Eager to see how his good deeds have altered his picture for the better, he rushes home only to observe that his face is now twisted with the sneer of hypocrisy.The Government, abetted by public opinion, has undergone a similar self-deception in banning hunting with dogs This has ostensibly been done to prevent cruelty to foxes. But really, as we all know, it is little Britain's daring revolutionary act against the posh and the privileged.There are one or two good arguments for banning hunting, and one or two good arguments for not doing so. Mostly they are lost in a babble of self-serving tripe about town versus country or aristocracy versus meritocracy. Few ban supporters - there are exceptions - can put their hands on their hearts and say that they are not motivated by depriving the tally-ho brigade of their sport, but only by the respite gained for the fox.Britain may be a nation of animal lovers - though the statistics on how we treat our pets and farm our animals hardly bear this out. But this ban speaks more of a nation of peasants who go belly up when the hand of the aristocracy comes along to open the new branch of the supermarket that's really responsible for the suffering of animals I don't like hunting But I don't like smug, smirking liars much either More from Deborah Orr. A letter arrives at Self Towers from English Heritage and the Women's Institute, asking me to take part in their new, joint campaign, "Save our Streets".
Together with it are a beautiful pamphlet, the cover of which has been artfully embossed to resemble a street surface, and a CD-ROM which allows me to come face-to- face with Philip Davies, the campaign's head, in the pornographic privacy of my own computer screen. Davies - who resembles a jovial pork butcher wearing a High Street suit - speaks eloquently, if jerkily, on what we can all do to banish unnecessary road furniture, signage and traffic-calming bollix. Let's get this straight - I have nothing but admiration for English Heritage. When it comes to the English heritage business I think this organisation is, er, streets ahead of the competition. When you trouble to think about it, what's happened to the likes of Anachronistic Albion, BBF (Britain Before the Flood) and all the other quangos which have sought to protect our sceptic isle from the gleet of time? Gone, is the answer, declined into the dust to become only another layer in the mighty, papier-m??idden of history. But English Heritage marches on: putting up its own signs, conserving buildings and generally adding to the gaiety of the nation.This latest campaign is predicated on the indisputable facts that: "Streets are places in their own right" and further "the character of a place is defined by its streets". One of the English Heritage Commissioners, the noted anecdotalist Mr Bill Bryson, has been wheeled in to provide his own encomium: "This is a country thoughtful enough to remind people to look left and right before stepping off the kerb, and stylish enough to produce iconic pieces of street furniture such as red telephone and letter boxes.
The debate is no longer: 'Is there a global warming signal?' The debate now is what are we going to do about it?"The findings are crucial because much of the evidence of a warmer world has until now been from air temperatures, but it is the oceans that are the driving force behind the Earth's climate. Dr Barnett said: "Over the past 40 years there has been considerable warming of the planetary system and approximately 90 per cent of that warming has gone directly into the oceans."He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington: "We defined a 'fingerprint' of ocean warming. Each of the oceans warmed differently at different depths and constitutes a fingerprint which you can look for. Scientists have found the first unequivocal link between man-made greenhouse gases and a dramatic heating of the Earth's oceans. The researchers - many funded by the US government - have seen what they describe as a "stunning" correlation between a rise in ocean temperature over the past 40 years and pollution of the atmosphere. The study destroys a central argument of global warming sceptics within the Bush administration - that climate change could be a natural phenomenon. It should convince George Bush to drop his objections to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the scientists say.Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and a leading member of the team, said: "We've got a serious problem.
