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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John Tillman says:
February 19, 2014 at 5:49 am
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.
Rhys Jaggar’s comment isn’t fair. It’s ignorant. Delingpole is not an American.
You, Gamecock, are apparently also unaware that the USSR could not have defeated those German divisions without US aid. To take but one of many examples, Khrushchev admitted that the Red Army could not even have traveled from Stalingrad to Berlin, let alone fought its way there, without the hundreds of thousands of trucks, jeeps & tanks we sent them. This largess should have stopped when the USSR let Germany destroy the Polish Home Army, but it didn’t. It kept flowing even after the US & UK needed those vehicles in France, lack of which slowed our advance. To this add vast bounty in food, boots, aircraft, steel, you name it, most sent at great cost in lives & treasure on the deadly Murmansk Run.
Britain would have been starved into submission in 1940 & 1941 by German forces in the Battle of the Atlantic without US aid in merchant seamen & ships, naval escorts, Royal Navy ship repair, Lend Lease supplies, food & materiel. Not to mention volunteers & av gas in the Battle of Britain & planes & superior tanks in the Desert.
Since we’ve been dragged into another WW2 discussion here’s my pennyworth:
America were certainly the biggest winners from the war. But neither in the Pacific nor in Europe they was the USA the principle or even largest protagonist. Japan’s commitment of troops against America was smaller than against China. And Germany’s effort against the western allies was dwarfed by that against Russia.
Talking about transport, Russia indeed relied on American vehicles just as Germany – initially much less mechanized than the western allied and more reliant on horses – rode into Russia mostly in French vehicles captured by the surrender by France of an almost pristine war inventory. Barbarossa was almost Franco-German (as the eventual defence of the Reich was Franco-Belgian-German etc.) – a true foretaste of the European Union.
It must be clarified, sadly, that the British Arctic convoys, though supremely heroic, were insignificant to Russia’s war effort compared to the American imports by rail via Iran (“Persia”). It was the wrong sort of material and too little and in the wrong place.
It was more luck than destiny that America both joined the war and joined on the side of England. There is nothing new about loathing of British in America. As documented in the recent book “those angry days” by Lynne Olson, in the pre-war years there was a sizeable faction in the USA which sided with Germany not England, including most notably Charles Lindbergh. In China the USA’s vision was so blinded by the mist of Anglophobia (especially that of general Joseph Stilwell) that they believed the good guys were Mao and the communists and worked against the British army in Burma. Towards the end of the European war America sided increasingly with Stalin against Churchill. An yes – Britain only stopped paying interest to the USA for war debt less than a decade ago.
DirkH – with all due respect you cant argue Britain was in any way a protagonist for WW2 except after the war had already been made inevitable – by Germany. Whatever he might have said in 1936, at that time he was as marginal a figure in British politics as James Delingpole is today.
As for England’s code-breakers, yes they were clever chaps, but Stalin had no need of any British communication to him of the Bletchley Park code-breaking output since Britain was thoroughly infiltrated by Soviet spies. Russia began the cold war before WW2 had ended, Churchill and the western leaders were laughably naïve in this respect, not realizing for instance that at conferences such as Yalta and Teheran all their rooms were bugged – by Stalin’s own son. (When Churchill told Stalin of the atom bomb he was looking forward to a big reaction. When there was none he thought Stalin did not understand. But he probably had known of it before Churchill.)
As for the Soviets being so heroic, recent research has made it clear that in the absence of confrontation with US and British troops, they had plans to advance all the way to the English channel and into Italy.
A good source of info on all this is the new book by Anthony Beevor, the history of ww2.
Jack C says: @ur momisugly February 19, 2014 at 3:05 am
I am hoping James will skewer the Greens over this piece of Stalinism:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26187711
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I just lost my breakfast.
So much for freedom of speech and thought. The greens are revealing how ‘different’ they are from all the other totalitarians responsible for DEMOCIDE – Death by Government
Given the number of UK people who died from ‘Green Policies’ it is just another method of Democide. Dead is dead.
My wife and father in law are both journalists – well, my wife WAS, but she found she could make a LOT more as, wait for it…… a violin instructor. Actually she teaches Celtic Fiddling AND violin at a college near home as well as a home studio, and THAT pays better than being a full time journalist did. My father in law is retired.
Both, BTW are appalled at the way there is no reporting on the actual story behind things such as ClimateGate and other juicy follow-ups. To them, those are news. There are salable stories and they are incredulous that there is virtually nothing said about the bad bahaviour of AGW champions.
/the unbiased American Press.. Yeah, right.
The reason America resisted getting involved in helping Britain and France is that their prime ministers had overruled Pres. Wilson at Versailles and insisted on a victor’s peace, not one based on his 14 points–which the Germans were relying on when they agreed to an armistice. They thereby sowed the whirlwind, as Keynes predicted at the time.
Americans felt that France and Britain had betrayed America too at Versailles–so why should we help them? This was not a big-picture, statesmanlike POV; but Britons who blame Americans for being late should bear in mind their country’s culpability in our reluctance.
PS: An incredible book on WW2 in Europe is British journalist Max Hastings’ Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944¬-1945
daddylonglegs says:
February 19, 2014 at 8:23 am
Technically it wasn’t war debt repaid but post-war. The Anglo-American Loan was from 1946.
But for the FDR administration engineering Japan into attacking us, isolationist sentiment might have kept us out of the war. Had Germany & Japan then dominated Eurasia, 15 million rather than five million Jews would have been exterminated.
Had we belatedly gotten in after a British surrender & Soviet defeat, Germany & Japan could have been destroyed by longer ranged bombers on the drawing boards armed with atomic bombs. Germany was the original target.
Bravo, Delingpole, BRAVO!
eyesonu says:
February 19, 2014 at 6:59 am
Thanks for your grandfather’s service. The losses of merchant mariners are often overlooked, 9500 US & I don’t know how many British or Commonwealth.
My dad was a Marine Corps Corsair fighter pilot, but didn’t see squadron service.
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. – Winston Churchill
u can get some insight what is going on at the DT in Private Eye.
Richard Courtney,
Thanks for that. Would that be the book “Acid Politics” – or is there another paper?
Basically, the problem is that non-specialists are going to say “Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says one thing, but that is a heterodox opinion.” Connolley represents orthodoxy. So when the average person reads Delingpole’s book, why would he take it seriously if he then has a quick look at Wikipedia?
I don’t doubt that Wikipedia is biased. The way one checks it, of course, is to read what it says about something one knows something about. So, to take two examples, I’d have to say that the article about Andrew Montford and the one about his book “The Hockey Stick Illusion” seem to be pretty fair to me. So how do does the non-specialist know that the one about Acid Rain is misleading?
John
Delingpole … exactly were he belongs. Political loony land. Both right and left varieties are embarrassments.
Really? Can you cite a specific piece ‘prop’ to support that assertion?
Note: Disagreeing with MSNBC or Think Progress or other heavy lefty orgs does not qualify as propaganda except in the eye of the beholder.
PS “News is where you find it.” Quote or cite me on that, as often as you see fit.
.
You find NPR, the BBC or MSNBC to be rationale?
It’s just a question … after all, these ‘places’ are veritable sellouts to CAGW, a subject requiring GREAT FAITH in the MANN and his dogma, where rationality and challenge of the facts need not raise it’s head nor ask a pertinent question …
.
John Mann:
At February 19, 2014 at 9:17 am you ask me
You cannot know, and that is why academics ban the use of wicki as a source for use by students.
As to the ‘Acid Rain’ scare, we are in danger of going wildly off-topic. It was Sonja’s PhD thesis I was commending: it is brilliant. I have reported my involvement in the matter on WUWT in a few threads so you may be able to search for it.
Richard
Does little good when the misinformation appears here; owed to someone who sees ‘corporatists’ and specific, planned, intentional mal-intent ‘perched’ and ready to spring from behind every rock (close to how the saying used to go …)
.
daddylonglegs says:
February 19, 2014 at 8:23 am
“As for England’s code-breakers, yes they were clever chaps, but Stalin had no need of any British communication to him of the Bletchley Park code-breaking output since Britain was thoroughly infiltrated by Soviet spies.”
Given that the Soviets apparently re-used quite a bit of the technology they captured from the Germans you might like to consider why it was that Tutte and Flowers were kept under the blanket for so long.
The Soviets may have penetrated Whitehall quite a lot, they did less well of the coal face of SigInt.
P.S. Every wondered why you never heard of them?
John Mann says:
February 19, 2014 at 7:28 am
My copy of The Fairie Queen has thousands of footnotes & end notes (to say nothing of line notes). As I clearly have no axe to grind, I must say it’s more authoritative on the issues of communism, environmentalism, feminism, fascism, warfare, monarchy, human sexuality, slavery, robotics, horsemanship, fencing, & gastronomy than anything you’ve ever read, written, or referenced in your entire life. QED.
Good to see Deli is still in the public eye, still baiting those Greens.
I noticed his output had dropped off a bit in recent months, so I’m not too surprised he’s moved on. To be honest, not heard of Breitbart before, so just flitted over there for a good perusal. Certainly full of “red meat conservatism,” and looks to be filling a gap in the market since the increasing wetness of the traditional conservative press – yes DT, I’m talking about you.
Whether Breitbart takes off over here, remains to be seen, but I wish them well.
Ian H says:
February 19, 2014 at 1:52 am
Unfortunately Breitbart isn’t a real news agency,
—-
Neither is the Telegraph, BBC, or most other members of the MSM.
I concur with the lament that Delingpole has been marginalized by relegation to a less popular, albeit agreeably clearsighted and combative, medium. But no matter how supportive and congenial Breitbart is, preaching to the choir is no less irrelevant for skepticism than for true belief. That’s a shame and a big loss. Delingpole is an absolutely brilliant satirist, epitomizing the best of the school, from Voltaire and Swift to Wilde and Mark Twain. He belongs to the world: our world. Ecrasez l’infame, James!
He also deserves — needs — much better exposure. I sincerely hope his new publisher has the enterprise, push and resourcefulness to get Delingpole’s columns syndicated in every newspaper, popular journal, and website that has the good sense, honesty and integrity to run them.
How about it, Breitbart? Will you do the honorable, the right thing, and broadcast his words?
John Mann says:
February 19, 2014 at 4:06 am
—-
Wikipedia is worse than useless for any subject that is controversial, especially involving the environment.
There never was any science behind the acid rain myth.
It was just the scare story for that decade.
richardscourtney says:
February 19, 2014 at 7:26 am
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Fascism is a form of socialism, there is nothing right wing about it.
John Mann says:
February 19, 2014 at 7:28 am
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The IPCC claims to be writting about science and has lots of footnotes to boot.
Should we therefore just accept everything they say?
Ian H says:
February 19, 2014 at 1:52 am
Unfortunately Breitbart isn’t a real news agency, just a right wing propaganda website. Maybe he can write stories about the Friends of Hamas.
You are smoking crack. Read Breitbart’s book Righteous Indignation to find out why it was created in the first place. All MSM but Fox News are controlled by liberal people…