It's like the 1970s all over again

When people think back to the dying days of the last Labour government back in 1979, they often remember the winter of discontent and the piles of rubbish that lay uncollected due to the binmen being on strike.

Nearly 30 years later, history is repeating itself. The rubbish is lying uncollected, but this time, it's not the binmen that are on strike, but the local council, who've decided that you only need your rubbish collected once a fortnight.

Fallout from the "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

The Great Global Warming Swindle seems to reflect a trend for TV programmes that break taboos. It has attracted a lot of media attention on both sides of the Atlantic.

Predictably, the Guardian and Independent hated it, whilst the Daily Telegraph was more supportive. The following comments are worth a read...

• Dominic Lawson in the Independent
• Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph
• Brendan O' Neill in Spiked online

What is really shocking is the number of people who wanted to see the programme taken off the air, including Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat's Environment Spokesman. What are all these people scared of?

An inconvenient truth.....the fact that the debate on global warming is far from closed

In the 1960s, we were told that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation by the late 20th century. The world population has grown by over 50% since then, but were still here. 30 years ago we were told that the world is threatened by global cooling. Today we are told that the world faces a global warming catastrophe unless we take urgent action. To even challenge this idea has become taboo.

So praise is in order for Channel 4 for screening The Great Global Warming Swindle. They may have been responsible for some pretty awful programmes (Big Brother and Minipops come to mind), but their current affairs programmes have always been first class. They've never been scared to tackle sacred cows, regardless of whether they are left or right wing causes.

The programme just goes to show that the jury is still out on global warming, so before David Cameron jumps on the trendy causes bandwagon, he should pay a little more attention to both sides of the argument.

Regardless of where the debate leads, I intend to carry on recycling my bottles and newspapers, I hate the idea of our beautiful country being littered with landfill sites.

You can watch the programme here