Just a short one today as I am away from home on the ipad, which is much more limited for using wordpress.
After being accused of having no sense of irony by a climate change denier on twitter yesterday, I found this extraordinary thing.
Matt Ridley, the Irrational Optimist, has a prize for “writing exposing pseudoscience behind eco-projects” . Sir Matthew is a hereditary member of the House of Lords and brother in law to Owen “Badgers Moved the Goalposts” Paterson, former Secretary of State against the Environment. Ridley, some may also remember, was chair of Northern Rock when it collapsed, leading to the first run on a British bank in over 200 years.
That Ridley should be offering a prize for pseudoscience is deliciously ironic, since he has repeatedly used pseudoscientific arguments to justify his denial of the impact of climate change on humanity and nature, opposition to neo-liberal economics, GMOs, the badger cull, and indeed many other things.
One wonders whether he has a highly developed sense of irony, or none at all.
This could start a whole series of ironic prizes:
The Genghis Khan prize for peace studies
The Owen Paterson prize for badger welfare
Any other suggestions?
a new nature blog 
The Tesco Alumi award for Accounting and The Terry Leahy Ideas award for local economic growth
thanks Vicki
What about the Nobel Peace Prize – names after Alfred Nobel the inventor of dynamite and one of the leading manufacturers of armaments.
good one – thanks Matt.
How about:
The Nigel Farage prize for abolishing agricultural subsidy
In advance of the UKIP conference at Doncaster Racecourse today, Farage proposed scrapping income tax for workers on minimum wage and wants a new 35p band for people earning up to £55,000. He said this would cost about 12bn, but that 10bn would be saved by leaving the EU. Does this mean that he does not intend to replace CAP payments to agriculture by direct Government subsidy – would he be “doing a New Zealand”?
It often puzzles me what deal the NFU is doing with the Euro-sceptics on safeguarding farm handouts if we leave the EU. I imagine they must be doing a deal (or cacking their underwear) because loss of CAP funding will wipe out UK net farming income. Provisional figures for 2013 give a turnover of 25,7bn with a net income from that of 5.46bn. However, Pillar 1 and 2 subsidy added up to nearly 6bn of that turnover.
thanks Mark. UKIP have committed to continue to support British farmers via direct subsidies from the Treasury.
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