Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Oh Jesus

Sometimes I try and think up clever titles for these blog posts. I think, ooh, I could write a little pun about that, or a little joke about this, or something. Today, though it's just "Oh Jesus", because that was what appeared in my mind as I looked at today's Express feebleness.

Oh Jesus. I don't mean it in a shocked "Oh Jesus!" way, as if I've seen something I'm not expecting. No, I'm not Edward Woodward seeing the Wicker Man appearing over the top of the cliff - or indeed anyone in the world seeing The Wicker Man remake. No, it's more of a slightly weary, jaded "Oh Jesus".

Imagine you're a desk sergeant at a police station, and you see the same crims coming in day after day for the same old petty offences, and they keep turning up; then one day, one of the little recidivist bastards gets dragged in, covered in blood and shit, with a slightly weepy eye. You're expecting him, sure; but you didn't expect him to be quite that bad. Oh Jesus. You again, and you've managed to surpass yourself in terms of awfulness.

Like I said the other day in 'Bogus Bogeyman Bingo', I want to make it absolutely clear that I don't really hate Express readers. How could I? I see perfectly normal men and women, who don't appear to be intellectually sub-normal or particularly disgusting examples of humanity, buying the paper in the newsagent or popping it into the shopping basket at the Co-op. It's not them that I have the problem with. No, I don't hold them in contempt, or pity, because the people who really hate Express readers are the ones concocting the stories for their paper of choice. They're the ones who really treat them with complete contempt. They think their readers are such simpleton bastards, such feeble-minded scum, that they won't see the crap that's being thrown in their general direction.*

Unlike the story the other day, whose construction was rather elegant, this doesn't even bother to try and hide anything away:

CLIMATE scientists yesterday stunned Britons suffering the coldest winter for 30 years by claiming last month was the hottest January the world has ever seen.

Yes. Did they really? Britain isn't the same thing as the world, is it? OK, I know; to some people it is. But we all know there's a big blue sphere-shaped thing called the world, and Britain is just a small collection of rocks upon it, in the big scale of things. It's completely possible, and understandable, that it could be a freezing cold winter in Britain, but a very warm winter in lots of other places. Isn't it? Apparently not. Apparently we're stunned by this idea.

The remarkable claim, based on global satellite data, follows Arctic temperatures that brought snow, ice and travel chaos to millions in the UK.

Yes, it was cold in Britain in winter - colder than it's been for a while. But it's been milder in other places, which aren't Britain.

At the height of the big freeze, the entire country was blanketed in snow. But Australian weather expert Professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne, said yesterday: “January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we’ve ever seen.

...to which you could add, yes, the entire country was blanketed in snow, but there are lots of other countries that weren't, and even some of the cold ones were less cold than they usually are, meaning, as a whole, the planet was warmer. It's really not that hard to understand. If I set you on fire but put an ice cube on the end of your nose, you wouldn't say "Pah! I am freezing!" would you?

Hold onto your hats, though, because the Express have found the climate change version of MigrationWatch and the Tax Payers Alliance: here's someone who can be guaranteed to rubbish climate change whenever they need them to:

But UK forecaster Jonathan Powell, of Positive Weather Solutions, said: “If it is the case and it is borne out that January was the hottest on record, it is still no marker towards climate change.

...

“It’s been the coldest for 30 years in Britain but we predicted that and climate change always tends t o throw up anomalies. It’s all in line with predictions and I won’t be sold on climate change at all. The data is either faulty or manufactured to make it look like it shouldn’t.”

Hooray! I'm looking forward to hearing a lot more from Jonathan Powell in the future. What's amazing, though, is that the Express is still proud of this shambles:

Following the embarrassing revelations, the Daily Express published a dossier of 100 reasons why the rise in world temperatures is natural and not caused by man.

I think you'll find that was not so much a dossier as a badly thought out list of reasons, many of which were merely reflecting policy and parroting the views of people who don't agree with the idea of man-made climate change, as opposed to real reasons. I said at the time you could easily write a list of 100 reasons why the Express may not be the world's greatest newspaper.

The Express is now using its own widely discredited articles as evidence to prove that the fact that it was cold in Britain means that anyone who says that it was warmer across the rest of the planet as a whole was saying something outrageous. I can't wait to see where they go next. I think they might start quoting the article they're actually writing. You never know.

I wish I could offer you more, but there it is. The Express treats its readers like dummies. I wish it didn't, but it did. I kind of feel sorry for those few remaining buyers, and all the decent journalists who I am sure work there, and shake their heads daily at the rubbish that gets churned out by their employers. But it's not going to get better any time soon.

* Of course you could take me aside for a quiet word and say, look pal, I know you naively think the best of people, but have a look at what Express readers think about climate change by reading the comments underneath the story. (Have a look at Army of Dave for a marvellous look at one simply batshit insane comment) And I'd look at them for a bit, and see the shouty face-slappingly dumb rubbishness of them, and weep softly, and think about things differently. You could do that, but I still cling with my muddy fingertips to the idea that perhaps - just perhaps - those readers on the online forums are not representative of real newspaper readers, and are just a small coterie of complete cunts who happen to congregate on the Express website because that's where like-minded fuckwits happen to be hanging out. There is that hope. You've got to have hope. Haven't you?

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