So Farewell Then James Delingpole

As I type this (that’s 1132 hours today, at this point), wind energy is providing more than 11% of mainland Britain’s electricity needs. Moreover, there is more wind generating capacity under construction, and more again approved and awaiting the arrival of the installers. So it is no surprise that one particularly vehement opponent of wind power was saying his farewells yesterday.

Not even partially fair and balanced

That less than totally august being was James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, who has departed the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs, and hopefully for the last time, unlike his pal, the loathsome Toby Young, who piled off in search of the Murdoch shilling, only to fail in his quest to satisfy Rupe’s expectations, get binned from the Sun, and return to peddle more of his lame spin.

And, true to form, after letting his adoring readers (Damian and Toby Bonkers) know that “Today is the sad day when I must bid you all farewell”, Del Boy characterises his critics, or, as most people call them, normal people, as trolls who are “pretty annoying ... incredibly stupid and wrong”, then lets rip one last time.

“It's a bit like the wind farm appeal hearing I attended today ... When I stood up to give my speech what really fired me up wasn't the righteousness of my cause. Rather, it was pure bloody irritation at the various forms of slimesome lowlife I'd just heard on the other side of the room trying to justify why it makes perfect sense to despoil one of the loveliest corners of rural England with a noisy, ugly, taxpayer-subsidised, bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifix”.

And with that, he was off to those “pastures new”, to carry on peddling the myth that wind energy is useless, and that those who advocate it are like paedophiles (that would be the article in The Australian that was censured by the Australian Press Council, quoting an unnamed sheep farmer who told “wind-farm business is bloody well near a paedophile ring. They're f**king our families and knowingly doing so”).

That’s just about the sum total of Delingpole’s technical advocacy, as he is, remember, an “interpreter of interpretations”, as he told Paul Nurse in an attempt to deflect a legitimate question about whether one should accept the consensual position on climate science, rather as one would most certainly accept the consensual position on, say, medical diagnosis.

No doubt we will  continue to see Del Boy appear on the BBC, which he hates with a passion except when it generates More And Bigger Paycheques For Himself Personally Now, deploying his patented “air quotes” while describing “gay marriage”, “global warming” and “eco crucifixes” in his own inimitable style. But Telegraph blogs will be that little less batshit without him.

That is, unless Damian Thompson has someone even loopier to replace him.