I suppose if you stick your head over the political parapet, you deserve to get it shot off from time to time. My post on Al Gore BELOW has caused a certain frisson on some blogs. Tom Watsonthinks it very rude. Devil's Kitchen wonders why I remain in the Tory Party. More on that in a moment, but let's just look at what I said...

On Thursday US Climate Change hypocrite Al Gore will address David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet. He will no doubt be instructing them all on the art of preaching climate change religion bollocks while at the same time creating a carbon footprint the size of a mammoth's. I wonder how many of them will find they have a subsequent engagement...


Al Gore is indeed a hypocrite. He tells the rest of the world to reduce their carbon footprint, while living in a house which has a carbon footprint the size of Tennessee. Gore's heating bill is dozens of times higher than that of virtually every other American. It's a little known fact that George W Bush's Texas ranch is very environmentally friendly. Bush just gets on and does it without makign a song and dance about it. Gore, meanwhile, flies to Hollywood and collects his ill-deserved Oscar from celebrities who have arrived at the ceremony in a gas guzzling strech limo.

I used the phrase "preaching climate change religion bollocks" for a reason, one which seems to have passed the ninety or so people by who have commented on the thread. It has indeed become a religion to those people who like to jump on the bandwagon of such causes. Their fervour reflects the CND marchers of the 1990s. If you speak out against their creed you're attacked as a 'denier', putting you on the same level as a holocause denier. I dislike the messianic side of those like Gore who treat Climate Change as a pseudo religion which if you deign to question you're considered a nutter.

I do question it, but I do it out of curiosity, not out of dogma. Let me make my position clear. I do believe climate change is taking place, but I have an open mind on the extent to which it is (if at all) man made. I am unconvinced by both the Stern Report and the IPCC report, which seems to change its eveidence according to the conclusion. I am prepared to listen to the arguments of the climate change sceptics, just as I am to those I respect on the other side of the argument. The reason I railed against Al Gore is that he does not fall into that last category. Sometime soon I will watch his film - I won't yet call it a documentary. I will also watch the Channel 4 programme from last Thursday (repeated tomorrow on More 4 I think) called THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE SWINDLE. I'll read more on the subject and then make up my mind. My stance at the moment reflects my annoyance at the climate change protagonists who won't brook any argument at all.

No onto the Devil's Kitchen article. He makes a number of assertions in his article as well as using words I don't allow on this blog. Let me repeat some of them...

Can I be the only one who is wondering precisely why Iain Dale is supporting the Tories? Apart from the fact that they are willing to give him a seat, of course... But Iain is a free-trader who is anti-EU. And yet Cameron is pro-EU, and naive enough to believe that he can change it... Iain is also against the state-funding of parties, whereas Cameron is pro.To state this quite clearly and for the avoidance of doubt, Iain Dale is fundamentally opposed to Cameron and the Conservative Party on all of the major issues that the Tories have deigned to pronounce on. And he is not the only one; very far from it, in fact.So what is the motivation? Does Iain know something that we don't; being something of an insider, does he know that the Tories are going to renege on these ideas once in power?... The second option is that Dale and others are merely trying the Matthew Sinclair tactic: they have decided that it is better to try to persuade the Tories of the rightness of their position from within the party... Which leaves us with the third option: that some people will happily support any policies, no matter how wrong they believe those policies to be, in order to gain power.None of those three alternatives fills me with any hope for the future, frankly.


Where to start?! Devil's Kitchen left the Conservatives to join UKIP over one single issue - Europe. He now finds himself out of tune with the Conservatives on any number of issues. On this blog I think I have made fairly clear that I support David Cameron's policy of building a big tent, in the full knowledge that there will be some policy areas where free market, tax cutting Thatcherites like me will have cause to suck our teeth. DK is right that I oppose state funding for political parties, I'm a free trader and that I am a Euro Sceptic. So does this mean, as he implies, that I should leave the Tories and join UKIP? In his dreams.

All political parties are coalitions. And within those coalitions people argue their case. I will argue my case on the issues I care passionately about even if that means that at times I am at odds with the stance of the party hierarchy. I've never once been asked by anyone to tone down my views on this blog.

DK reckons I sometimes pull my punches because I would like to be a candidate at the next election. What they - and others - don't like is when I praise David Cameron for the progress he has made. If I dish out criticism from time to time, then surely I am also entitled to praise Cameron and his team when I really believe they have got something right. Yes, I would like to be an MP, but if I stand at the next election I want to do it in my own way on my own terms. No one likes someone who constantly greases up to the top of the party, but equally, a constant whine of criticism is equally as tedious.

I would never leave the Tory Party. The Tory Party may, on occasion, leave me, but it's then my duty to stay and argue my case. We all know all politics is temporary. Politicians come and politicians go. Policies come and policies go. The one constant are the members of the Party who have to go out and sell the Party on the doorstep. Just because they might disagree with a few of those policies, it doesn't stop them from believing that the Party they have supported through thick and thin will do a damn sight better job of governing the country that the current lot.

I'm a Conservative, a Tory, a free marketeer and a Euro Sceptic. There can be no other Party for me than the Conservative Party. Not now. Not ever.