Paedophile Smear Ban Not Fair Says Del Boy

Following his censure by the Australian Press Council (APC), James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole has taken the idea that he might, after all, not be so “right about everything” rather badly, taking to the bearpit that is Telegraph Blogs to launch a sneering assault on all things Australian that have to do with stopping him comparing his opponents with paedophiles.

Still not fair or balanced

“Australia you are so totally gay” he sneers, in the style so beloved of his adoring fans (Sid and Doris Bonkers). Not that he’s getting at gays, you understand, but instead using the word as meaning, well, gay. Del Boy sneers that Oz is nowadays all about “gag-making political correctness ... handed in its testicles to the progressives long ago”. Progressives are people who disagree with Del.

And he is unrepentant about his piece for The Australian, which now carries an APC health warning: “I stand by every word of the piece – especially the bit about paedophiles ... If Jimmy Savile were alive today he would definitely be heavily into wind farming”. Then he whines about it only being an opinion piece, on which he has a point, but there is no need to be dishonest or abusive.

What a pleasant chap he is

Then Del sells the pass, by contrasting what happened to his article in The Australian to his experience of the PCC in the UK. The latter body let him off, but what he does not let his readers know is that the PCC accepted his evidence as fact, and that the Telegraph deployed the “Littlejohn Defence”, which holds that it is OK to say something that is not true because it’s just being done to make a point.

Problem is, that kind of behaviour by the PCC is exactly what has caused it to become a laughing stock: it picks and chooses which cases it will deign to consider, it deploys the most ludicrous and twisted logic to excuse the target of the complaint, and is so obviously in the pocket of the press that it is supposed to be regulating that it ceased to be taken seriously long before Phonehackgate.

And since the hacking scandal, and the PCC being absent and deaf with it, nobody has suggested that it would be a credible option for it to continue in its present form – well, except Del Boy, that is. Both Young Dave and Mil The Younger have called for it to be replaced. The PCC claimed to have found no evidence that it had been misled over hacking – except that it had been. Seriously misled.

Even the NUJ has called the PCC an “abysmal failure”. It is such a poodle of the likes of Paul Dacre that the Desmond titles were withdrawn from it. Yet James Delingpole approves of it because it allows him to liken his opponents to paedophiles, along with whatever other smears and abuse he wishes to deploy. Well, I have news for Del Boy – what happened in Oz is coming here very soon.

So he’d better get used to being called out for dishonesty when he uses it.