistency.’
What makes me fear that Paxo is very much part of the problem not the solution, however, is his apparent belief in ‘carbon credits’. Elsewhere in the article, he complains that BBC staff are being forced personally to fork out for the cost of carbon-offsetting the air-, land- and sea-miles for all their BBC junkets to the Olympics, Glastonbury, and God knows where else. He speaks as if, somehow, this were a bad thing; as if – heaven forfend – it ought to be the licence-payer who ought to be funding these carbon-offsets.
“Come off it, Jeremy!” as I’m sure his killer TV replicant would say under different circumstances. There are varying levels of credulousness and air-headed stupidity among warmists. But only the really thickest of thick actually believe that paying fifteen quid so that some bloke in India can plant a mango tree so as to carbon-neutralise the cost of your eco-junket in Copenhagen is anything other than silly, pointless and redolent of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Still, here is the perfect opportunity for Paxo to prove me wrong. Go on Jezza! Come out for your bro! Speak up against the wind farm menace! Otherwise, it may be that I shall be forced to distrust anything you say on any subject ever again, for I will know that you are not the questing, intellectually fearless empiricist you claim to be but, well frankly, that you’re just another of Al Gore’s useful idiots.
Related posts:
- We need to talk about wind farms…
- Come off it, Paxo! If you earn a million a year the licence-payer has a right to know.
- ‘Wind farms cure cancer, save kittens, create world peace’ says new wind industry report
- The best article on wind farms you will ever read
Chris P says:
Don Stuart says:
yaosxx says:
In fact air resistance is highest when the velocity is highest (in the early stages), because the drag is due to dynamic pressure, which as Euler found is clearly proportional to the square of the velocity of the shell. So as it slows down, air resistance becomes smaller, not bigger (as previously believed from intuitive guesswork). The key problem was determining the shell’s range as a function of gun elevation angle and the initial velocity of the shell. Napoleon studied the French version of Euler’s revision, and was able to get his gunnery more efficient than his rivals, whose military relied on an excessive amount of preliminary “test shots” to empirically determine the best elevation angle (wasting time, wasting cannon, and forewarning the enemy!). So the basis of Napoleon’s success was the brainpower of an English physicist!
Whether these ‘dream teachers’ succeed or fail becomes dwarfed by the incite we will all get by watching the reactions of real kids in real lessons. And I’ll bet a pound to a penny that the Headmaster will inadvertently expose his political training, along with the culpability of the teaching profession as it currently stands.
The other key he missed was freedom. Freedom of the individual to push boundaries, wether that be technology, industry or science (ie. knowledge).
He touched on Chinas regression from being the most advanced nation but he didn’t nail the reason: authority or centralising of power.
Centralising power of economic progress is fatal. Ity proved fatal to China.
Whereas in Europe entrepeneurs, primarily agricultural and industrial, had room to breath. However Americas freedom surpassed Europes increasingly stifling Govts which is why America overtook authoritarian Europe so rapidly.
Incidentally James ‘The Abyss’ is about to kick off i believe. The Euro and US stock markets have just taken what looks like the beginning of an accelerating wave down.
This is important because it’s a lead indicator for the economy. And it also leads all political events (markets = horse… politics = cart).
This last stock rally is being nicely ‘peeked’ by Merkals Emperor like orders for the minnows of Europe and agreeing to increase the Eurozone bailout fund. But this stock collapse is marking the beginning of the end for these last ‘chummy’ and ‘friendly’ Euro Clubbers. The declining stock market will now bring on devision, fall out and the inevitable split of the Eurozone in the next year.
Tell Hannan… he’ll like the news… in fact if he knew how events unfold he could make the news and mark his place in history! He was very brave to use my line that business does not need the EU/Govts to trade across Europe in his speech at the EU. He gulped a bit delivering such a powerful message but deliver it he did (kudos for that)
competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic.
Neither can I disagree about that these are negatives:
bunny-hugging, diversity awareness training, renewable energy and the EU. The last is taxation (and regulation) without representation.
The way that successive UK politicians of both left and right have ceded sovereignty to the EU.is treason in my book. NZ politicians have similarly ceded sovereignty to foreign interests and the UN. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the same leaders have abolished the death sentence for treason. Playing it safe, no doubt.
Two comments are necessary.
It is ironic that China, which is growing very fast, has central control, but does it in such a way that it now at last has all of the key advantages you identified. (Actually, they always did have the last, the work ethic.) I am uncomfortable with the excesses of the control the Chinese exercise, but it seems to be working overall. The Chinese are out-performing the West.
Part of their success – a big part, arises from the headlong rush of western businesses to source their manufactured goods from the cheapest sources. As a result, manufacturing in the West has severely diminished. The short-term profits have been made, but the overall wealth of western nations has declined sharply.
And the Chinese, and latterly the Indians, are beginning to laugh all the way to the bank.
Competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. greed may not be such a crash-hot idea. It might be a good thing if western governments exercised some controls designed to promote growth. And abandoned the cloying, unecessary growth-limiting controls of carbon taxes.