The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: flowers on July 14, 2013, 11:53:31 pm
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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100226302/another-day-another-wind-farm-scandal/
What's the difference between a left-wing investigative journalist and a right-wing investigative journalist? Simple: the left-wing variety wins Pulitzer prizes (a la Woodward and Bernstein), or gets feted ad nauseam in Private Eye (Paul Foot), or gets given endless documentaries on Channel 4 (John Pilger); the right-wing one languishes in undeserved obscurity.
I'm thinking especially of blogger Richard North, for my money the best investigative reporter in Britain today, probably one of the best in the world. He does the legwork; he questions everything; he breaks story after story, both in his superb, ever-furious Eureferendum blog and also via the Sunday Telegraph with his long-time collaborator Christopher Booker.
Perhaps you've seen his latest scoop? I hope so for it's an absolute corker: the story of how the National Grid has been secretly forking out millions on diesel-generated power in order to stop the lights going out. And why does the National Grid need this hugely expensive, dirty energy available on standby? For all those occasions when the wind isn't blowing, is why. The greater the proportion of our total energy capacity taken up by wind, the more unstable our grid becomes. But rather than admit the scale of the problem (already causing havoc in places like Germany), the Coalition has had to persist in the charade that renewables are an essential part of our energy mix. So rather than scrap all wind projects – the only really sensible option – we instead have to go through the nonsense of having even more expensive energy in reserve (ie diesel generators) driving up our bills by another 5 per cent.
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"What's the difference between a left-wing investigative journalist and a right-wing investigative journalist? Simple: the left-wing variety wins Pulitzer prizes (a la Woodward and Bernstein), or gets feted ad nauseam in Private Eye (Paul Foot), or gets given endless documentaries on Channel 4 (John Pilger); the right-wing one languishes in undeserved obscurity."
Yeah, six feet under...