Jeux Sans Braincells: Scargill vs Monbiot

It’s August. The whole of the BBC has gone to Beijing. The Silly Season is in full swing, hurrah ! And … Arthur Scargill returns to the energy fray, scene of his glorious proletarian victories of the 1980’s.

Piqued by George Moonbat’s declaration of everlasting war upon coal and newfound acceptance of nukes, Arthur wishes to offer a modest counter-proposal or two of his own:

(1) “Britain needs an integrated energy policy that will produce 250m tonnes of indigenous deep-mine clean coal per year - from which could be extracted all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that our people need".

Integrated, and balanced, too, don’t you feel ? And on the subject of balanced …

(2) “I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes".

Now this is tempting. I’m sure what Arthur was really volunteering for was a couple of minutes in a room full of carbon monoxide, and as a service to the Nation, doubtless George will oblige us by picking up the gauntlet. I feel also that others should be joining the challenge, by immersing themselves for two minutes in their own effluent: Alan Johnson in a vat of MRSA; Hilary Benn in agricultural slurry; bullshit also of course for several more of their Cabinet colleagues …

Sadly, and before we get carried away here, the Grauniad has consulted a potential umpire for this little bout of Jeux Sans Frontieres, the Health Protection Agency. Putting on their most disapproving faces, these worthies “would not sanction admission to either room.”

‘It's a hypothetical experiment on an emotive issue and it would never get approval on ethical grounds’ said a spokeswoman.”

Sanity prevails and we can all go back to watching the Olympics. Now there’s a real contest in a fog of CO2 ...

ND

PS, to judge from the photo, Scargill's previous encounters with CO2 gave him a nasty case of that unpleasant miners' complaint, toxicombova