Julia Hartley Dooda Biology Fail

These are increasingly trying times for self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Brewer. Her beloved Hardest Imaginable Brexit And Stuff The Proles is looking increasingly unlikely, her paranoia almost got the better of her during a mildly fraught discussion with Dominic Grieve, and all the while the prospect of HMRC landing her with a significantly-sized back tax demand hovers over her.

Ms Hartley Dooda may call herself a journalist, but her appetite for shameless, and indeed baseless, propaganda grows by the day, typified by her eager endorsement of a very obviously planted article in the Murdoch Sun by Liam Halligan demonstrates. Zelo Street regulars will remember Halligan as the individual who was allowed to front a Channel 4 Dispatches hit job on the HS2 project. They may not be asking him back after that.

After all, Channel 4 still has some brand value, unlike TalkRADIO, which is merely another Murdoch propaganda outlet. Halligan sprayed false premises around like confetti in his Sun rant - like saying the UK economy was growing so Brexit would be fine, without admitting that Brexit has not happened yet - but Ms Hartley Dooda endorsed him anyway.

“No Deal Brexit will cause minimal damage. Recovering from a Jeremy Corbyn Labour government will take 25 years or more – by the excellent [Liam Halligan]” she trilled. She wanted to hear stories like that, so they had to be true. Equally, stories she didn’t want to hear were clearly not true, and here we get to this morning’s Mirror front page.

A dystopian scene from Brazil is accompanied by the heading “Exclusive From The Amazon … Our world … choking to death … Exposed: Crime gangs whose fires are destroying the Earth’s ‘lungs’ and putting us all at risk”. It was all too much for Ms Hartley Dooda. “I have so many questions about this front page. Why does the editor of a national newspaper think trees are ‘lungs’? Why is he wearing a suit and tie? In the middle of a fire? In the Amazon?”. Could anyone assist with GCSE Biology here?

One enterprising Tweeter had a go: “Trees absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen , which is why the Amazon rainforest is often referred to as the earth’s lungs. This is regarded as an important ongoing atmospheric regulatory function”. Just to ensure Ms Hartley Dooda got the point, he added the hashtags #science and #facts.

Sadly, she was unable to get her massive brain around this elementary exposition, snapping back “No, it’s absurd and has no scientific meaning at all”. Er, hello? Here’s what the WWF has to say about the Amazon rainforests: “There is a clear link between the health of the Amazon and the health of the planet. The rain forests, which contain 90-140 billion metric tons of carbon, help stabilise local and global climate. Deforestation may release significant amounts of this carbon, which could have catastrophic consequences around the world”. It’s got everything to do with scientific meaning, thanks.

Julia Hartley Dooda is not merely a supremely intolerant Brexiteer, she is clearly wilfully ignorant of climate change and what drives it. For her, the more long haul flights she can book for the benefit of Herself Personally Now, the better, and sod everyone else.

This matters, because TalkRADIO has given this appallingly ignorant and wilful individual a platform from which to spread her views. And that’s not good enough.

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