James Delingpole, the great great anti-catastrophist writer for the UK’s Daily Telegraph, is in the middle of a tour of Australia. His latest column is all about us.
A week into my Australian tour and I already I love the country and its people so much I could happily stay here forever.
Except there is this bothersome matter he finds difficult to deal with (in which he is not alone):
There’s just one small problem – well, one bloody big problem actually: the rampaging political correctness. How, in God’s name, did the robust, no-nonsense pioneer spirit of the original settlers who carved an earthly paradise out of burning hell allow itself to be watered down, warped and wimpified by a minority of tofu-knitting greens and tight-sphinctered lefties?
He is here on a speaking tour which you should get to if you can. And part of the reason for this tour is to sell his book, titled in Australia, Killing the Earth to Save It. There are many spinoffs for you in reading the book aside from the pure pleasure his writing and thoughts will give. He conveniently sets some of these additional benefits out in relation to the pain doing so will give to Christine Milne:
a) baby polar bears tumbling off melting ice floes and drowning
b) happy Australians with real jobs earning a living
c) a dozen new mines opening in the Pilbara
d) every wind farm in Tasmania being taken down and replaced by a solitary nuclear power station
e) slow motion replay of the Queensland election result, with Greg Withers – head of the state’s Office of Climate Change – being told by incoming premier Campbell Newman that from henceforward his job is to undo all the state’s insane environmental legislation.
f) a chorus including Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, David Archibald, Joanne Nova, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Bill Kininmonth and James Delingpole singing ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’.
If he is only half as good in person as he is in print, he will be twice as good as anyone you are likely to listen to for the next little while. Sold out in Melbourne and Brisbane but perhaps you can catch up in Sydney and Adelaide. But if you are in Melbourne, he is also doing book signings on 27 April at these venues and as an added bonus he will be accompanied by Ian Plimer in a two for one deal never to be repeated again:
Book signings:
12.30pm At Mosaic Resources – 508 High St Preston VIC 3072
and then
Books in Print: 100/102 Glenferrie Road Malvern VIC 3144 at 3.30pm
Cost: Free
I’ve been a huge fan of his for years – might have to head up to Sydney to catch his gig.
Anyone who names one of his kiddies’ pet hamsters “Pickles Deathclaw” is alright by me.
Adelaide is sold out as well I understand. Shame, because I wanted to heckle him and see what witty riposte he’d come up with. What’s wrong with giant bird-slaughtering windmills, you bird loving hippy!
Dellers has the throne of satire forever. No one can match him. He’s got huge, sharp– he can leap about– look at the bones! He fears but one thing. One thing only. The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
I’m very grateful to Delingpole for sticking with his crusade against stupidity, disinformation and criminality at considerable cost to his health and his family. And isn’t it hilarious that the hijackers of science and democracy have no retaliation against truth and wit?
The army is thankfully not entirely overwhelmed by PC;
From Scott ludlams visit to Afghanistan:
Pausing at the FOB (the only moment of hostility so far – “Which one’s the Green? You can wait outside the base,”)
http://fieldnotes.org.au/2012/04/18/afghanistan/
I doubt that the situation re political correctness is any worse in Australia than US or UK, but they have a larger mass of non-lefties so they can maintain more outlets for alternative ideas. It is all about critical mass and the leverage that you get with numbers.
Nice work fellas! (lifted from the JD piece and filed under regulation nation).
1) Because the media is overwhelmingly left-wing. Playing the game of Outrageous! Outrage! special interests have become expert at ginning up arenas for ‘reform’ and then relying on a push-polling media to mainstream whatever wacko ideas result therefrom. Gay ‘marriage,’ women in combat, plain packaging, native title apartheid and a thousand ‘health and safety’ ‘initiatives’ are all good examples.
2) Australians themselves have become curiously mawkish and sentimental about ideas designed to make us ‘safe,’ wearing their commitment to the latest bans and compulsory ‘reforms’ almost as a badge of honour. There is also that poisonous trait in our identity that sees levelling as a good thing. Ergo, ‘I don’t personally believe in owning a gun’ becomes ‘nobody should own a gun.’ Or ‘sure, I could wear a helmet while cycling and leave other people to make up their own minds but that’s not fair – it must be enforced so that nobody is better or barer-headed than me.’
Wonder if he will appear on Lateline, might even break with tradition and watch it if he does – if only to check the response to Tony Jones’ obligatory “are you now or have you ever been…” McCarthyist line.
Lateline on April 30. Pre-record before his CIS function.
Australia the land of “don’t’.Observation from my wife yesterday as we walked past the umpteenth sign with a line through numerous activities. Don’t do this or that or you will be prosecuted.
The context was that one of our son’s is on holiday in Brazil and can’t believe the beach culture. Beer and food freely available from vendors, deck chairs and umbrellas to rent and an incredible party attitude. Dangerous stuff here. Open a beer on the beach and you’ll get arrested. All we do here is create criminals of normal sensible people
Reminds me of this article:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/todays_liberals_are_much_like_englands_18th_century_leaders.html#ixzz1sleUjRPT
Even here in uptight Japan I’m perfectly free to walk down the street, go to a park, ride a train, with a beer in my hand and smashed off my face, as long as I don’t bother anyone. Australia always feels more restrictive when I visit.
That reference to Delingpole et al singing ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ is a bit unfortunate is it not? I recall that the song was much favoured by Hitler Youth.
That’s the whole point of the reference, rafiki. i-r-o-n-y, get it?
So the hitler youth liked ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’ and is thus forbidden.
And so it goes – the PC list of things you cant say or do or own starts.
We are still a bit too close to the Nazi period to use their symbols as a point of reference for irony, and it is ridiculous to say that restraint in this connection PC. Test it this way: what is, on stage, and instead of a reference to a song, Delingpole had waved a swastika.
A few typos there, but you can work it out.
Yep, we’ve worked it out – it’s what we in the business call a ‘word salad.’
🙂
If it makes you feel better, Rafiki, that was my first thought too. And then I realised that was the point of the joke.
At the risk of diverting the thread, at what point would making nazi references be considered ‘safe’ for irony? And is there a transitional period? Say, ‘tomorrow belongs to me’ today, eventually transitioning to swastikas in twenty years? Or are there things that are a bridge too far?
South @ 9:38
I am going to Japan in May – first time. My brother will be there and he has promised to take me to a beer vending machine near where I am staying.
Oz – the nanny nation.
“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” was indeed sung by the Hitler Youth …. in the movie, “Cabaret”.
Delingpole’s reference stems from a thematically-similar Greenpeace advert a couple of years ago.
Andrew Bolt blogged about it here (includes link to the clip of the song being performed in Cabaret).
Better tell Mel Brooks it’s too early for comedic references to the Nazis as well.
rafiki is quite correct. It’s quite a disgusting reference, and emphasises the real origins of the far rightists infesting our community.
The kero hammy, the kero
For the umpteenth time, let’s say it again.
Hitler was a socialist. He was the head of a Socialist party.
Hitler was far left. He carried out Eugenics, which was the in-vogue scientific theory of the left at the time.
Like any good leftists, he reserved his special hate not for conservative liberalism, but for other socialists of different factions – ie, the international Marxist movement. The most bitter struggle of the Nazis was against other leftists.
How and why this ‘Hitler is an example of the right’ came about I will never know. I suspect it was something to do with socialist propaganda, though. All the pre-war literature talks about Hitlers socialist story for Germany.
brc,
hitler was a national socialist. married anti-capitalism and nationalism as in Italy.
If there is one thing all Fascists and National Socialists agreed on, it was their hostility to capitalism. Anti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism
To all the Rightist deniers:
There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it. And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete destruction – to Bolshevism,
-Adolf Hitler
Like his rightwing bedfellows(Mussolini,Franco,Reagan) he had a hatred of the left and for socialism. Indeed, thats why National socialism is seen as a RIGHTWING ideology.
Like all good rightists, he teamed up with other jew hating conservatives & capitalists and targeted the left for persecution.