Diary – 5 December 2009

To Edinburgh, that most gracious and civilised of cities, for what promises to be a less than altogether agreeable experience. I have to confess that, when BBC1’s Question Time rang to ask whether I might be available to take part in last week’s show from that city, the words ‘hole’ and ‘head’ sprang to mind. Scottish audiences tend not to be — how to put this — entirely sympathetic to my general take on the world. And since the likely topics for this encounter are global warming and the Iraq war inquiry, the chances of this audience responding with enthusiasm to a right-wing warmongering certifiable neocon Zionist climate-change denier with a posh London accent are about as high as Al Gore becoming a cheerleader for the Republican party. So it proves. To the propositions that man-made global warming is a scam and the Iraq war was justified, there is not merely hostility but open-mouthed incredulity. How could anyone sit there and say what all right-minded people know is totally unsayable? Afterwards, I am deluged with emails running at around 70–30 in my favour. The editor tells me that the programme’s online public response has doubled on the strength of my comments on global warming alone. A number of viewers are outraged that I was ‘bullied’ on the show. Was I? It all seems sadly par for the course to me.

Speaking of which, I am upbraided by a couple of viewers for being too direct and uncompromising rather than trying to persuade people more gently to my opinion. I’m afraid I have come to the view, however, that on certain topics the irrationality is now so profound that there is simply nothing that will dissuade those gripped by the frightening group-think that has its thumb on the public windpipe.