Last week a number of people were in shock about the news that James Delingpole had his last column at the Telegraph. It was all rather abrupt. As to why, I have the inside scoop.
I asked James directly, and in a nutshell it was three things.
1. They paid him poorly, ’nuff said.
2. They never seemed to appreciate the kind of traffic and exposure he’d brought. Remember, Delingpole was the first MSM columnist to break Climategate, and I’m pleased to say he got the scoop from WUWT. But, they didn’t really recognize the asset, even though he won an award for his Climategate coverage. When Delingpole’s column won the Bloggie award for “Best Weblog About Politics“, they didn’t even mention it in the print edition or in the online main page. Usually when a columnist or writer wins such an award, the paper crows about it.
3. Often, they didn’t like the content. As we know, James skewers the left and in particular greens. He reports he was getting increasing pressure over his environmental essays.
Usually when people are the most angry at someone for something they’ve said or written, it’s because what they’ve said or written has some truth in it. While Delingpole pulled no punches when it came to describing (with great flourish) the defective nature of some aspects of the environmental movement, some ‘proper’ folks found it hard to stomach.
Of course, then we have this, which I find even harder to stomach:
Andrew Montford cited this as an example of Delingpole’s prescience.
So, now, the Telegraph’s loss is Breitbart’s gain, and just three days later, James has come out swinging:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/02/16/Lefty-Lies-UK-Floods
All in all, quite an exit mirrored by a grand entrance.
Finally, all this leads me to something I’ve been remiss at doing simply because the day to day business of running WUWT often gets in the way, and that’s to recommend James most recent book. He kindly sent me a copy, and while the title admittedly made me cringe, once I started reading it, I found it lighthearted and hilarious. It reads a bit like a dictionary, except every definition has a punch line. Highly recommended, click the cover to have a look.
Also, be sure to add Breitbart London to your bookmarks. Delingpole’s latest is: Whose Life Is More Important? Yours, Or A Shark’s?
Oh, and what essay on Delingpole by yours truly would be complete without this photo courtesy of our friends at “Skeptical Science”?
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Rhys Jagger: “Delingpole is a typical American joining a 20th century world war. Late to the party but demanding all the credit.”
Oh dear Rhys, you’re a bit “special”, aren’t you?
John Mann says:
February 19, 2014 at 4:06 am
“I’m sceptical about climate change. I’m even somewhat sceptical about Wikipedia. But if Delingpole is correct, then we have a Wikipedia article on a scientific subject which is completely and utterly misleading.”
That’s par for the course for wikipedia. Look up John Holdren. In 1975 or so he co-authored a mighty tome, EcoScience, with the Ehrlichs. Now try to find the wikipedia page about EcoScience. There is none. It is a legendary book where Ehrlichs and Holdren discussed all coercive and non-coercive ways to bring down the population to 1 billion.
If you thought the wikipedia’s “NPOV” means that wikipedia’s “neutral”… well… need a bridge?
For another take on acid rain see also Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist. He also has something else to say than the wikipedia.
Wikipedia is always, always conformist.
rogerknights says:
February 19, 2014 at 5:31 am
Piltdown’s post-doc fellowship, during which the SLAPP-happy trickster concocted the Hockey Stick, was funded by a US Dept. of Energy grant.
Bart says:
February 19, 2014 at 2:59 am
“I say, you don’t give credit to the guys who helped start the fire. In my book, the Brits were the real heroes.”
The Brits surely did “help to start the fire”. Without going into details, they had their motive; competition; a desire to save their empire (which obviously failed).
“Germany is too strong. We must destroy her.” — Winston Churchill, November, 1936.
Ian H says:
February 19, 2014 at 1:52 am
“Unfortunately Breitbart isn’t a real news agency”
There’s always Thomson-Reuters for all your Global Warming needs. (Had Crispin Tickell on the board of trustees, now replaced with Pascal Lamy.)
Looks like Delingpole is off to a good start over at Breitbart. On the post about sharks there is now over 600 comments.
Good luck James. You were the reason that I would visit the Telegraph. Dropped one bookmark and added one.
DirkH says:
February 19, 2014 at 6:03 am
British and French pacifism (understandable after the horrors of the Great War) & appeasement, 1936-38, plus Soviet collusion with HItler, 1939-41, allowed the war to start. Without US aid & alliance, the western powers & the USSR could not have won the war. Britain would have been starved into submission & her lifeline to India cut, then the western Soviet Union occupied by Germany in a one front war.
Are we really glorifying someone who wrote a piece of sh*t column in which he suggests that we should kill sharks, just because some spoiled little *sshole want to surf? How low can you go??
REPLY: The opposite argument is – are we really going to pay attention to somebody that uses two cuss words in a single sentence to get a point across because they have no cognizant argument? I think not. – Anthony
Anthony,
Could you please post a blog detailing your abdominal workouts and diet?
My wife has been riding me about getting back into shape and it seems to be working for you.
Thank you for the alert on Mr. Delingpole’s new blog, Mr. Watts!
Unfortunately the Telegraph publishes the absolutely brilliant cartoon “Matt” so I have to go there once a day (n.b. knowledge of current British affairs is a prerequisite to getting the jokes). I now just skip the rest of this once fine paper.
John Tillman says:
February 19, 2014 at 5:49 am
=============
Good response.
My grandfather made numerous crossings through the north sea supplying the Russians. The convoys lost ships. It was a matter of whether your ship was going to be the one sunk or the one travelling next to you. The real targets were the merchant marine ships. Those supplies were critical to the Russians survival.
I realize the doctored picture is from The Spartans at Thermopylae, but given the three recognizable figures in the foreground, perhaps Lord Macaulay’sHoratius at the Bridge is a more appropriate reference:
(Actually this poem is a lot longer than I remembered it)
Rhys Jaggar says: @ur momisugly February 18, 2014 at 11:17 pm
….Delingpole was late to the Climate Change Party and thinks that it started with ‘Climategate’….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
At least he woke up when hit over the head by some facts and has the integrity to write and publish those facts.
Most news media writers are bought and paid for and if they do not stay bought they get fired.
We farmers learned that the hard way during the ‘Farm Wars’ a decade ago.
HE who OWNS the press controls the press not the writers, and most media is owned by large corporations who have bankers on the board of directors.
You can do the digging yourself. The major news and other corporations have officers and the board of directors published on-line.
There is also this: The Network of Global Corporate Control which is also published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis The Network of Global Corporate Control (If you have criticism of that “sad little paper” _Jim you can give your corrections @ur momisugly that website.)
Gamecock says:
February 19, 2014 at 5:00 am
The Allied victory in WWII was a team effort. Here is an important statistic: 7/8 of German division months were in the east. The battle in the east dwarfed the battle in the west. But many Americans have no knowledge at all of the war in the east, and think we won WWII. So Rhys Jaggar’s comment about “a typical American” is a fair comment.
———–
And you my Eurocentric friend forget all about the war in the Pacific. Please explain those details to us (hint….it’s in the east, and Japan is over there)
I find it fascinating the way liberal publications would rather maintain ideological purity than actually make a profit.
I suppose they believe that they will be rewarded by their allies in the govt for their sacrifices.
Unfortunately, they are probably correct.
DirkH:
It would be helpful if you desisted from taking every opportunity to pretend that H1tler was some kind of misunderstood and left-wing ‘good guy’ who was dragged into war by the British.
In reality, H1tler was an evil right-wing tyrant who set out his plans for world domination in a book, and the British thought the horrors of WW1 were so great that nobody would want another war. The British were still trying appeasement and disarming while H1tler was invading Poland.
The defeat of H1tler was a team effort by the British, the British Empire, the USSR and the USA. Without the involvement of each of these it is possible that H1tler would have won.
The costs were great for all combatants but the benefits were greatest for the USA; e.g. the British were still paying to the US in the present century.
And, importantly, none of that has any relevance to Delingpole moving from the Telegraph to Breitbart-London.
Richard
DirkH
“If you thought the wikipedia’s “NPOV” means that wikipedia’s “neutral”… well… need a bridge?
For another take on acid rain see also Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist. He also has something else to say than the wikipedia.
Wikipedia is always, always conformist.”
I knew that it was conformist. I knew that it wasn’t strictly neutral. I knew that it was biased.
But deliberately misleading? On an article about science?
The article at http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/is_wikipedia_biased says “Maintaining what Wikipedia calls “the neutral point of view” (or NPOV) is relatively easy when writing about science topics or otherwise objectively verifiable subjects. But in other topics, such as politics and history, bias and controversy inevitably arise.”
The article about Acid Raid is about a science topic. But if Delingpole is correct, it is not just biassed, it is seriously and deliberately misleading.
Anyone with no ax to grind who reads both Delingpole and Wikipedia on Acid Rain is going to see that the Wikipedia article has 39 footnotes and decide that Delingpole is a joker.
As for Lomborg – he wrote his book 15 years ago, and all the evidence suggests that the scientific community taken it very seriously.
John Mann,
You should be extremely skeptical of Wikipedia.
snow says:
February 19, 2014 at 1:40 am
…. Do our tax dollars help pay for these agw scientist research grants.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of course!
The Big Winners in the Climate Change Money Game
Federal Climate Change Funding from FY2008 to FY2014 (20 page .PDF report)
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43227.pdf
(I have not opened that PDF. It is from:
http://us.resiliencesystem.org/federal-climate-change-expenditures-report-congress
Also see Jo Nova’s The climate industry wall of money
“Money for the Climate Industry: The US government spent $79 billion on climate research and technology since 1989… the Australian Government put $13.9 million into just one quick advertising campaign.”
There is more information if you sift through THIS.
Even the World Wildlife Fund, Inc., an arm of World Wildlife Fund International gets government grants. From Donna Laframboise The WWF’s Vast Pool of Oil Money
“The World Wildlife Fund’s first corporate sponsor was Shell oil – which continued to fund it for the next four decades.” not surprising given The Royals of the Netherlands own a large chunk of Shell and HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was the first president of WWF.
richardscourtney says:
February 19, 2014 at 7:26 am
The US post-war loan at low interest rate was less than the value of Lend Lease write-down to ten cents on the dollar & Marshal Plan aid to the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-American_loan
Bankrupt Britain got a heck of a deal, but Marshal Plan aid was squandered by Labour.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml
US aid was critical for the Commonwealth & other allies, to include France & its colonies & Italy, once those nations joined or rejoined the allies. Without it, neither the USSR nor Britain could have defeated Germany. The UK would have been starved into surrender before Germany turned on its erstwhile ally the USSR. Stalin would have lost even sooner with Japan attacking in the east at the same time as Germany in the west. Transferring crack cold-WX Siberian divisions west, thanks to Soviet spy Sorge’s report on Tokyo’s decision to attack the US, saved Moscow.
Communist agents like Harry D. White in FDR´s administration engineered the shift in Japanese strategy by cutting off the supply of US oil, scrap iron, etc. The previous Japanese Foreign Minister grew up & was educated in Oregon, so knew not to attack the US. He urged joining Germany against the USSR, but the army was wary after its 1939 experience against Zhukov in Mongolia. The new FM sided with those who favored the “Southern” strategy, aimed at Dutch East Indian oil.
Agree Richard, I’ve yet again wandered off topic, but felt the calumnious charges needed an answer. If the US had stayed out of the First World War, maybe there would have been a peace settlement & the Soviet Union & NazI control of Germany might never have happened.
Australia has shown the alliance the way forward toward victory in the war against the anti-human Green Shirts. Here’s hoping that Canada, the UK & US follow the lead of Oz away from the emerald slough.
PS; In a lame attempt to make WWII more relevant, I recommend Delingpole´s Coward series of novels.
How about updating the Delingpole link on the sidebar? It still points at the Telegraph 🙁
Bart says:
February 19, 2014 at 2:59 am
Rhys Jaggar says:
February 18, 2014 at 11:17 pm
“Delingpole is a typical American joining a 20th century world war.”
Mmmmm… Unh-uh.
Alan the Brit says:
February 19, 2014 at 2:12 am
Well, yes, we do feel we played a key role. But, many of us are well aware that Britain was sine qua non. Had the Brits not held virtually alone in the darkest days, there would have been no safe routes for American troops and material to arrive.
I’ve had arguments with friends who insist that, by virtue of suffering the most, the Soviet Union really won the war, you don’t give credit to the guys who helped start the fire. In my book, the Brits were the real heroes.
This has unfortunately gone off topic & for that I apologise. Richard S. Courtney is right, this has nothing to do with JD’s move.
I will say this, the points made about what the US contributed are valid, but Britain was also supplying the Soviet Union with equipment via the Arctic Convoys through treacherous bitterly cold seas to do so (something only now in the UK is shamefully being acknowledged). Curiously enough the UNIPCC acknowledges that the Arctic was warmer than it is today back in the 1940s, although I suspect those who served in those convoys may not agree from a certain viewpoint! Finally, what Britain & the USA did in the West may not have compared in size or scale to those events in the east, at least our troops were motivated by a sense of freedom & democracy, not a bullet in the head for refusing to commit open suicide, the Russians were brutally savage as much with there own people as with the enemy!
John Mann:
re your post at February 19, 2014 at 7:28 am.
Delingpole is right about the ‘acid Rain’ scare. Simply, ‘waldsterben’ (i.e. forest death) was not happening; it is now known that the forests were expanding at the time.
The best account of the false ‘Acid Rain’ scare is the paper by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (it is better than both of my papers on the subject). Every account of every environmental issue on wicki. should be distrusted because the C0nolley effect is severe.
Richard