It’s jolly nice to be proved right about everything
The most important, and comforting, thing to emerge from all that Wiki-Leaks business was that, by and large, we were right. All the things we suspected, or knew either instinctively or through common sense, were proved to be correct. Prince Andrew — arrogant, rude and with the IQ of a corgi? Yep. The oil company Shell effectively runs Nigeria? Sure thing. Gulf state Arab leaders are a tad duplicitous? No kidding, bub.
It is always uplifting to discover that you were right all along, and that, in secret at least, the establishment agrees with you. It may well be that by the time you read this there will be no more WikiLeaks, given that the penalty for revealing universally acknowledged truths is a spell inside a Swedish prison. But even without it, 2010 was a fine year for debunking establishment propaganda, destroying officially approved shibboleths and confirming that the things we’d always thought were right all along. Often these stories gained little press attention — so here’s a recap:
1. Lesbians don’t exist. I have always held that lesbians don’t exist or, at least, that they are scarcer in this world than ball lightning, St Elmo’s Fire, Tasmanian tigers and competent economists. But it is part of the strategy used by campaigning groups in their attempts to acquire entirely justifiable civil and legal rights that the figures get stretched a little, here and there. They use the principle of inclusivity: if we are all lesbians, then we cannot possibly object to the rights for which they are campaigning. This is not how the campaigns begin, of course — at first the complaint is that they are a minority, and that a democratic society should be judged by the way in which it treats its minorities. This is not gainsaid by most politicians, and for good moral reasons. But then a sort of hyper-inflation takes place, as these campaigns become ever more successful and it ceases to be a minority issue at all.
I have read claims that gay and lesbian people constitute one in three of us, or one in ten of us, or one in 15 of us. And again, the politicians do not demur because they do not wish to be seen as homophobic and they dutifully repeat these arbitrary figures. But then the real figures come out — as they did in September this year. According to the Office for National Statistics, the correct proportion of gay people in Britain is a little less than one in 100. And for lesbians, about one in 400.
2. There aren’t that many disabled people, either. I mean, obviously, there are some, hobbling around. But not as many as people would have you believe. The disability lobby has become the most vociferous and unforgiving of our pressure groups and, much as with those who agitate, rightly, for equal rights for homosexuals and lesbians, they too stretch the figures to improve their chances of making a point. Again, I have heard disability groups insist that one in three British people are disabled. But when you ask them what disabled means the term has become so distorted that it almost loses its meaning.
For example, all of the people in this country who claim what used to be called Incapacity Benefit are usefully classified, by some lobby groups, as ‘disabled’. And so because the lobby groups insist that there are vast numbers of disabled people, it does not seem a great shock that we are paying out a staggering £7 billion per year in one or another form of sickness, disability or incapacity benefit. It is a costly and self-perpetuating myth. Luckily a slightly more stringent procedure has been introduced and as a consequence two thirds of people claiming to be incapacitated either withdrew their claims or had their claims refused (this latter group constituting 36 per cent of the whole). That is, two thirds of those who would have qualified under the previously lax system do not do so now. If this was applied retrospectively it would mean that two thirds of the people currently classified as incapacitated, or disabled, would no longer be so defined. And it would save us approximately £4 billion a year.
3. It’s been bloody cold this year in Britain. It has, you didn’t imagine it. You may have felt confused because at the end of last year you were told what a scorcher it would be in 2010, as a consequence of global warming. And you will have been told this not just by comedians like Marcus Brigstocke and George Monbiot, but by serious, disinterested, neutral observers of phenomena, such as the Meteorological Office. You may remember what was said by the Met Office at the end of 2008, which had been a warmer than average year with a benevolently mild winter. The year had been ‘consistent with the climate change message’, the spokesman announced. Further, ‘it is exactly what we expect winters to be like (henceforth) — warmer and wetter. And dryer and hotter summers.’
So, this year then; the winter of 2009/10 was 0.3˚C below the mean for 1971–2000, according to the Met Office. Spring was 0.6˚C above and summer was 0.2˚C above. Autumn was 2.0˚C below. Take an average of that and you are left with the temperature being about 1.5˚C lower than the 1971–2000 mean (which are the years chosen by the Met Office for comparison, incidentally, not chosen by me). Furthermore, the summer was not dryer, it was wetter. And the winter was not milder and wetter, it was colder and about as wet as usual.
Now I am perfectly happy to concede that this does not remotely disprove global warming. One coldish year disproves, or proves, nothing — one swallow doesn’t make a summer. In fact the fatuous pronouncements from the Met Office actually militate against a proper understanding of climate change. If 2008 in Britain was ‘consistent with the climate change message’, then you might expect a statement from them soon saying that 2009/10 was ‘totally inconsistent with the climate change message’. But my guess is that you will not hear anything like that from the Met Office.
Instead they will argue that the extreme weather of this and last winter are ‘consistent with the climate change message’. In fact we’re already hearing this now. Everything that happens with the weather is the consequence of climate change, for those who prosecute the case with more evangelical fervour than understanding of the issues. Just as the cold winters seem, to the furious opponents of climate change, immediate evidence that the earth is not warming up. They, I think, are madder than the Met Office, but it is a close-run thing. The AGW lobby cannot have it both ways. And attempting to do so undermines the perfectly rational arguments which support long-term climate change.
This December, incidentally, is expected to break all records by being the coldest since mammoths walked up and down Oxford Street looking for a coffee shop not run by Starbucks. Soon this will be parlayed into another piece of evidence for global warming. The truth is, when it comes to short-term meteorological behaviour, no one has a clue.
Offer ends in:
