which might be good for him for a few months, anyway. Why on earth does the Independent employ this talentless hack, who other than occasionally being a mouthpiece for the security services, never writes anything of the slightest interest to anyone. Today he has an article about how difficult it is to be famous, sold on his poor sister Nigella sometimes receivng less than sycophantic media coverage.
A piece asking us to sympathise with Nigella Lawson and Nick Clegg over the moderate stress associated with their earning of huge incomes is bollocks journalism. I see his article has attracted 9 facebook recommendations. As compared to 723 for my equally ephemeral but infinitely better article in the same publication on the kilt.
Sorry, Dominic, for someone with your advantages, judged by your own crass standards, you are just crap.
Most of these journalsists are employed not so much because of the quality of their writing, but for the opposite reason, merely to fill up space.
I don't mind his writing /style/, but even in an article about the humanness of celebrities, he manages several defences of the status quo. He pops in a substantial defence of Nick Clegg, who by any measure has royally shafted his electoral base; then, we have the suggestion that the government might be quite kind after all, despite their attacks on a public sector and the simultaneous kid-glove treatment for banks who precipitated the need to cut government debt in the first place; oh yes, and a mention of antisemitism, in case readers were not feeling sufficiently sympathetic to Israel.
Is some of this subconscious? Well, possibly; but it still illustrates how `realpolitik pundits' think.
Facebook recommendations!
Sorry Craig they are really pisstakes to give everone a good laugh (normally).
Have a look at this. http://www.facebook.com/debtrally
The polite rally against debt ffs!
sometimes, but not always, and as this paeticular effort is meant to be light and amusing, I presume it is recommended as an amusing read
Agreed but "light and amusing" often seems to be the preserve of the Lawsons and Clarksons of this world, but as other people suggest it has an agenda and quite often a not very nice one! Green stuff bad, Oil good! I used to work for BP and really have seen how the oil companies work. God help us if they get to using shale oil in a big way which I have no doubt they will.
I've noticed a lot of Jewish commentators flash their ethnic credentials, often when it is entirely out of context to their subject matter. Presumably it's an insurance policy deliberately employed to shield them from criticism. They should realise it's not only tiresome but also reduces their argument and is no more than cultural elitism.
I agree with you in general, but I don't think Lawson is doing that in this article. Other than the sixth-former reference to Shylock's speech, I don't think he refers to his Jewishness in the article?
Norman Finklestein does a very good deconstruction of contemporary antisemitism. It begins 24mins in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO6rA1RH5jI
The rest of the lecture in three parts is well worth a listen too. He's very amusing, and rounds off with an offering of hope.
Like you Craig, he was hounded out of his job for telling the truth!
He really doesn't bother researching the facts for his articles at all. I remember he wrote one in which he claimed a new study showed organic vegetables and fruit were no better for you than non-organic, on the basis that they didn't have more vitamins and minerals. That completely missed the point that the reason organic food is better for you is because it's not full of highly poisonous pesticides – and a simple google of any media report on the study would also have told him that it's authors had not researched the effects of pesticides on health, only the side issue of whether organic had more vitamins and minerals.
There are some good columnists in British newspapers (Johann Hari and Robert Fisk for example) but there are a lot who are just there either because of who they know or because they get sales up by "creating controversy" (saying stupid things or making up claims without researching the facts and so generating letters and debate that editors hope will push up sales – so long as they don't upset anyone powerful or influential )
I was always amazed by the father's lack of credibility in terms of his chancellorship. And his current attachment to to the contrarianism with regard to climate science is simply a reflection of his reactionary politics. It always amazes me that such people feel enabled to project their undoubtedly limited and armchair bound conceptions to the harm of others.
I live in hope that these blogs and the internet are slowly displacing the charade of knowingness and deference that these charlatans depend upon.
Too right. He and all the other climate change deniers always leap on the 'petition by ten thousands scientists' (actually a fraud published by a front group funded by Exxon-Mobil and other oil companies) – and they were elated when Piers Corbyn's forecast of the hardest winter for decades (based on solar activity) came true two years in a row – ignoring the fact that he's been making that prediction for about a decade now and was wrong every other year http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2011/01/petitio…
I have no expertise in climate science (or any other science) whatsoever – but when pretty much every (non oil-company funded) climate scientist says they're over 90% sure climate change is mostly man made, i listen. I don't understand why Lawson thinks he has any qualifications to disagree with them based on some oil company fronts and a weather forecaster who is right by chance sometimes.
I'm not saying Piers Corbyn is totally wrong that changes in solar activity account for some climate change, but his forecasts seem to be wrong the majority of the time, suggesting he's wrong that solar activity accounts for pretty much all climate change.
Duncan, your ideological commitment shines through very nicely. "Climate change deniers" is a choice phrase that reveals a high level of intolerance for the dissenting view but by your own admission you are not an expert in the field. Is this not a contradiction?
In support of your conviction that AGW is fact, you point to a rival theory apparently being wrong. But this is a non-sequitur – just because your opponent is wrong, it does not make you right necessarily. It is a false dichotomy.
I read your analysis of the AGW controversy on your blog and for me it lacks rigour. To dismiss an argument simply on the basis that someone you dislike presented it is intellectually a weak position. To dismiss broadly the dissenting view as Exxon funded fraud or some such is argumentum ad hominem and is simply not on.
But what is really conspicuous by its absence in your piece is any attempt to apply the same criteria to the protagonists of the AGW movement. How are they funded? Are there conflicts of interest? Perhaps AGW theory is just an exceptionally successful product of the age-old anxiety industry. This industry after all predates the oil industry by millennia, but you don't seem to have any such doubts.
Then there is the laughable consensus argument. Science is unlike political science. Have you read War Against The Weak by Edwin Black?
The scientific method is a philosophical concept. The understanding of it requires no specialist training beyond that of logical reasoning. A veterinary surgeon is perfectly entitled to have doubts about the methods employed by climate scientists.
I can`t really comment on this Craig, I don`t read many newspapers, they are a waste of money and time. Stick to the web blogs for the news. All newspaper titles are the same…The Daily Brainwasher.
His father, Nigel, the holder of Maggie's purse strings and the overseer of Black Wednesday etc, is the Chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation whose funding is top secret as this article informs us. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/20…
On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Polic… Funding – Citing privacy concerns, Director Benny Peiser declined to reveal the sources of funding for the GWPF. Peiser said GWPF does not receive funding "from people with links to energy companies or from the companies themselves." In accounts filed at the beginning of 2011 with the Charities Commission and at Companies House, it was revealed that only £8,168 of the £503,302 the Foundation received as income up to the end of July 2010 came from membership fees
.
Well dodgy as Arthur Daley would have said.
I quite like Nigella. As well as being utterly gorgeous, she's an intelligent and charming person. It's not her fault who her brother and father are! I've never heard her complain about the 'hardships' of being rich and famous eiher – I reckon Dominic is exploiting his sister's fame to give him some sort of credentials to write this silly article.
Purlease! i think your mixing up 'utterly gorgeous' with charming and intelligent person. An easy mistake, granted. It's idiot television. Here – look at my cake/tits, I'm frighfully posh. Giggle.
Craig Murray's 'Kilt' article: superb – informative, engaging, witty yet not condescending… now I know why Craig sports that enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile! I have a couple of tartan ties and now will think of Craig's article every time I wear them!
Dominic Lawson's piece: A reflection of the tiny world in which these cossetted columnists seem to move. Of course, his alleged spook connections/activity makes him more directly malevolent than most of the other the authors of the pampered fluff that poses for 'Comment' in too many of our 'quality' rags today, but the entire phenomenon debases discourse and serves the purposes of the rich and powerful.
Germanicus: Never fear!! There are sets of 'Nigella' dvds around, I'm sure, books galore and you may wish to check out Youtube, the BBC website or similar, for unending doses of Nigella's ample presence. "Let us eat cake!" (as Marie Antoinette might have said, had been a 'talking head' on her own TV show).