The trouble with democracy is that quantity always wins out over quality. This is a dangerous thing to say, because it is now very easy to brand me as a fascist, right-wing totalitarian dictator. But as Anatole France said, if 52 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

On September 21 hundreds of thousands of people will attend 1000 events in 88 countries, taking part in what has been described as a “great global climate wake-up call”. Let’s hope the great global climate is listening. But the people the organisers really want to be listening are government leaders and, of course, the media.

The organisers are Avaaz, a global campaigning organization that promotes activism among “ordinary people” and works mainly by way of e-mails. They do a lot of good work in protesting about injustice, but in this case are actually promoting it. Unknowingly, of course.

The aim of the “easy and fun” wake-up call is to persuade Governments meeting in Copenhagen to “make hard choices”, ignore “pressure from oil and coal companies” and “sign an ambitious, fair and binding global treaty that will stop a climate catastrophe”.

That seems straightforward enough. Only one or two problems: first, there is no scientific evidence that we are heading for a climate catastrophe; second, even if we were, the idea that it could be stopped by signing a treaty – even a global one – is preposterous; third, those opposing any such pointless treaty are not so much oil and coal companies but an increasingly growing number of scientists and precisely those “ordinary people” who Avaaz purports to represent.

These are the people who have been deprived of a voice. Having been betrayed by the politicians, they are now inundated by wake-up calls from thousands of people who know virtually nothing about climate science, but who rather like the idea of telling governments what to do.

There is a real danger that such a movement could help sweep to power someone who promised to deal with climate change, without any regard to his or her policies on freedom, law and the rights of individuals. Impossible? Wait and see.

It’s not impossible when the major media, like the BBC, ignore climate sceptics and take every opportunity to promote alarmists.

It’s not impossible when these same alarmists refuse to allow a voice to any other view by saying “the debate is over”. That is an outrageous thing to say, but thousands upon thousands of us calmly accept it.
And this in the face of so much evidence that the climate is not behaving as computers have predicted. I am tired of pointing out that the earth has not warmed at all this century, while carbon emissions have been increasing. Can the papering-over of this crack in climate orthodoxy be anything but sinister?

At Greenbelt arts and music festival I protested to Christian Aid about their massive tunnel vision on this issue (one shared by many charities and NGOs). A charming young girl said they “had to accept what the scientists said”. She had no doubts, and it is not surprising, because opposing views are never publicised. She will certainly not be reading a website like this. Why should she?

Twitter users are currently inundated by messages urging everyone to demand a treaty on climate change. Most of these are simply passed on by people too lazy to think about it or research it, but have accepted the popular view because it ticks all the right boxes: industry is guilty, government is guilty, we are guilty. Woe is us.

Meanwhile in the Spectator, Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer is saying: “The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astonomy, history, archaeology and geology.”

And in Germany more than 60 scientists have written to Chancellor Angela Merkel pointing out that rising CO2 has “had no measurable effect” on temperatures, and global warming has become a pseudo-religion.

In Britain environment expert Paul Briggs says: “Energy and Transport policies are being blighted by CO2 emissions targets that are unachievable without restrictive laws and a huge amount of financial pain for no climate gain.”

And in the developing world there is a real risk that cash for aid will be diverted from, say, provision of clean water for all into measures designed to “reduce the impact of climate change”. The poor will suffer as usual, and the carbon-savvy entrepreneurs will make money. As usual.

There is no doubt that the climate changes, and its effects will sometimes be devastating on a local level. It has always been like that. Much of the eastern part of the county I live in was under water less than 2000 years ago. It is right to protect those affected in the most efficient and human way possible.

But we spend so much time pretending that we can change the climate, and so much money on measures that will have no effect, that we are effectively killing people who we could help. This is the sort of thing you might hope that Avaaz would get upset about. But no. They, like half the population, have been brainwashed.

I’m not a fascist, right-wing totalitarian dictator. I’m a cuddly, open-minded writer with poetic leanings, a love of unpolluted nature and no wings whatsoever. And I’m prepare to admit that democracy may be the best thing we’ve got in the way of government.

But I’m really, really tired of being swamped by these politically motivated, ill-thought-out, self-righteous slogans that bear so little relation to reality.

The war between cyclists and motorists is dragging on, with no sign of a solution. A cyclist writing to my local newspaper, the Norwich-based Eastern Daily Press, recently lamented the “daily slaughter of the roads” and added, with grammatical casualties mounting, that there was only one place for “environmentally and health-conscious cyclists” to ride to avoid this horrific no-man’s-land – the pavement, of course.

Sadly, this brings thousands of innocent civilians into danger, and there is nowhere for them to retreat to, however “environmentally and health conscious” they might be. So they may get mown down by loose cannons at any moment.

From what I have read, many cyclists think this a price worth paying for their own safety, despite the fact that there is no forced conscription into the ranks of cyclists: pedestrians, on the other hand, have no alternative but to walk. Unless they drive, of course, but you will find few cyclists keen on that idea.

The same writer, horrified that cyclists might be banned from the pavements (they are, actually, but no-one seems to care, least of all those who castigate motorists for not obeying the law) points out that “reckless driving by some motorists does not lead to all motorists being banned from the road”. No, but it messes them up through carpet-bombing city streets with road humps, ludicrously low speed limits and speed cameras in lucrative positions.

The average motorist is a pretty good driver, really, and unlikely to discharge his weapon in a threatening manner. He (or she) knows the appropriate speed to drive at for the conditions and pays pretty good attention to what is going on around him. Nevertheless he is, in the words of another EDP correspondent, a “scapegoat for the failings of others”. British soldiers abroad will know the feeling.

Much of the war is sustained by the use of spin. A cleric writing in the same edition of the EDP warns of death traps on rural roads and “speeding motorists with mobile phone in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and often also calming children in the back seats”. Thus the civilian far from the front line will assume that all motorists who exceed the speed limits are also criminally careless when driving: far from true, but a handy weapon of mass destruction.

Recent surveys have revealed that over 80% of drivers break the speed limit, which can be presented in two ways: either most drivers are habitually dangerous, or they all know the speed limits are unrealistically low. The same survey revealed that a quarter of those polled believed speed cameras could improve road safety – or, put another way, nearly three-quarters thought they couldn’t. I wonder which way the High Command will be wording its propaganda.

Meanwhile snipers continue taking potshots, and motorists are in defensive positions: from October, drivers who defend themselves against a motoring charge will have to pay the bulk of their costs, even if found not guilty. “This is like the way witches were tried in the Middle Ages,” said one commentator. To me it seems about as fair as the recent suggestion that when a cycle and a car were in collision, the motorist should always pay. Having seen the random progress of so many guerilla cyclists, I can see how this might be a useful piece of artillery.

But there are signs of a fightback. In Nottingham, in a rare employment of chemical warfare, Boots UK has threatened to move its entire car parking provision across the city boundary to avoid paying an “outrageous” proposed workplace parking levy. And there are more and more signs that speed camera camouflage tactics are getting exposed.

There is, sadly, a risk that spies being dropped into rural villages with radar guns are facing the ultimate penalty. “Catching people out will get people’s backs up,” said one. “It’s not very nice if you catch someone you know.”

Exactly. And if you didn’t think you were superior in some way, you wouldn’t be trying to catch them. Which would be much nicer.

If you want to, it is easy to make life difficult for inconsiderate road users without trying to inflict pain on people who simply prefer a different mode of transport. But when you start a war, it’s hard to stop it. The signs are that we will go on taking chunks out of people who are behaving in a perfectly reasonable and inoffensive way.

You do sometimes wonder about the quality of the research that backs up government policy – especially policy relating to driving. I suspect that the kind of research indicating that speed is a major factor in road accidents goes something like this: “Wow, that guy is going fast. That looks dangerous.” Or maybe: “Hmm. It seems that if you hit something faster it causes more damage. So speed must kill.”

Cynical? Me? Not if you look at the kind of research just put together by the University of Sussex to back up the Government’s “Act on CO2” initiative (whatever that means).

The research in this case consisted of comparing the heart rates of ten – yes, a whole ten – drivers making journeys on their own and ten driving with a companion. This revealed that “on average, there was a ten per cent reduction in heart rate when car sharing than when driving solo”.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: the grammar is pretty awful. But so is the thinking. Why should a lower heart rate be safer? Most people have a lower heart rate when they’re asleep. And even if a lower heart rate is safer, my own 45-year research reveals that I have carried a number of passengers (probably more than ten) who have increased my heart rate considerably, for one reason or another.

Experience leads me to conclude that driving with a companion is more dangerous than driving alone, because when you are alone you are not likely to turn your head to speak to someone who is not there; furthermore, you are more likely to concentrate when you don’t have someone next to you asking questions, commenting on the scenery and saying: “Wow, look at that aeroplane.”

It seems that for once even the Government couldn’t swallow the research and has abandoned a campaign to encourage people to share car journeys on the basis of it. The DfT observed, in announcing this decision: “It was not, and was not intended to be, a thoroughly robust piece of academic research.”

So if anyone has some research that could back up such a campaign, please ring the DfT. But you will need at least 20 people and a catch phrase. Something like: “The debate is over.”

Or to put it another way, we really, really don’t want you to debate it. BBC newsreader Peter Sissons has revealed that the BBC, in common with many other news media, is complicit in keeping quiet about any challenge to “orthodox” climate change propaganda.

It was one of several factors that persuaded him to leave his prestigious job. He describes how, after “what was billed as a climate change rally in London last December, the leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, went into the Westminster studio to be interviewed by me on the BBC News channel. She clearly expected what I call a ‘free hit’ – to be allowed to voice her views without being challenged on them.

“I pointed out to her that the climate didn’t seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions.

“Well, she was outraged. I don’t have the actual transcript, but Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views.”

Mr Sissons is one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change. He says: “The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.

“But it is effectively BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.

“Politically the argument may be settled, but any inquisitive journalist can find ample evidence it is not. I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”

We are coming close to a time when our entire civilised and relatively liberated way of life is threatened needlessly by people who feel themselves morally superior and therefore qualified to control us.

I have always tried to avoid criticism of individuals, because I am aware that we all have faults and make mistakes. But it is impossible to express the disquiet I feel effectively without personalising it. So let’s invent a man who has high principles, is academically in the top few per cent of the country, and who is by all accounts a pleasant and agreeable chap.

Let’s call him Rupert Read. He is a professor of philosophy, a Green Party councillor who failed to get elected as a Green MEP and is now standing for Parliament. By the time you read this he may have been elected, or he may not. (Not, in fact. He failed even to beat the UKIP candidate.) He is a vegan, a former hunt saboteur and, he tells us, a “frequent participant in (animal rights) demos over the years at places such as Huntingdon Life Sciences”.

What is there in Dr Read to object to?

Well, let’s start by observing that academic brilliance does not necessarily coincide with common sense and good judgement. It can do, but it is by no means the same thing, as those who head up university schools will quickly tell you.

What about high principles? On Dr Read’s website he quotes J K Galbraith, who says: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

He clearly intends this as a barb directed at his natural opponents, but it actually fits himself very well. He should perhaps listen to Oscar Wilde: “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

This is precisely what Dr Read does. It is presumably why he got into politics. Although many electors may find his stance on hunt sabotage and animal rights demos morally dubious because it seems to put animals before people, he does not hesitate to promote his views, and he has done so on Norwich City Council as a “key mover”, in his own words.

I am not suggesting for a moment that Dr Read is a violent man. He is not. I am suggesting simply that he has very strong ideas which he would like everyone to adopt. There is nothing wrong with that, until he is in a position to make us adopt them, or to change our lives to suit him.

Many readers will still feel, I’m sure, that they have no problem with what Dr Read advocates – and they are glad that, thanks to him, Norwich is a “foie-gras-free city”. Saving animals from pain or even indignity is a laudable thing, as long as you fully understand the implications, and have discovered precisely what is going on, and what the alternative is.

Nothing wrong with being a vegan either, except of course that it is extremely uncompromising and makes little allowance for other views.

But Dr Read now has bigger fish to fry. He has climate change. He used to insist on calling it global warming, but now he has reverted to climate change, because the world has not warmed in the last decade – an uncomfortable fact, but one that has not affected Dr Read’s stance at all. Holy writ is, after all, holy writ.

According to him, and in line with Al Gore, the leader of his religion, the debate is over. He has taken up a fundamentalist view with regard to climate change, which is that we caused it, and we can put it right. I suspect both these statements are probably false, but of course Dr Read is entitled to believe them. What he is not entitled to do is say the debate is over, because it is not.

If you say the debate is over, that automatically disenfranchises everyone who disagrees with you. That is not democracy: it is dictatorship. It means that the Government can put seriously ineffective windfarms wherever they like – or in Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s worrying words, “persuade people to accept them” – and introduce all sorts of taxes and demands that nibble away at the freedom of the individual, and the individual’s castle, or the heating of it.

Dr Read, it seems, is not too concerned about the freedom of the individual in this area. In a letter to his local paper this week he writes: “I would persistently call for Britain’s economy to be placed ‘on a war footing’ now to create a million new jobs in the Green sector and to safeguard our kids’ futures. This would both help raise employment and stabilise and tackle dangerous climate change.” (Eastern Daily Press, July 14)

The phrase “war footing” is a worrying one. Could it mean creating a situation where the Government can do more or less anything it likes, regardless of the voters, to ensure the country’s survival and “our kids’ futures”? If so, it’s rather scary.

Dr Read has made a number of promises on his website, centred on his being politically “clean, positive and honest”. He promises not to “scaremonger in ways that may frighten the most vulnerable members of our society”. His motives may well be pure (he is a pleasant chap), but if so he is deceiving himself: in the eyes of many he is scaremongering about climate change, and he certainly frightens me (though not because I believe him).

Is he being strictly honest in saying that we can stabilise and tackle climate change? Whether such a feat is even possible is very much open to debate, but it suits Dr Read to say that it is possible – and for nobody else to be allowed to say that it isn’t.

Last month an expert on polar bears was prevented from contributing to a meeting designed to produce one of many orchestrated reports that are being prepared to stoke up public alarm in preparation for the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

He has been studying polar bears for 30 years and is an acknowledged expert, but unfortunately he has observed that polar bears numbers are not declining, but are much higher than they were 30 years ago. He was told that his views were “counter to human-induced climate change” and “extremely unhelpful”, and his presence was not required. The bear facts did not bear examination, you might say.

I wonder what Dr Read thinks about polar bears. One thing is certain: he would not eat them.

Scare stories and strange predictions like those seen in many areas last week will become “the norm” in the years ahead, an expert warned last night, as newspapers forecast once again that climate change will affect “every aspect of our lives”.

Parts of the country were hit last Tuesday by ferocious summer storms not unlike similar storms that have occurred over the past half century and, possibly, beyond. Tonnes of hailstorms fell from the sky, together with acres of newsprint and enough ink to cause the sea level to rise by an estimated “huge amount”.

The most comprehensive research yet into wild predictions made by local newspapers forecasts many more outbreaks of freak news stories, based on nothing more than computer models fed by a series of assumptions presented as fact.

Tim Lenton, who has lectured at the University of East Anglia and writes frequently on climate change, warned that summer rain could decrease by more than one fifth and winter rain increase by 16%. On the other hand, it might not. Equally, icebergs could be a hazard in parts of the Wensum, and there was a real risk of temperate periods leading to a catastrophic lack of interest in the weather as a whole. He added that more rain was likely to fall on the wettest days, and it would probably be dry when it was not raining, except in coastal areas.

“Climate change is going to transform the way we live,” he added. “We will be reading fewer newspapers, which is dangerous for those employed there. But we will continue to believe that freak weather is unique to the last 20 years, despite years of evidence to the contrary. Older people who point this out will continue to be accused of not caring about future generations, despite the fact that many of them have grandchildren who they care very much about.”

Meanwhile newspapers have revealed that there was a heatwave in 2003, and 2000 people died. Of course, 30,000 people die from exposure to cold each year in the UK, according to the BBC, but this is not a useful statistic. It is not caused by greenhouse gases, after all. Fears that roughly 0.1 per cent of people writing in local newspapers know anything about climate change are, if anything, likely to rise in the years ahead.

Readers may have seen that I wrote a letter to the Eastern Daily Press in Norwich on the subject of climate change. It read as follows: “Dear Sir: Councillor Rupert Read castigates Alan Dale for not engaging with UEA’s ‘expert climate scientists’. Mr Dale has to my knowledge spent a huge amount of time trying to get UEA’s well-funded climate scientists to respond to the evidence he presents them with, but has had no success at all. The debate about climate change is far from over. Thousands of experts worldwide dispute man-made climate change.”

Well, that’s what appeared in the paper. What I actually wrote was: “Cllr Rupert Read castigates Alan Dale for not engaging with UEA’s ‘expert climate scientists’. Mr Dale has to my knowledge spent a huge amount of time trying to get UEA’s well-funded climate scientists to respond to the evidence he presents them with, but has had no success at all. While I recognise that Cllr Read, who also works at the UEA when he is not engaged in politics, is likely to take his colleagues’ and friends’ word for it, if he were to look further afield he would find that the debate about climate change is far from over. Thousands of experts worldwide dispute man-made climate change. I am sure that this view would receive short shrift in some places, but people who say the debate is over, and those who do not respond to criticism, must be greeted with some suspicion. Just who is in denial here?”

Obviously not a good question.

There is a television series called Numbers, in which a mega-brained young professor of mathematics assists the FBI in solving crimes by using statistics, algorithms and formulae that predict what criminals are going to do.

Its appeal lies partly in the attractive characters, but also in the idea that life should be like that: there should a scientific answer to every problem. In real life, people with normal-sized brains use numbers differently – primarily to justify their own agendas.

For reasons that may not be unconnected with money, the road safety industry has over the last few years been anxious to attribute a very high percentage of accidents to excessive speed. Figures like 30% – sometimes even 50% – have been, and still are, bandied about, although the Government has admitted that speed is a contributory factor in only 6% of all accidents, and 13% of fatal ones.

Since these are government figures, we tend to distrust them, and the Government is not likely to be downplaying the role of speed, so maybe the true figure is even lower. Despite this, the drive towards lower speed limits continues, fuelled by the disproportionately loud voices of those who don’t like cars anyway and want you to walk, cycle or bus everywhere. A big advantage to driving is speed; so they naturally want to make driving slower.

Certain road safety groups also have an obsession with speed, and a more-than-willingness to be free with their use of figures. Brake, for instance, confuses driving speed with impact speed when it claims that a car travelling at 35mph is twice as likely to kill a child as one travelling at 30mph. The statistic actually refers to impact speed, which is quite different: a car travelling at 35mph is unlikely to hit anyone at 35mph unless the victim suddenly materialises in the road. There would be braking and an attempt to avoid collision. The impact speed is likely to be much lower.

It could be counter-argued that a driver travelling at 35mph would be that little bit more alert, and without aggressively policed speed limits (yes, I mean cameras, fines and points), he might not be looking at the speedometer instead of scanning the road and pavements ahead for possible hazards.

But no such arguments are admitted, and we have recently been told we live in the speed camera capital of Europe. The Department of Transport justifies itself by saying that its policies have cut deaths or serious injuries by 17,000 a year while making about £100 million in fines.

Why include serious injuries in these figures? Well, “serious” is pretty hard to define, and the actual figures for serious injuries depend on who has been collecting them. Also, it muddies the water, which can be useful.

The independent pressure group Transport Watch on the other hand blames speed cameras for increasing fatal accidents, to the tune of almost 10,000 deaths since their introduction in the 1990s. It argues: “Between 1980 and 1995 UK road deaths were falling 7.1% a year. But since speed cameras arrived, deaths have fallen just 2.8% annually.” The other thing that has fallen, of course, is police patrols. There are 4309 speed cameras in the UK, and just 1904 police traffic patrol cars.

Clearly at least some of these numbers contradict each other. The problem with numbers is that they deceive us into thinking they are magical: they can solve everything, or reveal everything. Arguments based on common sense take a back seat because the numbers are somehow mysteriously heavier: they carry more weight.

The real threat to road safety is not speed: it is bad driving. Police patrols are better able to deal with this – when they are there. But mostly they are not.

The average motorist does not drive recklessly, but nevertheless has his collar felt and is made to feel like a criminal. Meanwhile those who drive with their eyes glued to the speedometer survive, but are a much bigger risk to other road users. The very few dangerous speeders seem to carry on regardless.

And many drive dangerously slowly in the current climate, either through incompetence or fear, or not realising that road safety is improved by those who don’t dither when joining or leaving faster traffic; who don’t hold up queues of cars that clearly would like to progress a little more quickly; and who don’t move snail-like into the outside lane about three miles before they intend to turn right.

Yes, but what are the numbers? The fact is, they are just about anything you want them to be – as you can see by clicking here and here. Happy motoring.

Global temperatures have not increased in the last decade. But it takes more than that to stop the global warming bandwagon, which will probably keep on rolling until it hits a glacier somewhere in Kent.

The Prince of Wales is anxious that we should combat climate change before it’s too late. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says climate change kills 300,000 people a year, and it’s time to stop polluting.

Why should we not believe them? They are distinguished people. The problem is that their expertise is in other areas. I don’t really blame them: they are surrounded by insistent and loud advisers – the sort of people who tell MPs what they can claim on expenses.

The count of 300,000 victims of climate change has all the hallmarks of a figure plucked out of the air. If by some fluke it is roughly true (how on earth would you find out?), it has probably always been true. Climate change does affect people, and the climate always changes: as Heinrich Heine might have said, c’est son metier.

If we can do something practical to alleviate the negative effects of climate change, then we should. But to think we can stop it happening is a delusion, and a very expensive one.

Incidentally, you can be fairly sure that anyone who describes carbon dioxide as pollution cannot be relied upon. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas vital to our survival. What could be described as pollution is soot, and a recent study has shown that soot could be responsible for 18% of global warming when it actually occurs. Until now this had been overlooked. I wonder what else has been overlooked.

Still the bandwagon rolls on, and last week’s elections saw many candidates flaunting their green credentials, little realising (until they got the results, perhaps) how many people they put off voting for them. Our local Green Party candidate attacked UKIP for having MPs who were climate sceptics (whatever that means), only to find that they had polled many more votes than he had.

So there is hope. Sadly the churches have been told they should “push the climate change agenda” as one of the top moral issues of the day, showing how comprehensively they have lost touch with their own heritage, theology, people in general and Jesus in particular.

But scientists of various persuasions and specialties are not all pushovers. At a recent gathering in Cambridge, David Henderson – a former Treasury official, professor of economics and critic of the Stern Report – issued a strong warning about the way the global warming bandwagon is powered.

“I have come to believe that the widespread trust in the IPCC is unwarranted,” he said, listing a number of criticisms about the IPCC’s handling of data and evidence – and alleging that those who managed the IPCC process had a “pre-commitment to the urgency of the climate issue” that prevented them from assessing objectively. His impressive criticisms of the process, and other comments, are available here.

Today’s received opinion on climate change is not well founded, he says, highlighting three characteristics of it: overstatement, overconfidence and the blind acceptance of a flawed advisory process.

UK Government departments and funded institutions working on climate change are, he says, almost entirely staffed by what might be termed “believers”. No surprise there. “I doubt whether among them there is even a handful of professional staff members who could be identified as even mild dissenters.”

He added that the IPCC was “neither objective nor authoritative”, and an alternative framework was needed – “less presumptive, more inclusive, more professionally watertight and more attuned to the huge uncertainties that remain”.

The huge uncertainties that remain don’t seem to worry global warming enthusiasts too much. A paper contributed to the journal Climatic Change says that such uncertainties – that is, the possibility that predictions are quite wrong – should not prevent governments from acting. It concludes that “if robust strategies are in place, minor inaccuracies in climate change modelling and predictions will be of little concern”.

In other words, the facts don’t matter. Well, unfortunately, that’s exactly what we thought.

Andrew Motion, who until last month was the UK Poet Laureate, has drawn attention to the poor knowledge in schools of the contents of the Bible. Judging by some of the bizarre answers given in quiz shows such as The Weakest Link, or even University Challenge, he is right to do so. And his observation might go some way to explaining why almost no-one nowadays knows what Christianity is, beyond a vague notion that it’s to do with people being good. (In case you were wondering, it’s to do with people being generally bad, admitting it and being forgiven.)

Mr Motion is concerned primarily that children are missing out on the historical and literary aspects of Christianity – the same Christianity that has been the motivation for countless works of visual, verbal and musical art over many centuries. It continues to motivate artists, of course, though not politicians so much.

Militant atheists may abhor any mention of faith in schools, but most of us would think that depriving pupils of knowledge and telling them what to think is not the optimum educational solution.

Such atheists seem to think that teaching Christianity is the same as evangelism. It is not, of course, and if the only way atheists think they can “protect” children from Christianity is by promoting ignorance, then they can have little confidence in the strength of their position.

It is surely significant that Muslim parents on the whole would rather their children attend an overtly Christian school than a secular one. I leave you to work out exactly what the significance is, and whether Christian parents would be equally happy to see their children attending Muslim schools.

Certainly there is concern among many Christians at the increasing influence of Muslims in our society – with the BBC installing a Muslim as head of religion, and the Koran, so I am told, being placed on a higher shelf than the Bible in courtrooms. The BBC is “known” for being happy to broadcast attacks on Christianity, but treading softly, softly around Muslims. But is that the issue here? It might be worth asking whether the new head of religion is good at his job, and whether he is the best candidate available.

As far as our secular society is concerned, one of the current battlegrounds is homosexuality. Christians hold different views on this, and some of those views are quite forceful. But should they be able to put these views in public debate? The Coroners and Justice Bill, which is presently in the House of Lords and has received heavy criticism there, seems to allow the interpretation that they can’t, which is a disturbingly anti-democratic stance, however the phraseology seeks to disguise it.

The often-shrouded point is that to oppose something, you don’t have to hate its proponents, or encouraging others to hate them. The thinking behind the Coroners and Justice Bill seems to be that in certain areas, everyone has to think and say the same thing. In what way is this different from Orwell’s vision of 1984?

Of course if you happen to be homosexual or gay, or both, then it would be nice if everyone was like you. (It would also signal the end of the human race, of course, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.)

Canterbury, which might be regarded as the “home” of English Christianity, was recently accused of not being gay enough. Apparently, there are no gay bars there. But why should there be? Are there any heterosexual-only bars? Any white-only bars? I should hope not. The point of equality and diversity is that we should be equal and diverse, not pushed into exclusive ghettos, or bars.

Instead of logical thinking, there seem to be huge irrational leaps going on. The fact that it is wrong to express hatred of homosexuals does not mean that it is essential to promote homosexuality. I don’t hate crocodiles or hamsters, but that doesn’t mean I have to promote them. I may feel that the level of crocodile and hamster activity in the world is about right.

But whatever stance Christians take on controversial issues, Christianity has something special to offer, which is forgiveness, love and acceptance – even to those we find completely wrong-headed. No, I don’t mean homosexuals; I mean absolutely anyone we disagree with. So I was delighted to read the restrained response of the Rev Sally Theakston, a team rector in Norfolk, when British National Party representatives attended one of her churches and then launched an attack on the worship there and on the Church in general.

She did not use the opportunity to attack BNP policies or advise people not to vote for them, however much she may have been tempted to do so. Instead, she said: “I am sorry that members of the BNP do not find worship at St Faith’s helpful for their discipleship.”

Way to go, Sally!

A head teacher makes all the difference to a school. So much so that if you are checking a school out to see if it is up to your child’s exacting standards, you will do well to ask the head if he or she is thinking of moving on. Once a head goes, the school mysteriously changes. It could leap over a cliff, or it could suddenly come alive with the sound of learning.

The best heads are not those who adhere desperately to local or central government criteria in a bid to totter up the league tables. The best heads have minds of their own and are willing to circumvent all the newt-like centralised stipulations to make sure their children get the best teaching and the best environment to work in. They are inspired, and inspiring.

So why are the best heads paradoxically desperate to retire? Because of the rubbish heaped on them by whichever “education education education” government happens to be in power. All the form-filling, the budget-bending, the health-and-safety nitpicking, the equality and diversity demands, the constant government “initiatives” and above all, the social work. Bit of a clue when the education department of a county council suddenly becomes children’s services.

Anyone with any intelligence just wants to put the whole lot in a bin bag and throw it at the nearest politician. Or ignore it, of course. But it does wear you down – which is why, as I said, so many great heads are keen to retire. And why, incidentally, so many deputies who would make great heads take a look at what is lumped on their own head’s heaving desk and decide that discretion is the better part of valour, so “thanks, but no thanks”.

How has this ludicrous situation come about? Primarily a lack of trust for those with expertise. As in so many areas where the Government feels it has to intrude, we end up with people with no special knowledge at all telling the experts what to do. It is as if a journalist were to draw up a plan for building a nuclear reactor and then insist that his plan was followed by the engineers. Result: nothing, or extremely dangerous fallout. Just what has happened in schools across the country.

But Britons in positions of authority love telling the masses what to do. No-one follows those ridiculous European directives more closely than us. Where the French would laugh and the Italians would pass by on the other side, we slavishly try to follow it all to the letter.

Perhaps that is why the Government is so enthusiastic about measures to combat climate change. It is not that there is any way of affecting climate change (this planet is bigger than all of us); it is just a glorious opportunity to put into operation all kinds of directives, warnings, demands and taxes – and best of all, to tell people how to live their lives.

So the United Kingdom becomes the only country in the world to set legally binding carbon budgets, in a meaningless bid to slash carbon emissions by a third within 11 years.

Environmental expert Bjorn Lomberg, of Copenhagen University, described this as “pure wishful thinking”, adding: “No country in the world has ever managed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by a third in just 11 years.”

But it will be worth it, won’t it? Well, you tell me. Government advisors say it will cost each household £600 a year, and apparently the effect will be to reduce world temperatures by one-three thousandths of a degree by the end of the century. And that’s if carbon dioxide really causes warming, which is by no means certain.

The other problem in schools, apart from the tendency of great head teachers to retire, is the perceived failure of those who are not academically able. There is no real reason why academic expertise should be more highly prized than the ability to, say, build a house. But for some reason our entire schools system has been based on exactly that strange misjudgement.

In a bid to change this, it became fashionable in some areas to concentrate all efforts on the less academically able, to bring them up to speed on paperwork. But that didn’t work either. What happened was that those who were good at arithmetic, writing and reading were deprived of showing their true potential, and those who had no talent for paperwork made little progress either – and through league tables and assessment tests they were deprived of demonstrating what they really were good at. Everyone was a loser.

The same is true for people who are good at driving. They find that all the measures taken by those in authority are aimed at someone else: namely those who are not very good at driving but good at something else – it doesn’t matter what. A transport expert once told me he had never travelled with a highways engineer who was a good driver, so perhaps they’re aimed at highways engineers. On the other hand, maybe he was unlucky.

So those who enjoy driving and who do not cause accidents find that everything is against them – most obviously road humps and speed cameras. Exceeding the speed limit is such a tiny cause of road accidents that a visiting Martian might think that we had lost our minds. There are undoubtedly bad drivers who exceed a safe speed for the conditions: most of them are inexperienced or habitual law-breakers.

These problems could be tackled by better driving instruction and more police patrols. But no, we have speed limits set lower and lower, so that even the good drivers become bad drivers, losing concentration and constantly taking their eyes off the road to check the speedometer. With cameras deliberately set to catch offenders rather than improve safety, the bad drivers go on being bad, and the good ones get fined for driving at a perfectly safe speed.

Job done. We have the statistics to prove it. Of course we have. We always do.