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Samizdata quote of the day

Clarkson is a hero, and Monbiot is a chicken.

Why Monbiot is so Miserable

47 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Nick M

    Whilst I do believe that Monbiot’s latest mentalism was recently highlighted on this very blog that’s a great link. Cheers Brian. You made my day!

    I loved this…

    What George needs to realise is that people don’t drive cars because they watch Top Gear, they watch top Gear because they love cars and the positive things that cars represent. Environmentalism offers us nothing positive.

    It doesn’t does it? The Greens are to having fun what the Muslims are to sex. I watch Top Gear because of the irrepressible nature of Clarkson, Hammond and May. I watch it because if I’d just fired a mini off a ski-jump slope using a rocket or crossed the English channel in a modified Nissan Patrol with my mates I’d be high-fiving and laughing my ass off too. That’s because I believe in fun. Has George Monbiot ever enjoyed himself?

    Moreover, is Monbiot lying? I mean regardless of the carbon foot-print, I defy anybody who has ever flown in a jet not to get a buzz when the turbofans spool-up and they get a kick in the kidneys.

    I also note that Clarkson, May & Hammond have all made other shows about science and technology. Whilst they have a light-hearted tone every episode of all three shows contains more genuine stuff about science than an entire series of Horizon.

    They also demonstrate genuine friendship and that is rare on TV these days. The best you’re likely to get is the cod bonhomie of utter crap like “Loose Women”.

    I’d best stop before I say something off-colour about the presumed state of ITV’s daytime flagship presenters pelvic floors. Although as their basic schtick is slagging men off (in that oh so dismal faux-feminist manner) then fuck ’em – though, even if you’re hung like a donkey, that would be like throwing a chipolata down Deansgate – as they say in Manchester.

  • squawkbox

    I blame the Reformation. 500 years ago douchebags like Monbiot would have entered monasteries, donned hairshirts, flagellated themselves and left the rest of us alone. Now they go into journalism and try to make everyone else as miserable as they are themselves.

  • RAB

    One of my claims to Fame is that I made George Monbiot groan out loud on National radio.
    It was fun fun fun!

  • RAB

    I have told this one before Mike,
    but just for you.
    George and all the usual suspects (a mess of Porrits)
    were gathered on the Mayo show on Beeb 5 Live to “Discuss” Global Warming.
    As usual, impeccable Beeb balance.
    None whatsoever!
    Unremitting doom and gloom, rising sea levels, scorching deserts, we’re all going to fry or drown or both at the same time whilst freezing to death too!
    This went on for 3/4 of an hour before I snapped and emailed the programme the following-

    Well I live on top of the highest hill, here in Bristol
    and I for one, am looking forward to having a sea view!

    Someone with a sense of humour at the prog got it read out, and the collective groan from the usual suspects was music to my ears!
    See they thought they had it nailed down. But the last word was from me!
    Sheer glee!!!

  • Sam Duncan

    They probably thought you were “trivialising the issue”, RAB. But the best way to deal with nutcases like that is ridicule, up to and beyond the point of absurdity. If they’re taken seriously, they’ll win.

    Clarkson isn’t as politically incorrect as he – and the BBC – would like the world to think (take his anti-Americanism, for example), but he’s still worth a hundred Moonbats, for all the reasons NickM mentions.

  • Paul Marks

    The antiAmericanism is the key Sam.

    Mr Clarkson often attacks the United States from a point of view I quite like (attacking crazy regulations, and the trial lawyers and so on). But sometimes the B.B.C. do not seem to really care on what grounds someone attacks the United States in general and President Bush in particular – as long as they do.

    For example, if someone were to say “George W. Bush is a wild welfare state spending moron” I suspect that some people in the B.B.C. would just hear “George W. Bush is a moron” and be happy.

    It reminds me of a libertarian in Hollywood (I can not remember his name) who was asked how he survived in this environment.

    He replied (more or less) “I just say “f*** Bush” – the people here do not care that I am saying it because Bush has increased spending on programs such as government health care, whereas they would say it because they think government should spend even more of other people’s money – they just hear “f*** Bush” and that is enough”.

  • Paul Marks

    Actually it would be interesting to conduct a couple of experiments in relation to the B.B.C. (or other establishment media).

    One could say “f*** that weakling Bush – he should not have saved the life of the demented Chevez in 2002 and he should have attacked Iran years ago before it built up its strength and alliances” and see how they react.

    And on the environment one could say “f*** Bush – his failure to remove the regulations that undermine nuclear power is the root of the problem”.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    For me, Clarkson’s television documentary on the greatness of |Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his “Extreme Machines” series are things that make it almost worthwhile paying the BBC licence fee. Almost, of course.

  • Paul has put it in a nutshell. Though the BBC also can’t argue with the viewing figures.

  • RAB

    Ah Ha ! violet on the handle!
    Finally at last Black Pussy in a coalmine!
    Congratulations my friend!

  • pete

    Monbiot is a chicken but Clarkson is not a hero. Clarkson makes trash TV with my money because the government insists I pay the BBC to make trash TV I don’t want. Clarkson is sensible to take the government’s money but that doesn’t make him a hero.

  • mike

    RAB: it would have been funnier if they’d read out a few more emails like yours! Still, pretty funny..

    I love Top Gear – but what makes it such a good laugh for me isn’t just the tearing of an old Lada in two using dumper trucks, but watching those three daft sods taking the piss out of each other. Or of the Americans – I remember one time Clarkson showed a yankee muscle car to be slower than a horse going round a track, thus demonstrating that American car designers, big engines aside, had yet to progress beyond 1 unit of horse power!! How I laughed…! Totally non-political humour, but at the expense of the Great Satan so the BBC won’t mind…

  • Pete

    The problem with people like Mike is that he doesn’t like paying full whack for Top Gear. He needs subsidy.

    I do wish that people who like trash like Top Gear could be persuaded to pay full price for it. On the other hand maybe I’m lucky that the dimwits who do like it are so easily satisfied.

  • Pete

    The problem with people like Mike is that he doesn’t like paying full whack for Top Gear. He needs subsidy.

    I do wish that people who like trash like Top Gear could be persuaded to pay full price for it. On the other hand maybe I’m lucky that the dimwits who do like it are so easily satisfied.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    I do wish that people who like trash like Top Gear could be persuaded to pay full price for it. On the other hand maybe I’m lucky that the dimwits who do like it are so easily satisfied.

    Okay Pete, we heard you the first time. I reckon that Top Gear could survive and thrive commercially, which no doubt would upset many people of a snobbish cast of mind. Yes, it is “trash” tv, it is also lots of fun to watch, which is why it is so revealing to read the comments of a sad bastard like Moonbat. Long may Clarkson continue to get up the noses of such people.

  • mike

    …and the problem with people like Pete is that they are presumptuous tossers.

  • J

    Environmentalism offers us nothing positive

    Rubbish. Monbiot isn’t an environmentalist. He’s an essayist, who current theme is environmental disaster. You’re average libertarian, moaning and wailing about the ever expanding nanny state isn’t exaclty a bunch of laughs either.

    But there are many people who show us the fun side of (in broad terms) ‘greenness’. Ray Mears is to some degree the Clarkson of the green world. I would trade any sports car for a ten acre woodland and a machete. You could add characters like Bill Oddie, Bellamy, Steve Irwin. If you can’t understand how some people relish a week in a woodland with a knife and box of matches, you’re just a dull as if you can’t see the attraction in driving around the med in a Lotus.

    If clarkson sat there writing boring essays on the damaging effects of fuel tax on British society and how SOMETHING MUST BE DONE he’d be just as lethally tedious as Monbiot. As it is, he merely embodies the fun to be had from machines and cars. There are others who embody the fun to be had from nature and the environment. I suggest paying them more attention and leaving the essays to those who are gluttons for punishment.

  • J: a fair point. It seems to me the problem is that the “fun people” on both sides are not getting enough attention from their opposite side, largely because these two groups don’t overlap all that often.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Rubbish. Monbiot isn’t an environmentalist. He’s an essayist, who current theme is environmental disaster. You’re average libertarian, moaning and wailing about the ever expanding nanny state isn’t exaclty a bunch of laughs either.

    I think Monbiot actually believes in environmentalism; I don’t think the guy is making it up. I think he genuinely thinks the world needs to be saved by the likes of him.

    Libertarians can be a miserable lot but then, J, if you are worried about the growing size and power of the state in recent years, there’s quite a lot to be depressed about. However, there is also a lot to be optimistic about, not least, the rising wealth of places like India and other former “Third World nations”; the continued amazing advances in science and tech, and so on. There is a lot going on in the cultural sphere that makes me quite positive about humanity generally. I also think that we have reached – hopefully – a high-water mark of the nanny state. We can always hope.

  • Top Gear is a very successful program around the world. Some of my Australian relatives love Jeremy Clarkson as much as Jonathan does. My hunch is that through selling the program around the world and selling products associated with it, the BBC makes enough money to pay for it without any licence fee.

    This argument is surprisingly true about a substantial portion of the BBC’s good programming. The BBC has a good brand and a reputation around the world for “quality”, and it is able to do quite well financially from this. (It could probably do better if it was not constrained by its “obligation to licence fee holders” to stay at arms length from capitalism in certain ways.

    On television what the licence fee actually pays for is the dross – the sort of unorginal downmarket stuff that nobody outside the UK would actually want to watch. That and the endless spending on internet sites and “new media” stuff that the BBC feels it has to spend money on to “stay relevant”.

    The truth is that if the licence fee was abolished some parts of the BBC would find other sources of income or expand existing sources, some would switch to a simple advertising funded model, and some would cease to exist. The bits that would survive would largely be the good bits. Why should this surprise anyone?

  • Apart from all the other reasons to love Top Gear, lately I’ve been noticing how gorgeous the photography is. It’s not just car porn, it’s Petter Hegre for cars.

    My favourite bit of the linked article is this:

    Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May celebrate human achievements

    It’s easy to be optimistic if you think that man’s dominance over nature is a good thing — because dominating nature is what people inevitably do. No wonder Monbiot is so miserable. (That’s probably why Ray Mears is so cheerful, as mentioned by J, because he’s all about making sure nature doesn’t kill you if you’re stuck amongst it.)

    On the subject of license fees (and I think Michael Jennings provides ample reason to forgive Clarkson and co. about this), this exchange between James Murdoch and a BBC director is amusing:

    Viewers should be wary of the use of state funds for a national news service, [Murdoch] said. “I wonder if we’re wary enough.”

    Mr Murdoch’s comments were challenged at the event by Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, who denied any state influence over the BBC’s news coverage. “I made no comment about your news,” Mr Murdoch told Mr Highfield in a testy exchange, “[but] the BBC’s a state agency with police powers to collect a tax.”

  • Ham

    Surely climate change is a scientific issue, not a personal one.

  • mike

    “Surely climate change is a scientific issue, not a personal one.”

    Not so Ham. Climate change may (or may not) be a fact, but the various propositions for what to do about it are a personal issue because some of them involve taking your personal stuff by force – whether you like it or not (e.g. taxes). Simple really.

  • Paul Marks

    J has a point – not all libertarians are miserable, but I would not like to be trapped in a room with someone like me.

    As for Ray Mears – I have reason to be greatful to him.

    Some years ago there was big plan (by the B.B.C. and the rest of the usual suspects) to have Philip Pullman declared the greatest English writer.

    All the normal tricks were in play (rigged telepone vote and so on) but Ray Mears was quietly effective in arguing for J.R.R. Tolkien and this helped the number of calls for Tolkien be so huge that even the B.B.C. could not declare Mr Pullman the winner.

    It was rather irritating for them as they had already done the paper work to get Mr Pullman’s work into every library and then had to say “errrr no, the selection is someone else”.

    Now I am not saying that Tolkien is the greatest English writer – but his work is a lot better than that of Mr Pullman (and has no Progressive agenda), so I have a regard for the role of Mr Mears.

    The B.B.C. is a disgusting thing – but that does not mean that everyone who works for it is disgusting.

  • Nick M

    I remember “The Big Read” and quite frankly when I first heard about it I just knew LoTR would win. It always tops polls and with the films coming out… Everyone has read it with one exception. I have never known an English Lit student who has read it.

    Mears did a remarkably good job though and it was more interesting than watching him eat bugs. He did a much better job than Tristram Hunt did on “Greatest Britons” shilling for Newton. He made a couple of glaring factual errors and seemed to concentrate way too much on whether or not Newton was gay – a matter of almost supernatural irrelevance as to the question of Newton’s greatness.

    Climate change is personal because the high priests of global warming are forever urging us to make “lifestyle changes”. If what you eat, where you holiday, your chosen form of transport and who you vote for isn’t personal I’m stuffed if I can think of something that is.

    I also don’t believe it is exactly a scientific question. Say the sky does fall? The Chicken Littles will say “told ya so”. Say it doesn’t? They’ll say “This is because lots of you took our advice”. In the way it’s presented by the likes of Gore* or Monbiot (neither of whom has any relevant qualifications to hold court here) it is totally unfalsifiable. It is significant that one of the big advocacey groups here is called “Stop Climate Chaos” and not “Stop Global Warming” because that’s a tacit admission that they don’t really know what’s going to happen. In the UK we’ve been told that AGW will either (a) give us a Mediterranean climate or (b) shut down the Gulfstream and give us a Norwegian climate. So which is it?

    A genuine scientific prediction is something that can be acted upon. I want to know whether I should (a) plant an olive grove or (b) take up cross-country skiing. This is junk science of the highest order and it’s predicated entirely upon computer modelling of a fantastically complex non-linear system. Computer modelling is not an empirical result. Hell, it’s useful and all but it’s not the gold standard. Seeing as it is junk science I am going to allow myself to be flippant. “Climate Chaos” happens all the time – it’s normally called weather though. Apparently in the future it will either be hotter or colder. Truly these are the Einsteins of the age.

    Why do they promulgate this rot? AGW is so convenient. The UN blamed it for the Darfur genocide. So much less damning than Kofi saying, “Frankly, nobody gives a toss about The Sudan and collectively the UN and the African Union couldn’t get a fuck in a monkey whore-house if we turned up with a truck-load of bananas”. AGW can be blamed for everything. They’re basically saying that anything that goes wrong is because we haven’t appropriately genuflected towards Gaia. This isn’t science, this is throwing virgins into the volcano to placate the fire-god.

    *Who also invented the internet – truly a renaissance man.

  • Ham

    Where did you get the idea that it’s not falsifiable?

    My problem with the Monboit bashing is that he is a periphery figure. The men and women at the real sharp end are those in the climate observation stations and the laboratories. They’ve not got anything as absolute as a mathematical proof, but most science isn’t beyond reproach (you mentioned Newton, a good example). If the scientists were to argue that AGW was an incorrect hypothesis Monboit would either crawl into the shadows or look for a new movement to attach himself to. He has no credibility in this argument, but he is also not the standard by which you and I should make up our minds on the subject.

  • Jacob

    If the scientists were to argue that AGW was an incorrect hypothesis

    Many do.

    Monbiot and Gore and all the MSM have decided to do propaganda for one camp, and deny access to the media to those who hold “incorrect” views.

    Paul:

    but I would not like to be trapped in a room with someone like me

    .

    It was Woody Allen who said: “I wouldn’t want to be mebmber of a club that accepts people like me”.

  • countingcats

    It was Woody Allen who said: “I wouldn’t want to be mebmber of a club that accepts people like me”.

    Sorry, Woody Allen may have repeated it, but it was first said by Marx(Link)

  • Ham

    Many do.

    Monbiot and Gore and all the MSM have decided to do propaganda for one camp, and deny access to the media to those who hold “incorrect” views.

    The Theory of Evolution isn’t a substantiated perfectly or accepted by every ‘scientist’ either, but the weight of evidence makes it by far the most probable explanation for the development of life on Earth. The same is true of AGW. That there are odd dissenting voices is to be welcomed, but it does not mean that there is a 50/50 chance of the hypothesis being true. The truth is that ‘science’ is firmly in support of AGW. Medieval warm periods, urban warming, unreliable models, solar influence are minuscule, largely discredited arguments compared to what’s on the other side of the ledger.

    Here’s my question for those here that reject AGW: is there a point in the development of the science where you accept it? Are you waiting for a particular experiment to have a particular result before you throw up your hands in despair and climb aboard with George and Al? Or will there, in fact, *never* be a point where you’re willing to believe that carbon is bad for the atmosphere, regardless of the evidence you’re shown? If the latter is true, how can you claim to be rationally engaging with the issue at all?

    I’m a libertarian, and I don’t believe people should have the freedom to damage the planet that we’ve all got to live on. If releasing carbon into the air harms other people, why should I have that right? That is, while I don’t own the atmosphere, which I don’t.

  • Ham:

    Here’s my question for those here that reject AGW: is there a point in the development of the science where you accept it?

    I do. It still does not mean that I’ll accept the it is for the governments to solve the problem, but my mind is open.

    If releasing carbon into the air harms other people, why should I have that right?

    You and I are releasing carbon into the air by breathing, as do the plants and the animals that we grow for food. Where would you, as libertarian, draw the line?

  • RAB

    Ham. Traces of Homo Sapiens have been found in Britain dating from 130,000 years ago.
    The oldest skeleton was found in a cave in the Gower.It is 30,000 years old.
    Those two groups of humans had to vacate what is now the UK because of a two mile thick ice sheet that covered most of the country.
    Similarly the USA was uninhabitable for the same reason.
    The ice ages were catastophic, but nothing to do with man.Indeed mankind has never faced such a problem in our memory, written or otherwise.
    Now who do you think Monbiot would be blaming if a 2 mile thick sheet of ice suddenly covered the USA?
    So until someone can explain to me how these occurences happened (which they cant) then I will continue to get on as many airplanes as I can, as often as I can and enjoy my planet not hide in fear of it.

  • Correction: should have been there is instead of I do. Ham did not ask me to marry him, did he?

  • Nick M

    Ham,
    Obviously there is conceivably a point where I’d buy AGW.

    But, I haven’t seen anything that convinces me yet.

    Medieval warm periods, urban warming, unreliable models, solar influence are minuscule, largely discredited arguments compared to what’s on the other side of the ledger.

    How do we know? Climate is very complicated and it is hubris of the highest order to do as the IPCC have done and declared the “debate over”. What are they scared of, losing their grants? Being made to look like the naked emperor? Why do they call folk like me a “denier”, a deliberately offenisve term? I just smell that the whole thing is a con and a desire from those conned to have a secular eschatology.

    Furthermore Ham, if the gospel according to Gore is true chapter and verse and I become a full on member of the church and wear a little silver hockey stick round my neck and everything… There is a further problem. There isn’t a power on Earth that will prevent China and India industrializing. So basically you and me trading the old jalopy for a skatedboard and signing a “no flying pact” will make bugger-all difference.

    AGW probably isn’t true, or at least demonstrably true, but even if it were true we don’t know what the effects will be, whether it’s worth doing anything about it and even if we concluded we should do something about it then there’s probably nothing we can do about it.

    Certainly I don’t see there is anything even remotely in the AGW stuff to justify turning the entire global economy upside down. Certainly not to massage the ego of a failed US politico and a self-righteous UK journo.

  • Jacob

    Countingcats,
    I stand corrected. It was Groucho Marx.

  • Jacob

    Ham,

    The same is true of AGW. That there are odd dissenting voices is to be welcomed, but it does not mean that there is a 50/50 chance of the hypothesis being true. The truth is that ‘science’ is firmly in support of AGW. Medieval warm periods, urban warming, unreliable models, solar influence are minuscule, largely discredited arguments compared to what’s on the other side of the ledger.

    Everything above is totally false. AGW is NOT like evolution – not at all; the attempt to equate creationists to “deniers” is a cheap and ugly piece of propaganda, based on nothing more than name calling, same as most of the output of the media that is pushing an agenda.

    Go read some more, and read science articles and blogs, not propaganda in the media.

    It takes a lot of time, but you have to find out yourself, there is no other way !

  • Ham

    Jacob, my point is not a scientific one. I am not a scientist, and I never will be, however many ‘science blogs’ I read.

    I appreciate the value of Alisa and Nick’s worries over the nature and practicality of the political response to the situation; I also share RAB’s distaste for the tawdriness of many environmental campaigners. I think those are valid concerns (though, Alisa, if you are breathing out 10M tonnes of carbon a year, you need a change of diet). It’s the most difficult political/ethical question I’ve come across in my short life, and all I know is that the established politicians will almost certainly choose policies that needlessly abrogate liberties.

    So, Jacob, what do you estimate the probability of AGW being valid? How high does it have to be before you submit to forceful constraints upon your behaviour? I’m not being facetious, just curious.

  • Nick M

    Ham,
    But imagine if there really isn’t a problem? Just imagine that for a moment. Imagine it is a con or partly scientists getting over-enthusiastic or the Greens finally having a winner to push through their ideology on. Then it isn’t the biggest political/ethical question is it? It’s a non-question. The only reason I see why people are believing it to be THE BIGGEST QUESTION OF THE AGE is because they keep being told this by the likes of Gore and Monbiot, the MSM and all our politcos.

    The probability of AGW? God knows how you can answer that! Part of my problem is the shoddiness of much of the “science” with it’s over-blown claims to being the TRUTH. They are vastly over-simplifying a spectacularly complex issue – involving oceanography, ecology, atmospheric physics, geology and all sorts. Say some model predicts an average global temperature increase of x Celsius they still can’t tell me how that will affect the UK. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd? I seem to recall Lomberg figuring that it might cost $100 trillion to re-tool the global economy to combat AGW. How sure would you have to be sign that cheque? Yet what have we got to go on? An immature fusion of sciences which find their hardness in their staggering complexity. And that’s their complexity alone. Taking the interactions into account… It’s mind-boggling.

  • …though, Alisa, if you are breathing out 10M tonnes of carbon a year, you need a change of diet

    LOL!!!

  • So, Jacob, what do you estimate the probability of AGW being valid?

    What’s the probability of a big meteor hitting Earth ?
    We don’t know. Same about AGW. There is nothing behind it, it’s just a fad. And even if we knew, there is nothing that can be done about it… You can worry all you want if it makes you happy.

    There is no way we can live without energy, and there is no such thing as “green energy”.
    Over time technology will advance and find, maybe, new energy solutions, sometime. But you can’t decree the creation of new things. They happen when they happen, like the internet, for instance.

    All the cap-and-trade talk of the greenies is terrible nonsense – it’s like the five-year economic plan of the USSR – which the same people hailed at the time as the scientific way towards prosperity; it is guaranteed to produce tons of poverty and misery, and achieve exactly nothing about the imaginary AGW.

    I am not a scientist, and I never will be, however many ‘science blogs’ I read.

    You necessarily get your information from somewhere. Make sure that “somewhere” isn’t the MSM (main stream media) – they are just propagandists, dominated by “true believers”.

  • Paul Marks

    Nick M.

    Yes – I watched the “big read” with an old friend who was visiting from Australia (a man who was not in the best of health).

    It is obvious that the B.B.C. wanted to the Pullman work to win (so they could promote the thing in every library and school) and then the “Lord of the Rings” won the vote (in spite of the all the tricks) and my friend turned to me, with tears in his eyes, and said “we won Paul, I can not believe we won” (we had both voted for Lord of the Rings partly on tactical grounds, and partly because we liked the book).

    On the greatest Britons – Mr Clarkson spoke for Isanbard Kingdom Brunel and argued very well (indeed Mr Clarkson was head and shoulders above the others as a public speaker and presenter).

    Had the poll being “Greatest Englishmen” I would have supported Alfred the Great (scholar, soldier, King and hero – and, just as important, decent man both as friend a husband and a father – of course his daughter was a hero in her own right)- but on “Greatest Briton” I am not sure, there was no such poltical enity in the time of Alfred.

    As for the environment:

    The test of “environmentalists” is a simple one. It is the James Lovelock test.

    I do not know whether emissions of C02 from human activity are a great threat or not – but if a person thought they were such a thread that person (as James Lovelock, the father of the environmentalist movement in Britain, has often pointed out) should support nuclear power.

    If a person bangs on about C02 emissions and then OPPOSES nuclear power, they are a phony.

    Guess what Mr Monbiot’s position is.

  • Nick M

    Paul,
    I had forgotten the Lovelock test. I would add that they are phony if they object in principle to GM crops. I did “work experience” in a genetics lab at Newcastle University where they were working on removing the toxins from cassava – which make it’s preparation a grim ordeal for countless people in the third world everyday. Contrast the third world mother who labours to ensure her children’s bellies are at least half-full every night with the GROLIES who insist that little Tarquin and India only ever eat “organic”. My major objection to Greenism is that it strikes me as being my civilisation’s decadence. The Romans had vomitariums and we have “organic” carrots. The only moral decision I ever make is to ensure I never buy organic.

    (BTW – I suspect GROLIES came from obstetricians who were pig-sick of women wanting to have a water-birth with Tibetan chanting in the background and then when the labour pains kicked in they just knew they would be demanding an epidural.

  • Paul Marks

    No surprise that the arch globel warming newspaper, the “Independent”, opposes both nuclear power and GM crops.

    Instead it campaigns against plastic bags – often putting this campaign on its front page (as if it was the most important news story) of the day.

    They do not seem to understand that for people who WALK home from the shops (people like me) a paper bag is no use – because the goods come out the bottom of such bags (especially if it rains).

    So their position is (whether they not it or not) that everyone should drive to the shops and back.

    “Get a big strong bag and reuse”.

    Ah but I (and other evil plastic bag folk) do not just throw away the plastic bags – we use them to line refuse bins in such places as the kitchen.

    Only someone with no regard for public health would put rubbish straight in the bin from the kitchen and so on.

    First it goes in a little supermarket bag, and when the bags get close to full they get put into the bin bags in the bin.

    Remember rubbish is now collected only once every two weeks and ……..

    Oh I am wasting my finger power.

    If people can be against C02 emissions and nuclear power at the same time, and be against chemicals and GM crops at the same time – well they are hardly going to understand household management.

  • Sunfish

    Contrast the third world mother who labours to ensure her children’s bellies are at least half-full every night with the GROLIES who insist that little Tarquin and India only ever eat “organic”.

    Why would Mommy Dearest name her foul spawn against the Grand Moff of the Death Star? (Other than latent hostility due to the unmedicated childbirth with Himalayan chanting, that is.)

    As for the plastic bags…I find them useful for cleaning up when I walk the dog. Frankly, the alternative is to leave stuff where it lies. I suppose the take-home message is that Greens are in favor of dog crap on other peoples’ lawns.

  • RAB

    First get some plastic bags
    Preferably bin liners
    but smaller bags knotted together will do

    Tie one end to the ceiling.
    Not to the lightbulb socket.
    This leads to all sorts of unfortunateness.
    Position a bucket of water directly under twisted plastic
    Light dangling end.
    The droop droop droop, zip zip drip lightshow will have you in stiches!
    Did I mention getting ripped to the tits?
    Well it really is essential before you start or you never would’ave!
    There’s all sorts of recycling ya know!

  • Nick M

    Paul,
    The reason the Indy has decided that plastic bags are evil is very simple. We use very large numbers of them and therefore the Indy can run with an impressively large number on it’s cover. This is editing the Indy rule 101. The very idea that the purveyors of something that is frequently abandoned on a bus want us to go green is beyond contempt. If they really cared they would have long ago migrated entirely to the ‘net.

  • Paul Marks

    I stand informed Nick.

    Still one good thing about the absurd front pages of the Indy – they mean that there is never a reason to actually open the paper to find out just how silly it is.