{"id":407466,"date":"2025-10-10T13:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=407466"},"modified":"2025-10-10T13:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:08:11","slug":"the-great-reverse-ferret-is-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=407466","title":{"rendered":"The Great Reverse Ferret is Underway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Joanna Gray<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appears to be the season for the reverse ferret, the software update, the narrative whiplash. Call it what you will, but everyone seems to be at it. Boris Johnson said he went far too fast with Net Zero<\/a>, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride<\/a> announced with a straight face that formerly Big-Spending-High-Tax-Tories will cut public spending by \u00a347 billion, and Keir Starmer<\/a>, of all people, explained sententiously that immigration has got out of hand. I was in the audience of a literary festival<\/a> in Greece last week when Rory Stewart said we had been living in an \u201cextraordinarily deluded age\u201d. He called himself \u201cone of the guilty men\u201d involved in attempting to export liberal democracy and the rule of law to an uninterested world. The assembled audience listened agog as Florence of Arabia dismantled the past few decades of deluded foreign and overseas aid policy. As Captain Alberto Bertorelli used to say in \u2019Allo \u2019Allo<\/em>: \u201cWhata-mistaka-to-maka.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is astonishing to contemplate such things. How were these apparently clever, well-meaning folk duped? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did they know they were wrong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did they know they were wrong? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long did they keep it up? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do they plan to make amends? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could the same happen to us? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

William Wordsworth had the measure of things when he wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

For by superior energies; more strict<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affiance in each other; faith more firm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their unhallowed principles; the bad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have fairly earned a victory o\u2019er the weak,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vacillating, inconsistent good.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes such narrative whiplash from unhallowed principles can happen in a heartbeat and no-one remains to defend what was once trumpeted by the thinking class. Who but\u00a0Ed Davey<\/a>\u00a0still insists ladies can have willies? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the NetZero Banking Alliance has\u00a0folded<\/a>, how quickly will other corporate support for green issues just melt away? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether motivated by ambition, delusion or cowardice, what are we long-time sceptics and \u201cvacillating, inconsistent good\u201d to make of those who recently admitted to colossal, global errors of judgement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of us who are of a religious disposition, we can reach for Luke 15:7: \u201cI tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.\u201d However much they may grate, if influential people such as Rory Stewart realise, dangerously belatedly, the error of their ways, then we can all rejoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However: it\u2019s still outrageously annoying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the small scale scarring of a field close to my home with a disgusting solar farm, to the one million-plus dead in the Middle East after decades of Western intervention, the children maimed with gender hormones, and immigration and welfare dependency causing British cities to once again resemble slums<\/a>, these newly unfashionable ideologies have not been without consequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And on a lesser scale, it is intensely annoying for we regular folk who realised at the time such ideologies were perilously bogus. We who marched against the Iraq War, who thought the hockey stick graph a bit dicey, who knew \u2018gender affirming care\u2019 was child abuse, find ourselves wailing like Cassandra, <\/em>the accurate prophetess whom no-one believed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

No, no, the torment!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once more, the hideous pain of a true seer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In response to former Labour party supporter Matthew Syed\u2019s dopey realisation that the state\u2019s \u201cwild move to the Left<\/a>\u201d is a dangerous thing, Peter Hitchens manages to maintain his dignity, writing<\/a>: \u201cI was specifically and in detail, explaining and enumerating this 20-plus years ago. I didn\u2019t see you around. Is it possible you were a footsoldier in Blair\u2019s Army then?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However tempting it is to yell with Cassandra-like frustration: \u201cI told you so, why weren\u2019t you listening?!<\/em>,\u2019 we might instead attempt to ensure the closed mindsets that made such idiotic ideologies stick do not again deaden the bien pensant <\/em>class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As society moves forward, let us not repeat the folly of being\u00a0certain<\/em>\u00a0about the ideas that come next. When this \u2018Age of Delusion\u2019 finally passes, let\u2019s avoid making similar catastrophic mistakes because we are sure we are right, convinced we\u2019re \u2018on the right side of history\u2019 or too cowardly to voice dissent and follow where the evidence leads. As new ideologies begin to coalesce, we mustn\u2019t fear putting them under rigorous scrutiny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we absolutely sure reducing immigration is always a good thing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about collapsing birthrates? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will fracking and North Sea oil definitely solve our energy problems? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is talk around ethno-nationalism going to lead us down dark paths? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What views will we seek to deny in 20 years\u2019 time? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s not sanctify incoming new ideas just because the Overton Window has shifted and all our favourite podcasters agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai puts it best in The Place Where We Are Right<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plough.

And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears to be the season for the reverse ferret, the software update, the narrative whiplash. Call it what you will, but everyone seems to be at it. Boris Johnson said he went far too fast with Net Zero, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride announced with a straight face that formerly Big-Spending-High-Tax-Tories will cut public spending by \u00a347 billion, and Keir Starmer, of all people, explained sententiously that immigration has got out of hand. I was in the audience of a literary festival in Greece last week when Rory Stewart said we had been living in an \u201cextraordinarily deluded age\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":407472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"Explore the implications of the 'great reverse ferret' in politics and how societal ideologies are shifting and evolving amidst controversy.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"The Great Reverse Ferret: Lessons from Our Deluded Age","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691838678,691818154,691838680,691838679,691828237],"class_list":{"0":"post-407466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-mass-immigration","9":"tag-net-zero","10":"tag-netzero-banking-alliance","11":"tag-reckoning","12":"tag-woke-gobbledegook","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0Screenshot-2025-10-09-145804.jpeg?fit=1395%2C769&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1I02","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":259835,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=259835","url_meta":{"origin":407466,"position":0},"title":"Andrea Jenkyns MP joins Net Zero Watch board","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"31\/05\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrea has been MP for Morley and Outwood since 2015 and served as a junior minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.","rel":"","context":"In \"Andrea Jenkyns\"","block_context":{"text":"Andrea Jenkyns","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=andrea-jenkyns"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/0Screen-Shot-2023-05-31-at-09.00.43.png?fit=1139%2C593&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/0Screen-Shot-2023-05-31-at-09.00.43.png?fit=1139%2C593&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/0Screen-Shot-2023-05-31-at-09.00.43.png?fit=1139%2C593&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/0Screen-Shot-2023-05-31-at-09.00.43.png?fit=1139%2C593&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/0Screen-Shot-2023-05-31-at-09.00.43.png?fit=1139%2C593&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":205123,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=205123","url_meta":{"origin":407466,"position":1},"title":"Calls for Boris Johnson to pause Net Zero policies after Auditor General warns costs risk spiralling out of control","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"20\/06\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"London, 20 June \u2014 Net Zero Watch is calling on Boris Johnson to pause Net Zero policies and spending plans after the UK\u2019s Auditor General has warned that their costs risk spiralling out of control. Climate policy group Net Zero Watch has welcomed the decision by the Auditor General to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-20-at-13.04.52-2048x1078-1.png?fit=1200%2C632&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-20-at-13.04.52-2048x1078-1.png?fit=1200%2C632&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-20-at-13.04.52-2048x1078-1.png?fit=1200%2C632&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-20-at-13.04.52-2048x1078-1.png?fit=1200%2C632&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-20-at-13.04.52-2048x1078-1.png?fit=1200%2C632&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":204492,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=204492","url_meta":{"origin":407466,"position":2},"title":"Boris Johnson warned he won\u2019t survive continued ban of UK shale gas\u00a0","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"15\/06\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Plans to keep 1,2 or maybe 3 coal-fired\u00a0power stations on standby\u00a0over winter look somewhat threadbare for a population of around 70 million, as the gas crisis rages on. 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