“Actually, I have been in and around the newspaper business for about 50 years … never has the mainstream media been more important, because while I respect what people like that [gestures at Kerry-Anne Mendoza] are doing … don’t forget that when you go to these sorts of utterings, which many times are like the mad ramblings of the man on the top deck of the bus speaking into his hand, they have no journalistic backup whatsoever”.
So spoke, or perhaps that should be ranted, LBC’s Gammonmeister Nick Ferrari. And he had this to say in defence of that MSM: “That is why we need to keep journalists, like the people who work on this show … who work on my radio show on LBC, because when you hear it from us, it will be true or to the best of our endeavours it will be true”.
Even then, this was a campaign destined to develop not necessarily to his advantage. So it is now, as Ferrari’s latest offering for the joke newspaper otherwise known as the Sunday Express shows. “Last week saw the unedifying spectacle of a gaggle of desperate MPs queuing up to be berated by that Princess of the eco-activists, teenage Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg” he sneered. And there was more.
“With such a ‘right on’ following, it was to be expected that our politicians would be prepared to crawl over broken glass to get ‘an audience’ with this modern day Joan of Arc”. As opposed to crawling to Bozza, for instance. But do go on. “Wonder if she'd have been afforded the same salutations had she been a 16-year old Leave campaigner?” She’d have had Peter Hitchens fawning over her in the Mail on Sunday, actually.
Then come the best of his endeavours. “When she did speak she labelled our achievements in cutting carbon emissions ‘beyond absurd’. She dismissed official figures that Britain has cut emissions by 37 per cent in 30 years as ‘very creative carbon accounting’ and blasted us for a ‘mind-blowing historical carbon debt’ … Rather than making the case that, while it could go further, the UK has taken this issue far more seriously than virtually any other nation, our pitiful politicians nodded in submission”.
Rather than bothering to ask what Ms Thunberg meant by “very creative carbon accounting”, he means. Because the UK has indeed been most creative. This from the Guardian, just three days ago: “The UK is breaching the Paris agreement on climate change by excluding international aviation and shipping figures from carbon budgets, according to a leading NGO”. Which means what, exactly?
“Andrew Murphy, of the Transport & Environment NGO … said this had to change. ‘Aviation has been kept off the books … We believe the Paris agreement is clear that international aviation and shipping should be included in national climate targets’ … Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, said the problem of aviation emissions was going to get worse in the UK”. That’s why she was applauding Ms Thunberg.
But Nick Ferrari couldn’t be bothered to do five minutes’ Googling before ranting. And he has the brass neck to sneer at The Canary. The best of his endeavours clearly isn’t good enough. Thus another press dinosaur waddles towards its inevitable extinction.
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