I see a group of public-spirited citizens have clubbed together to fund a “breakfast club” at an inner-city primary school in Derby for poor children who otherwise would go without the most important meal of the day. But, hang on, isn’t childhood obesity now a major problem? And who’s to say those kids aren’t stuffing their faces with McFilthburgers at other times of the day?
An excellent letter in today's Telegraph making the point that the collection of fruitloops supporting the AGW theory generates an instinctive scepticism on the subject:
SIR – With Copenhagen just days away, the problem with the man-made climate change question for a genuine "don't know" like me is that there does not seem to be any credible authority which is independent and devoid of self-interest that I can listen to and trust.
The issue seems to have been hijacked by the same group of sincere weirdos, hand-wringing do-gooders, bandwagon celebrities and anarchists whom I so clearly recall from days gone by at Aldermaston, Greenham Common, and the Newbury by-pass. They too claimed to be trying to save the planet from impending doom.
Then there is the climate-change industry of vote-grabbing politicians, media folk and scientists who clearly have a deeply vested interest in talking the whole thing up, in order to gain power or pay their mortgages.
In the face of this I tend to gravitate, out of sympathy, towards the much vilified man-made-climate-change sceptics – but that is perhaps an emotional reaction. Who can I trust to give me facts I can understand and tell me the truth?
Philip Derbyshire
Brampton, Northamptonshire
