Broadsheet Watch – 7

Over at the Maily Telegraph, not content with his feeble attempts to discredit climate change by smearing the reputation of IPCC chair Rajenda Pachauri, Christopher Booker is making fresh, and typically fraudulent, assertions on the subject. He has repeated the “three cold winters in a row” one, which as I’ve shown previously, is bunk. Now he adds the assertion that “many councils now have more climate change officials than gritters”, backed up with a grand total of, er, no examples at all.

He also says that the Beeb is “facing an enquiry into its relentless obsession with global warming”, which it isn’t, though the BBC Trust is reviewing science coverage, which Booker needs to distort to suit his agenda. And that agenda has brought, over the recent past, a number of books whose lasting value is so low that they are almost being given away.

Following the example of the excellent Tabloid Watch blog, where a similar exercise has been done on the works of Richard Littlejohn, I’ve been having a shufty at Amazon.co.uk to see how Christopher Booker is holding his value in these competitive times. And the news, for the Great Man, is not good.

Booker is also a true Europhobe, so the title of his co-authored book “Castle of Lies: Why Britain Must Get Out of Europe” will surprise nobody. Neither will the “22 used from 0.01”.

Or there is “The Mad Officials: How The Bureaucrats Are Strangling Britain”, which shows “28 used from 0.01”. Then how about “The Seventies”? You can get it in hardback: “16 used from 0.01”, or on the next page in paperback: “10 used from 0.01”.

Perhaps espionage is more to your taste? No need to worry, Booker has also authored Games War: Moscow Journal “28 used from 0.01”.

One can only hope that the Maily Telegraph is operating a similarly free market when it comes to commissioning Booker’s columns.