Coming up after Doomwatch...

[Teddy Bear]

Terrific tongue in cheek article from Richard Littlejohn at The Daily Mail

Coming up after Doomwatch... the end of the world
by RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

'We're doomed, we're doomed. We're all doomed. Later in the programme, Arsenal fail to score at home against CSKA Moscow. But first, our top story - the end of the world as we know it. We're all doomed.'

Short of resurrecting John Laurie to reprise his role as the pessimistic Scots Home Guard volunteer, the Beeb did all it could to put the fear of God into us over global warming.

Well, I say 'the fear of God'. We live in a pretty godless society these days. And as G. K. Chesterton observed: 'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything.'

As usual, Chesterton was bang on the money. Although in his day the flight from religion was into the arms of Communism.

Today, all the fruitcakes, chancers and neo-Coms have pitched their tepees on the parched lawn of climate change.

Their church is situated at Television Centre, where they find a welcoming arena for their lunacy.

Credulous and gullible as ever, the BBC is only too willing to give free rein to the wildest fantasies of the eco-nutters, especially if it can pin the blame on George W. Bush and the evil multee-nash-nuls.

Watching the BBC's coverage of the Stern report earlier this week, I had to check that I hadn't accidentally stumbled across a re-run on UK Gold of the Seventies' science fiction shocker, Doomwatch.

Older readers may remember-this series, which starred Robert Powell and followed the fictitious adventures of scientists working for The Department of Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work as they investigated assorted ecological and technological threats to mankind.

The department was an arm of the Ministry of National Security (eat your heart out, John Reid) and among the dangers with which it was required to deal were planes falling out of the sky, cities being engulfed by rising sea levels and a plague of giant killer rats.

Doomwatch didn't quite anticipate young Muslims from Yorkshire strapping explosives to their bodies and blowing themselves up on the London Underground, but it was certainly pretty perceptive and ahead of its time.

In his risible reaction to the Stern report, Tony Blair forgot to mention the mutant Ninja rats, but no one would have been in the slightest bit surprised if he had.

That would have given the BBC an excuse to wheel out yet again the Guardian's deranged doomsayer, George Monbiot, to warn that unless we put up petrol to £100 a litre and start burning our own toenail clippings, we will all be eaten by 6ft high, 15-stone rodents before 2012.

(Or was that if we didn't join the euro? I can't remember.)

Monbiot is what passes for an 'independent' expert on the BBC, which reports on environmental issues about as dispassionately as it covers the Middle East.

In this context, The Earth is poor, downtrodden Palestine and the Enemies of the Earth are the savage, bloodthirsty Izza-ra-aylee stormtroopers.

I can't be bothered to revisit the scientific arguments. Melanie Phillips did a comprehensive job of rubbishing the eco-Nazis' twisted propaganda earlier this week.

Forgive me for being cynical, but I'm old enough to have lived through a procession of dire warnings, from new Ice Ages and nuclear winters to forecasts of flourishing vineyards in the Peak District and wildebeest sweeping majestically across the dust bowl which was once the M4 corridor.

What I do know is that nature has a way of sorting itself out, despite mankind's worst efforts.

Remember when Saddam sabotaged the oil refineries and tipped billions of gallons of crude into the Persian Gulf? The Monbiots of this world were telling us at the time that this was a major catastrophe which would blight the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. Tearstained BBC reporters were filmed doing pieces to camera clutching cormorants coated in Castrol GTX.

A few weeks later, the sea had washed away all evidence of the spillage and the beaches would have qualified for a Greenpeace kitemark.

You can also be assured that it won't be governments who save the environment. Would you put the future of the Earth in the hands of imbeciles who think the only way to encourage recycling is to stop emptying the dustbins every week?

In the end, the solution will lie, as always, with the hated multeenashnuls. It's the car companies themselves who have cut exhaust emissions to a fraction of what they were 20 years ago. And it's the oil companies, not brain-dead bureaucrats, who are coming up with cleaner fuels and investing in alternative energy sources.

The Earth will be saved, not through higher taxes but because business believes there's a nice little earner in it.

B&Q is already selling windmills for domestic use - yours for a mere £1,498, squire. That's the environmental equivalent of those market traders who knock out plastic statues of the weeping Jesus outside Notre Dame.

If Arthur Daley were around today, he'd have a lock-up full of winddamaged windmills and sundamaged solar panels. Call it a monkey for cash and I'll send Terry round in the van to install it in the morning.

Ignore the hysterical doom-mongers and political spivs climbing on the wind-powered bandwagon. As Private Frazer's sidekick Corporal Jones would say:

Don't panic.

If you feel like leaving the country, press three now

Cumbria Tourism has set up a hotline to allow callers to listen to a selection of inviting sounds from the region.

The Lakes' Escape Line includes a reading of Wordsworth's Daffodils, the sound of water lapping against the edge of Windermere and a Cumberland sausage sizzling on the grill.

Tourist chiefs say the tranquil recordings will help stave off the winter blues and encourage people to visit the area.

The scheme is already being studied by other tourist boards around Britain. London's hotline is ready to go.

'Thank you for calling Capital Cacophony. All calls are monitored for training purposes. For English, press one. For Arabic, press two. For Farsi, press three. For Urdu, press four. For that one which sounds like you've got a heavy cold, press five. For cockney rhyming slang, press the red button on your Sky remote and select Only Fools And Horses from the electronic programme guide.

'To hear the sound of Big Ben, press one. To hear the imam calling Muslims to prayer in Finsbury Park, press two. To hear a young woman vomiting in a shop doorway in Soho, press three.

'To hear aggressive begging, press four. To hear an announcement about your train being cancelled because of leaves on the line, press five.

'To hear the sound of police sirens as officers respond to a major fracas outside a boozer in the Holloway Road at chucking-out time, press six.

'To hear the sound of breaking glass as a drunk has his head shoved through the front indow of Selfridge's, press seven. To hear Ken Livingstone insulting a Jewish reporter, press eight.

'To hear the sound of a suicide bomber blowing himself up on a bus, press 999.

'If you are ringing to report your neighbour for putting the wrong kind of rubbish in a recycling bin, stay on the line and you will be redirected to our 24-hour emergency response team.

'If you would like information about emigrating to New Zealand, we don't blame you.'