Friday
The thing about Delingpole is not just the things he says, but the huge numbers of people he says them to, throughout not just the UK but the entire anglosphere. He said "climate science" was hooey to his massed readership, when saying that really counted for something. Now he is arguing for serious cuts, as in actual reductions, as in large reductions, in government spending, here in the UK, in the USA, and pretty much everywhere, at a time when that too needs to be said very loudly.
It is an odd feeling watching all the things I have have been banging on about for the last third of a century or so - about taxation, spending cuts, Hong Kong, the Asian Tigers, etc. - being banged on about by someone half my age and of several times my eloquence. Extreme jealousy mixed with extreme delight about sums it up. The former, I am getting over. The latter will last. I can remember when we used to dream of getting stuff like his in the Telegraph ... blah blah.
So, well done Delingpole, and keep it coming.
He is doing a great job; and Brian, I suspect he knows full well that folk such as you (and come to that, yours truly, ahem) have been banging on about such things and been branded as ideological nutters, for decades.
Is it just me, or is there a definite change in the intellectual atmosphere? There was a Channel 4 programme the other night about our nightmare debt; another show on the same channel having a pop at the Greens; we have had more discussion about hard money/free banking for years; Obama is electoral toast, etc.
Yes, I know that the "hegemony" (as Ian B might put it) is all one way: favouring the "proggies" and the puritans. But they are not getting all their own way and encountering resistence from unexpected quarters. Case in point: Toby Young, once a leftist son of a famous lefty educationalist, Michael Young, is becoming more and more vocal on what utter scum are the apparachatiks of the left. And so on.
Posted by Johnathan Pearce at November 12, 2010 03:12 PM
He's a good bloke. Writes well. Is right. Bound to make enemies in time. Well, there you go.
Posted by David Davis at November 12, 2010 04:27 PM
Bound to make enemies in time
Waddia mean in time!
I bet there's a sack full of snarling leftie rodents arguing over who gets to bite him first already.
Watched the C4 documentary Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story last night. Couldn't believe my eyes.
Small Govt, slash the Public sector to next to nothing, Low Taxes, let the market provide...
All getting discussed on a British Telly? How did that one slip through! Make and hour and watch it here, It's Brill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOsqBf5hDjI
Congrats to Delingpole.
Posted by RAB at November 12, 2010 07:00 PM
There was a Channel 4 programme the other night ... having a pop at the Greens
I presume you mean What the Green Movement Got Wrong. In which case it was less "having a pop" than establishment Greens telling land-of-the-fairies Greens that they needed to be more pragmatic. Hardly mugged by reality.
Posted by TDK at November 13, 2010 08:12 AM
The Trillion Pound Horror Story programme is delightfully punchy.
There's a shameful use of statistics that would embarass a Warm Mongerer, mind you. They show a stat of money supply since 1980 rising, then a graph of the declining value of the pound. The sleight of hand is that the latter starts in 1970. He has a strong enough case not to need such cheating.
Posted by manuel II paleologos at November 13, 2010 10:06 AM
I agree with everything I can remember reading in the occasional column of his I've read, and I also agree that it's cheering that there's someone in a mainstream newspaper saying this stuff. Obviously, I also agree that congratulations are in order.
However, I can't help not liking James Delingpole much. Or maybe it's just his writing style. I find many of the contributors here, or over at Cats, far more persuasive and eloquent. JD, it strikes me, plays to the gallery. He does not usually even attempt to persuade: he merely delights his followers with his own brand of cocksure posturing. He's superficial, cocky and glib: on occasions, these qualities are quite apposite, but there are subjects that deserve more gravitas. I find his trademark use of the term "libtards" (as if this were a precise ideological label) mildly irritating. I sometimes read Peter Hitchens, and although there's always plenty to disagree with (if you happen to be an atheist and a Darwinist), I think Delingpole could use a few lessons from Hitchens on writing style and the art of persuasion. My considered opinion.
Posted by Endivio Roquefort I at November 17, 2010 11:01 PM
