My problem with James Delingpole…

I don’t like homeopathy. I genuinely think that people who believe in it are really honestly actually a little bit mental to think that something so mind-numbingly bat-shit insane could be true. It frustrates me that these mental people do exist. It frustrates me so much that I’ve had enough, and I’m writing this article having just finished brutally slaughtering scrotum-faced Prince Charles just because he believes in it.

The peculiarly dressed man on the left is James Delingpole. James Delingpole is a proper journalist like us here at The Tab, only he writes for minor-league rags such as The Spectator, The Times, and The Daily Torygraph Telegraph. I’m told he doesn’t dress like this all of the time.

James Delingpole had a privileged education at Malvern College, and went on to read English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford. Given that Malvern College’s mission statement is to produce ‘happy, balanced individuals’, it’s something of an irony that James Delingpole writes very right-wing articles based on his very shit right-wing opinions.

James Delingpole is the politically balanced equivalent of an illicit lovechild between Fox News and the Daily Mail, raised in loveless squalor by its News of the World grandma, and given a lifelong enduring hatred of anything remotely centre or left-wing due to a traumatic playground experience umpired by Michael Jackson, where those thuggish papers; The Guardian, The Observer, and The Independent, systematically beat seven shades of shit out of him until lunch break was over and P.E was about to start and Michael Jackson hid everyone’s P.E kit and made them all do it in their underpants and he took photographs and let them all sleep in his bed but that’s all alright. That’s what he’s like.

Some of you may recognise James Delingpole, not from that ridiculous costume he’s wearing of course, but from a recent episode of Horizon where he showed himself up to be a bit of a wanker by arguing that a non-scientist is perfectly entitled to debate scientific research on the same level as a scientist, even without a scientific background, and without actually reading the research they’re debating. Delingpole refers to himself as an ‘interpreter of interpretations’. Fantastic.

In his most recent column for The Spectator, Delingpole asks ‘what harm is there in keeping an open mind’ towards homeopathy? There are shitloads of carefully controlled scientific trials and experiments that show that homeopathy doesn’t work. Water doesn’t have a memory, and if it did, it would probably remember all the excrement that’s been in it. It wouldn’t be able to forget.

So what’s the harm in keeping an open mind towards homeopathy? Well nothing, as long as you take it for minor illnesses that aren’t particularly threatening to your health, or illnesses that will probably clear up on their own anyway. The harm comes from when misguided people use homeopathic remedies to treat serious illness in place of conventional, evidence-based medicine. If you think that water’s ‘memory’ of dolphin song, or the light of venus (both actual homeopathic ingredients – seriously, what the fuck?!) is going to prevent you from contracting malaria, or help you in your battle against cancer, then unfortunately you’re probably going to end up on this list of 437 people that were harmed (sometimes fatally) by acting on bullshit advice.

Obviously the issue is a personal choice, and no-one is being forced to take anything. Oh, except many parents do in fact lovingly force homeopathy upon their otherwise oblivious children. GMTV’s Fiona Phillips gives her kids Belladonna, a treatment for high fever and delirium. Her actions are also pretty hypocritical given that she recently described once being dosed up on painkillers when she had a slipped disc. Where was your beloved fucking hammer-of-thor-unicorn-bollocks piece of shit remedy then Fiona, eh? What’s that Fiona? Homeopathy is only water and is therefore harmless as you can never overdose? Oh sorry Fiona, I can’t hear what you have to say because I’m too busy drowning you.

Anyway, back to James Greasypole. His blog for the Telegraph, where he writes his badly researched offensive opinions to a deadline in exchange for money, almost as if they were real *nods to Stewart Lee fans*, includes articles with deliberately provocative headlines such as ‘Why on earth shouldn’t hotel owners be free to turn away gay couples?”, “Why did God give liberals annoying whiny voices? So that even the blind could hate them” (that is actually pretty funny, hahaaaSHUTUP JAMES!!), “How many drowning polar bears can dance on the head of a pin?” (WTF?), and “I’m James Delingpole and tonight Matthew, I’m going to be as good at not being a tosser as Steve Irwin is at catching stingray!” (OK so that one may be made up). It’s the fact that he’s deliberately provocative that particularly winds me up. I don’t even think he really believes some of the stuff he says.

Delingpole’s blog introduction, written by himself, states that he is ‘right about everything’. I disagree with him. So much so in fact, that I plan to use James Delingpole and his blog as a kind of makeshift shit-o-meter that will inspire me to write more articles that have been as aggressive and offensive as this one, which despite that, I hope you have enjoyed.