Podcast: Play in new window
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John McGuirk is the founder and editor of Gript. John referred to the cost of building passive homeshere. In our discussion I mentioned an article falsely claiming that hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed scientists ‘plotting to manipulate data, … suppress evidence … and boycott … divergent researchers”.
I also mentioned an adulatory article celebrating the election win of the homophobic, anti-semitic Polish PiS party, and an article on Gript falsely claiming that a video error by ABC News was a ‘hoax‘, and another falsely claiming that British Extinction Rebellion protestors were being paid, and suggesting without evidence that Irish Extinction Rebellion were also being paid.
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There was one thing that we discussed that I have to comment on. On the Gript website there is a video interview under the headline “Pay more taxes to change the weather” – the world’s most expensive religion” with a man called Christopher Monckton, Gript presents him as an expert in climate change and he makes various claims about himself.
His first claim is that he is a member of the House of Lords. This is a straightforward lie, and he’s been telling it for years. He even wrote to US senators making the claim and got himself invited to a talk to a congressional committee in the US with him saying that he was bringing fraternal greetings from the mother of parliaments, although he got short shrift when he appeared before the committee.
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Monckton is not and never was a member of the House of Lords, or any other parliament. The closest he came was when he ran in 2011 for the Scottish Parliament as a UKIP candidate. He got one per cent of the vote.
His false claims to be a member of the House of Lords annoyed the Clerk of the UK Parliament enough to publish a letter to him which said “My predecessor, wrote to you [twice] in 2010, asking that you cease claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication. It has been drawn to my attention that you continue to make such claims.”
And it ended “I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not.”
This is not the first fantastic claim that Monckton made. He was quoted in 2010 announcing he has discovered a single treatment that cures multiple sclerosis, the flu, the common cold and AIDS. Which is lucky, because in the 1990s he advocated for all HIV positive people to be locked up in internment camps. He also subscribes to a whole host of other crazy right-wing conspiracy theories including about Barak Obama’s birth certificate.
Monckton has also claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner, I’ve checked the website of the Nobel Academy, which lists all the winners. He is not mentioned.
Monckton has also repeatedly claimed variously that he was Margaret Thatcher’s climate change advisor, scientific advisor, or her chief scientific advisor but John Gummer, Thatcher’s environment minister said that the idea that Monckton had held any such position is, quote, ‘laughable’. In fact Thatcher wrote a door-stopper of a book The Downing Street Years, detailing her time as prime minister. Her science advisor is listed as George Guise. Monckton is not mentioned.
And it is laughable, because if anything, Thatcher would have been far better qualified to advise Monckton on science than the other way round. She had a science degree from Oxford University. Monckton has no scientific qualifications whatsoever.
But that didn’t stop the Gript website inviting on Monckton to sneer at Greta Thunburg and lecture in his plummy accent, and it didn’t stop their presenter fawning over Lord Christopher. If ever you wanted an example of a silly little Irishman obsequiously doffing his cap to a silly little Englishman, this interview is it.
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John McGuirk asked me after the interview to include the last statement that he made unedited, and I’ve done this; he explained to me that his intention with his website is to provide a rational conservative news medium, and that this was important so as not to let the right-wing crazies out there be the only voices that challenge what he sees as a liberal consensus.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing to do, but if his ambition is to provide thought leadership as a counterweight to the crazies, he has to decide first of all differentiate himself from the crazies. For as long as he is publishing adulatory articles about anti-semitic, homophobic parties like PiS in Poland, or giving obsequious interviews to crackpot conmen, that distinction isn’t so clear.
