Peak Fairfax

In today’s Fairfax press, columnist Ross Gittins begins with the sort of opening paragraph you just won’t find anywhere else:

Every time I go to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival I’m asked the same question: since there’s no policy issue more important than responding to global warming, and we’re doing so little about it, why do I ever write about anything else?

Then there’s this:

I fear that history won’t be kind to the present generation – and particularly not to people with a pulpit like mine.

But the funniest line of all comes at the very foot of Gittins’ column:

Ross Gittins is the Herald’s economics editor

Should the ABC ever decide that the error-prone Emma Alberici might be better suited to compering an exercise show, rather than being stumped by the difference between revenue and profit, her replacement is obvious.

As this is a Fauxfacts production, Gittins’ drek comes complete with a gross misrepresentation, in this instance Margaret Thatcher’s position on global warming (“a vocal fighter for action on climate change”). Here is what she actually believed, as laid out in the chapter entitled ‘Hot Air and Global Warming’ in her 2002 book Statecraft:

The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.

If life is getting you down today and a laugh would help, Gittins’ column can be read via this link or the one below. Fairfax shareholders, whose need for a cheer-me-up is more pronounced than most, should probably avoid it.

— roger franklin

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