LIES, DAMNED LIES AND DELINGPOLES

A while back, we awarded a special, non-existent award for the Nimby Whopper of the Week to the anti-windfarm activitists of the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm campaign (a campaign organised by extremely wealthy individuals to combat a community-owned wind "farm" of two medium-sized turbines). This was as a result of our breathless admiration for their stunningly stupid claim that the lorries which deliver turbine parts are "longer than an aircraft carrier".

Funny, yes. Grossly untruthful, yes. Immoral terror tactics, yes. But nothing - repeat, nothing - to the unfettered lie machine that is James Delingpole.

Indeed, there are Nimby Lies. Insidious, stupid, self-serving, designed to frighten the children. Then, there are Spectacular Nimby Lies, like the "award-winning" rumours spread by the Stop Bridgnorth Windfarm group. And then there are Delingpoles.

A Delingpole is the new SI unit of nimby mendacity. When a lie is so huge, so eye-wateringly and crazily demented, that it defies the full scope of the English language to sum up its staggering dishonesty, that's a Delingpole.

Delingpole makes money by selling crap. Specifically, he sells climate change denial, and he does it on a huge scale. Naturally, one of his targets is those beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient devices known as wind turbines. They really get his goat. Because they're beautiful, clean, green, harmless, quiet and efficient. He really hates that.

And he's got a new book out. No prizes for guessing that his "book" is yet another mentalist rant against reality, peddling a whole flock of lies and myths to idiots.

Of course, given that Delingpole makes his living by lying his head off to anyone who'll listen - betraying his country and the planet in the process - he wants to publicise his latest outrageous assault on science and common sense. So he wrote an atrocious piece for the Daily Express. And what an atrocity it is. The Delingpole counter went right off the scale. It is a Super-Delingpole of deranged b*llsh*t masquerading as ... well, actually no, it's not masquerading as anything. The man is clearly insane.

He was spurred on by Simon Jenkins's ill-judged comments to what is in fact Delingpole's favourite newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. Jenkins, you may remember, abused his position as Chair of the National Trust to pretend that the said charity was turning against wind turbines. The said charity then had to correct its chairman's false claims, pointing out that its position on renewables remains the same - broadly in favour.

But, in the mad, mad world of the nimby, one man's lies are meat and drink to the next purveyor of lies. One feeds off another, and it all goes round in circles in a weird vortex of nonsense designed, by some magical process, to turn an obvious lie into some sort of "truth". Simon Jenkins said things he had no right to say - and which were blatantly wrong anyway - so Delingpole jumps on the bandwagon to repeat them. He has got a "book" to flog, remember.

Delingpole out-Delingpoled himself in the Express. These weren't just lies. They were Delingpole lies - lies so massive you can see them from space.

One lie: wind power "drives anyone who lives nearby mad with its strobing effects and low subsonic hum". How can a hum be "subsonic"? Does this maniac even understand the English language? He certainly knows nothing about windfarms, preferring to regurgitate foolish and disproven nimby myths than to risk a narrow brush with reality.

Another lie: wind power "trashes property values". Delingpole has no evidence whatever to support this monstrous claim, because it's a lie.

Another lie: wind power "costs between three and nine times the amount of conventional energy". He's making these figures up, of course, because it doesn't. And he fails to explain what he means by "conventional energy". If he means coal, oil, gas or nuclear, then he's clearly lying.

Yet another lie: wind power "slows economic growth". Again, no evidence is offered, because no such evidence exists. Across the world, wind power is growing (in Europe, installed wind energy capacity increased by 11% last year), and anyone who thinks that this is the cause of the global financial malaise is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Delingpole, by the way, is honorary President for Life of cloud-cuckoo-land. The reality is that the wind industry is actually creating jobs at a time when other industries are shedding them. Oh, but, if you're a Delingpole, living in a topsy-turvy nimby wilderness of gibberish, that means that wind power "destroys jobs". Honestly, what a twat!

And then - surprise surprise - Delingpole quotes figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation, an organisation funded and staffed entirely by Delingpoles. Which simply tells us that Delingpole relies entirely on dishonest lobby groups for his falsified information.

As if that wasn't enough, Delingpole then leaps off the high board into the deep end of nimby paranoia. Apparently, according to his perverse fantasies, the wind industry employs an army of lobbyists, many of whom pose as ordinary citizens in order to write to their MPs in support of wind. This is madness, pure and simple, and it proves only that Delingpole has vanished so far up his own bottom that he can no longer tell day from night or left from right. Still, in his frothy-mouthed craziness, he argues that the "real people who have to live alongside these eyesores stand no chance against such well-orchestrated, lavishly funded and utterly cynical campaigns."

Delingpole likes the word "utterly". Not only are the principled and conscientious supporters of green energy "utterly cynical" - unlike, say, a Delingpole ranting his way through an overflowing trough of his own mendacity - but wind turbines are "utterly pointless monstrosities" ... "utterly pointless", that is, in the sense that they currently produce between 6 and 12% of our electricity, while in Denmark they're getting close to 25%. At the current rate, the UK's windfarm fleet will be as "utterly useless" as the infinitely more expensive and hazardous nuclear power industry by about 2015.

Much of this is just a warm-up, really, for Delingpole's major problem, which is his fanatical and "utterly" bonkers climate change scepticism. But that's what he makes his money from - pleasing the Fox News-watching Tea Party extremists of America and a few grizzled Australian pensioners by flogging them a cosy but "utterly" dishonesty misrepresentation of scientific fact.

The more wild-eyed anti-windfarm maniacs almost invariably turn out to be head-in-the-sand climate change deniers. And Delingpole is their poster-boy. He'd rather blame "watermelons" (those who are "green on the outside and red on the inside") for destroying the Earth than even think for a single moment of letting a word of truth cross his lips.

Unbelievably, a member of BLoW ("Back Local Windfarms") is still receiving nuisance letters from a truly bonkers person in the Lenches, more than a year after the thugs of VVASP bullied the local council into betraying the electorate. These letters, scrawled as if they were written in an asylum, come along every few weeks, usually accompanied by a clipping from the Express with their latest diatribe of nimby drivel.

We're willing to lay bets that the nimby nuisance of Church Lench will be posting our friend a clipping of Delingpole's massive Delingpole of anti-wind gibberish. And why not? If you're so soft in the head that you actually believe anything the Express publishes or Delingpole writes, then you're certainly silly enough to use it to harass somebody who's actually got a heart, a soul and a brain.

But there are liars, and there are damned liars, and then there are Delingpoles. And they're dangerous. Because they are quite, quite mad, and they're making a fortune out of stirring up the nasty nimbies and selling our children downriver. And that, folks, is treachery on an epic scale.