A new storm is brewing – Monbiot vs Delingpole.
I think I have worked out where commentator James Delingpole is coming from. He pretends to be a climate change denier and enemy of environmentalists. In reality he’s a mole, paid by Greenpeace to inflict as much damage on the anti-green cause as possible. And he’s doing a marvellous job.
So wrote George Monbiot on the 27th January.
The reason: Delingpole had apparently written a blog on the Telegraph about a letter that someone had sent to their MP. Monbiot goes on to say:
It looks to me like a polite enquiry from someone concerned about climate change. Delingpole, however, saw it as a “nauseating email” which must have come from a “disgusting eco-fascist organisation”, though he didn’t know which organisation this might be. His post was headlined “Conservative candidates stalked by eco bullies”. Much worse, he published the man’s name and home address.
Delingpole’s bootboys took the hint and immediately swung into action. Within a few minutes of the comments opening, they had published the man’s telephone number and email address, a photo of his house (“Note all the recycling going on in his front garden”), his age and occupation. Then they sought to tell him just what a low opinion they had of “stalking” and “bullying”.
(My emphasis)
After some 20 hours of venomous comments, the Telegraph deleted the post, without trace or comment. That was before Monbiot posted his article.
Delingpole replied in a Telgraph blog post today entitled “Monbiot: an apology”. Despite it’s title, his first sentence is
George Monbiot is cwoss. Weally, WEALLY cwoss.
He does make some kind of an attempt at an apology to the victim of his earlier post, but mostly it is a diatribe against Monbiot. His final paragraph is
Monbiot, you apology for a columnist, you are as over as the dinosaurs. As finished as the Medieval Warm Period. Your cause is lost. Give up now and become a teepee maker instead. They’re very popular in your part of Wales, I gather.
I expect this dialogue to continue for a while (though I could be wrong).
What does it actually tell us, though?
- About the integrity of the columnists – not a lot in isolation. They are both guilty of name calling, though I think that Delingpole is the more vitriolic of the two ( in this dialogue alone, but historically I think Delingpole always has been).
Delingpole was certainly wrong in publishing personal details without permission, and lax in not offering an apology to the correspondent before Monbiot’s post – but he did, in the end, acknowledge this and offer a form of apology.
- About the integrity of the MP – loads (possibly).
I’ve written to my MP on a few occasions when I’ve felt strongly enough to do so. It’s kind of fun – you get letters back stamped with the House of Commons logo (which is also on the envelope), and often you will get several replies (since the MP will probably forward your letter on to someone else, since he or she doesn’t know the answer).
Certainly if my MP had passed my personal details on to a newspaper without my permission I would be extremely annoyed, and would do whatever I could to encourage people not to re-elect him or her. That is a clear breach of trust.
- About the science – nothing.
For those that are not personally involved, move on and ignore it (as both Monbiot and Delingpole should have done).
IMAGE CREDITS:
Image from jamesdelingpole.com
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Welcome back Greenfyre! You have been missed!
Good grief, he published a name and address.
Hope the Telegraph dump him.
I wonder what sort of contract/agreement he has?
Should have done? I don’t see that Monbiot has done anything more than he should have done, i.e. drawn attention to the stupidity of Delingpole. If of course he keeps attacking him for this stupidity, that would be another thing, but it is important to hold the likes of Delingpole to account, otherwise, like Monckton, they getmore and more out of touch with reality.
Erm, isn’t it good if the get more and more out of touch of reality?
Depends how many people they lead with them. “follow me, I know where I’m go AAARGghhh”
Actually I agree with Guthrie, I phrased my last sentence badly.
Delingpole’s behaviour was crass, and Monbiot was entirely correct in pointing this out. Delingpole should have published a simple online apology (along with sending a private letter of apology to his victim).
Instead, Delingpole used it as an excuse to attack Monbiot once again. Maybe he would not have done so if Monbiot had worded his response differently, but then again maybe he wouldn’t.
My last phrase should really have been “should now do” rather than “should have done”.
In Delingpole’s “apology”, he claimed he had ‘forgotten to remove’ the letter writer’s name and address; this might just be credible if the letter had been forwarded to him electronically. if it had been forwarded to him via the mail (i.e. it was a letter) he would have had to type the contents into his blog, address and all.
The Telegraph have not sacked Delingpole. Nor has any action been taken against him. It is therefore essential that anyone who feels this man should pay for his actions makes a complaint – not to the Telegraph itself, which would be pointless – but the Press Complaints Authority. This can be done electronically, and here is the link:
It isn’t the kind of rough justice Deligpole has in mind for those who disagree with him, but it is a start.
http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/process.html.
As a final note. There is one political party that is officially sceptic on the climate change issue: the BNP. Delingpole is always complaining about “eco-fascists”. But why worry about them when you have real fascists to do your dirty work?
Thanks for the link.
There is enough in this practice policy on which to base clearly justifiable complaints about his failure to respect privacy, possibly failure to protect the privacy of others (including children) in the home, and breach of confidentiality – never mind violation of privacy laws.
Such poor overall judgment, or best case scenario, ‘mistake’ but subsequent failure to respond appropriately and independently, should suggest to anyone that his opinions are those of a man with little sense of ethics or personal accountability for what he says.
And of course as others have commented, his beliefs lack any evidence.
It is unfortunate that this kind of vitriol is taking place at the same time as meaningful action to stabilize climate largely is not.
Distracting people with trivialities is one of many tactics that has been used very effectively by those seeking to delay action on climate change.
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Al Franken coined the term “kidding on the square” for statements that a speaker knows he actually believes more than is publicly acceptable, so the speaker makes the statement in a jocular fashion.
I’ve never been able to read Dellingpole’s blog because I can’t get past the introductory statement that he’s “right about everything.” Just by reflex, my fingers hit the browser’s back button. [1]
That statement and other stuff by Dellingpole I’ve seen quoted are classic kidding on the square [2], and give a good idea of the uselessness of the writer.
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Hold the phone. I’ve just read both Monbiot’s and Dellingpole’s dualing posts, and I think both have valid points. Make no mistake, I am as concerned about AGW as anyone, but I’m deeply annoyed by the one-sidedness of comments on both sides!
Dellingpole has a point that Monbiot’s post left out important facts. Specifically:
And that he completely left out the crux of Dellingpole’s post, that it was an orchestrated campaign.
Now, I don’t see anything particularly wrong about this kind of orchestrated campaign. It hardly seems to me to get to the level of bullying and stalking — I think Dellingpole is way wrong about that.
But I was shocked that Monbiot, and now Greenfyre, deliberately wrote up the story in such a slanted way.
I wish to god that there were more voices on the Internet that I could trust.
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“And that he completely left out the crux of Dellingpole’s post, that it was an orchestrated campaign.”
Delingpole didn’t provide a shred of verifiable evidence that the letter was part of a campaign.
Also, at the time of Monbiots writing it may not have been clear how much Delingpole left the address etc up deliberately to encourage stupidity, and simply how forgetful he was.
Also you overlook the larger issue of how Delingpole got hold of it in the first place. I expect all letters to MP’s to be kept confidential to some extent, certainly not splattered across the internet.
Philip: sadly the PCC is toothless by design. it’s entirely funded and run by the newspapers it’s meant to keep in check. when it does lay down the law, which seems to be in <10% of cases, iirc), the punishment is laughably small — a tiny correction hidden in the depths of the newspaper.
they also refuse to accept complaints by anyone other than the slighted party.
Hi Klortho,
I accept your point. The problem is, we don’t have JD’s original post; we only have what he said about if afterwards – which did not include a passage directed specifically at the individual author of the letter.
JD also claims that hundreds of similar letters have been sent out, but fails to provide any supporting evidence of that. Maybe ‘hundreds’ is really three or four… In any case, as you say, even if the letter was part of a campaign, it hardly matters. The senders aren’t automatons. They send the letters because they want to.
Yes, Monbiot probably should have written up the story in a less charged way. He does seem to be over-hasty sometimes (he called for Phil Jones to be sacked from the CRU when the ‘climategate’ thing broke. He’s going to look pretty silly when/if the inquiry finds that PJ did nothing wrong, except possibly try to keep back his e-mails from people he knew would mis-represent them, as they subsequently did.) But Delingpole has done more than anyone in the UK to foster animosity – even hatred – towards proponents of AGW; so having overstepped the mark, he can hardly complain about rough treatment. Imagine what he’d have written if Monbiot had made a similar ‘mistake’.
You’re far to quiet Greenfyre!
All hell has broken loose and we miss your posts.
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Topic:
Newsnight (BBC2) this week on 2/2/10, nasty attack on climate science. Interviews with Pielke jr and Chris Field.
Plus others.
Perhaps Greenfyre has wisely made a run for the exit. What started out is a small leak has turned into a flood of problems for the “science” of AWG.
He don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the cold winds blows.
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