The maverick climate-change deniers are examined in some detail by Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata. A good post, which addresses the concerns I had about the reliability of the documentary makers. Summary: who cares who made it if they spoke truth to power. Or, as Brian puts it:

"If a mad, not-to-be-trusted person says something true, there is still the matter of its truth to be considered. "

Generally speaking I would like to vote Conservative, but sometimes they've been too pathetic a shower to allow for it.

When Dave Cameron (yes, I'm still angry about the sacking of his shadow minister Mercer- see below post) was spouting his green credentials to the heavens recently I said to myself that sooner or later his judgement was going to be exposed on that issue. There's no way the reality matches the hysteria.

It looks as though that time has come sooner rather than later with the devastating documentary on Channel 4- The Great Global Warming Swindle- yesterday exposing the shallowness of global warming science. Dave could suffer serious credibility loss as this sinks in. Melanie Phillips has a grand summary up of the main points covered, so that even though I myself didn't see it I can tell how powerful the message was.

"The Great Global Warming Swindle has blown an enormous hole in every fundamental claim made to support the climate change obsession — including the claim that the argument is over."

Do read it all. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me is that it got made by Channel Four, maverick to the core it would seem.

What's left when this is right?

The Cameron bandwagon rolls on, and who cares if a little baggage falls off on the way?

Patrick Mercer, veteran high ranking officer of Bosnia and Northern Ireland, and MP close to my neck of the woods in the UK, just became inexpedient to his master Dave. Or rather he became another useful example to be made.

Dave really makes my blood run cold sometimes, and this is one of them. It is, of course, a rearranging of the deck chairs, but Cameron's contempt for a man's career and reputation is just awesome. That's as it's meant to be, I suppose.

Real impressive, Dave, you pampered little Etonian Oxbridge druggie. Check out the class dumping on show:

"The comments made by Patrick Mercer are completely unacceptable and I regret that they were made. We should not tolerate racism in the Army or in any walk of life. Patrick Mercer is no longer a Shadow Minister.”

Ooh err. How tough and hard and cruel that Dave is. Sexy!

Now, of course, Cameron is operating by certain rules of the game. You know, thou shalt be cool with the perceived moraes of the drifting mainstream, oriented towards that shrinking cohort of youth which everyone aspires to be cool with.

This is electorally smart but fundamentally foolish, if you aspire to actually do your country some good. For one thing there are clever and resourceful people who will not forget these kinds of bloodletting sacrifices to political correctness.

For another, unlike Dave, other people do live in a world that is not simply about deckchairs and their latest rearrangement. It's clearly true in Britain, and even more blatant elsewhere. There are people in Britain who cannot draw comfort from a label of minority, who are unable to follow the banal and emptied pieties of correctness, who can't make sense of it and who find the likes of Dave's mean media morality discouraging and depressing. If they don't raise their voices it's because it all seems way over their heads, and Dave obviously knows they can be safely ignored. Yet how safe is a cowed native populace?

Dave frets that Mercer compares army discrimination against blacks manifested in nasty names like "black bastard" with discrimination against redheads with nasty nicknames like "ginger bastard".

Dave, of course, is neither black nor ginger. I'd like to know exactly what makes him an expert on the feelings of black people, since he clearly wouldn't give a monkey's for the feelings of less seriously "different" sorts. I realise he's choreographed some trips in Africa, which isn't difficult when you have a political machine behind you. I don't know how qualified I am to comment, but I am red headed, have lived in- and adored- Africa, visited aids sufferers and slums, and dated several black ladies (in Europe) whom I respected and even could claim to have loved- so I do feel qualified, at any rate. Dave has also never been in the army. Dave merely pronounces.

Mercer was talking from experience. I don't expect he made anything up. Dave, meanwhile, is himself a piece of fabrication. He actually scares me: a puffed up piece of vanity propelling himself on a specious notion of power, a hydrogen balloon of pr. guff who will go off with a bigger pop even than Blair- and sooner. I once punched a guy who acted like Dave Cameron- probably the only decisive act of violence of my volition in my life. It felt great, and it was actually the right thing to do- which blew me away completely, and the other guy too.

What about Lord Black?

I wanted to link to this article by Mark Steyn because I have always been interested in Lord Black, since long before he was a lord. He made the newspaper world in Britain far more dynamic than it otherwise might have been. That dynamism is probably why it's so far ahead of its US rivals in adapting to the internet, and why, still, Britblogs are way behind the Dailies- with the exception of a certain Mr Fawkes.

Black lived it big, but not clever. If he'd been as cunning as most top execs he'd have been in a more lucrative business where hundreds of millions are available without the green-eyed onlookers prying in.

I also link to this article because it's a great read from a great writer.

And by the way, the Black story hasn't gone away yet, unlike his millions and his direct legacy.