In 2004 John Youngdahl was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with Securities Fraud and Insider Trading. In October 2001 Youngdahl found out that sales of the Treasury Department’s 30-year bonds were going to be cut off. He found this out before the news was made public…and gave his firm’s Bond Traders the tip-off. In a matter of minutes they made a killing estimated at £3.5 million. Youngdahl was working for Goldman Sachs at the time and is now behind bars…incarcerated in the Land of Striped Sunshine.

Ways need to be found to put scientists in the dock too. They have their own forms of Insider Trading and need to be held publicly accountable for their Scientific Fraud. So far they have had an easy ride. This particular buck starts and stops at the top with the United Nations and its corrupt Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which stands accused of knowingly undervaluing the sun’s effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashing the greenhouse effect, overstating the past century’s temperature increase, arbitrarily repealing a fundamental law of physics for political convenience and tripling the man-made greenhouse effect to shoehorn its computer data into its prejudices.

IPCC’s third assessment report released four years ago is a Scientific Fraud…right up there with the Blair Dodgy Dossier on non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The report implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages by displaying two 450 000 year graphs…a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that is scaled to look similar. Usually similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The IPCC Report didn’t. If it had the truth would have shown…the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.

In 1995 David Deming…a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma…reconstructed North America’s historical temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: ‘With the publication of my article in Science I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them…someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes.’ One of the more important players foolishly let his guard slip and sent Deming an email that said ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.’ So they did.

The second IPCC Report in 1996 showed a 1000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the third IPCC Report in 2001 contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1000 years. This is wrong. Here is how it was done.

Firstly IPCC gave one technique for reconstructing pre-thermometer temperature four hundred times more weight than any other…and omitted to mention the fact. The overweighted technique was one which IPCC’s second report had said was unsafe…measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines. Tree-rings are wider in warmer years because temperature speeds up growth. But tree fertiliser speeds up growth too and one of them is carbon dioxide so this distorts the calculations unless some way is found to make allowance for shifting carbon dioxide levels.

This might be bad science but need not be criminal. But closer scrutiny shows that the deception goes deeper…a domain of barefaced lying and Scientific Fraud. IPCC stated that 24 data sets were included going back to 1400. But without saying so they left out the set showing the medieval warm period...tucking it away in a folder marked ‘censored data’.

IPCC then used a computer model to draw the graph from the data. Now anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of statistics knows you can best fit data to any curve. Give it a=x+b and you will get a straight line. Give it a=x to the power of b and you will get a curve. IPCC asked for hockey-sticks so it got them…even from random electronic ‘red noise’.

The large full-colour hockey stick was the only graph to appear six times in the IPCC Third Report in 2001. The Canadian Government copied it to every household. It is a lie. It took four years for a leading scientific journal to publish the truth. It was ignored. The Canadian Government did not apologise...and IPCC still uses it. The good news is that the US Senate investigated. They unearthed a conspiracy, labelling the graph ‘meretricious’ and noting that known associates of the scientists who had compiled the graph wrote many of the papers supporting its conclusions.

IPCC…and the Stern Report…pretend the graph is not important. But scores of scientific papers show the medieval warm period was real, global and up the 3C warmer than now. There were no glaciers in the tropical Andes, Viking farms in Greenland and little ice at the North Pole when a Chinese naval squadron sailed round the Arctic in 1421.

‘Given by the hand of John by the grace of God King of England in the meadow that is called Runnymede between Windsor and Staines on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign for the better ordering of our kingdom to all Free Men of our Kingdom we have granted for us and our heirs for ever all the liberties written out below to have and to keep for them and their heirs of us and our heirs.’

Thus ran Magna Carta in 1215. Clause 13 was still valid with a few minor amendments when it was released under Royal Seal by John’s son King Henry III ten years later in 1225. It ran thus. ‘The city of London shall enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water. We also will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs.’

Two other clauses would have been of particular interest to the London Merchants with their Guilds and Companies and Antient Traditions. Clause 41 allowed that ‘All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear and may stay or travel within it by land or water for purposes of trade free from all illegal exactions in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. This however does not apply in time of war to merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without injury to their persons or property until we or our chief justice have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country at war with us. If our own merchants are safe they shall be safe too.’

In King John’s Charter of 1215 a Clause 42 was also to be found that ran thus. ‘In future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to our kingdom unharmed and without fear by land or water preserving his allegiance to us, except in time of war for some short period for the common benefit of the realm. People that have been imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law of the land people from a country that is at war with us and merchants - who shall be dealt with as stated above - are excepted from this provision.’ This clause was one of several omitted from King Henry III’s Charter of 1225.

Another of King John’s Clauses that fell out of royal favour between 1215 and 1225 was Clause 61 which was omitted from King Henry III’s Charter. At 540 words in its English translation it is the longest clause in King John’s Magna Carta of 1215 and it began thus. ‘Since we have granted all these things for God for the better ordering of our kingdom and to allay the discord that has arisen between us and our barons and since we desire that they shall be enjoyed in their entirety with lasting strength for ever we give and grant to the barons the following security’. Eight sub-clauses then follow regarding specific contingencies. The first three sub-clauses ran thus.

‘The barons shall elect twenty-five of their number to keep and cause to be observed with all their might the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.’

‘If we, our chief justice our officials or any of our servants offend in any respect against any man or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security and the offence is made known to four of the said twenty-five barons they shall come to us…or in our absence to the chief justice…to declare it and claim immediate redress.’

‘If we…or in our absence abroad the chief justice…make no redress within forty days reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or to him the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles lands, possessions or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon. Having secured the redress they may then resume their normal obedience to us.’ That’s a devil of an incentive for Central Power to pull its finger out…and quite the clearest statements of Real Subsidiarity…with teeth…to be found anywhere.

The Guilds and Companies of the City of London clearly thought so too because they adopted Clause 61 for their own governance and have stuck with it through thick and thin for nigh on 800 years…until now. Instead of the Good Burghers of the City of London seeking to spread their particular form of enlightened governance throughout Her Majesty’s Kingdom…for a similar manner of governance should be embraced by every town and village and not just one square mile of it...moves are afoot to force the Council of 25 Barons to share power with a Court of 100.

An application from Julian Malins…a barrister whose brother is an Member of Parliament…is to be heard by a closed session of Common Council. It seeks to scrap the exclusive rights of the 25 aldermen to provide and elect the Lord Mayor by tagging a clause onto some existing piece of Parliamentary Legislation and sneaking it through on a Bad News Day. Why? Because the last thing the Plotters want is to open up the matter of their governance…or anybody else’s…to public scrutiny by either house of parliament. Keeping the king at bay is one thing. The lid of this particular Pandora’s Box must be kept firmly shut…lest a Baying Mob escapes with Real Power within its grasp.

At seven o’clock yesterday evening I listened to the 15 000th episode of The Archers which first began broadcasting 57 years ago on New Year’s Day 1951 and is the longest running soap opera in the world. The day was not marked by a crowd-pleasing celebrity appearance…such as the visit by Princess Margaret in 1984 to celebrate the Borchester NSPCC Gala Dinner…but by something altogether more seismic. Would Ruth Archer finally consummate her potentially adulterous relationship with herdsman Sam Barton? There has not been so much simulated media tension since someone shot JR in Dallas. I can now tell you that Ruth has backed off…although a twist in the tail is possible.

The affair has caused much heart-searching among listeners with many claiming that the protagonists are being made to act in uncharacteristic ways and that the script has been sexed-up. But not everyone agrees. Listening to Ruth and Sam thrash out their dilemma over the past few weeks has been no different from overhearing a BBC producer and a Westminster PPS discuss their adulterous affair. The talk is all of personal happiness, self-esteem and a fresh start. The shock this will give to children, husband or extended family hardly counts against the reality of How I Feel.

Unfortunately The Archers is not East Enders or Friends or just any soap opera. The ‘everyday story of country folk’ taps into our romance with the countryside which in our soft-focused vision is inhabited by the virtuous descendants of Olde England. The rural moral code is infinitely superior to the urban one. Villages are mutually helpful communities where people share sterling values and never shy away from their duties. And vice stops at the M25.

Vanessa Whitburn…editor of The Archers…has appeared several times on BBC Radio 4 in recent days. She has not got to where she is by being too candid with her public. But in defending her scriptwriters Vanessa seems to take the view that The Archers should strive for realism. Mythical worlds played out against a background of real-life farming concerns can be taken too far. In reality the shenanigans of the metropolitan middle classes have nothing on the frisky rural hicks whose pastimes include drinking to excess, gambling away fortunes and stealing one another’s wives.

The Archers has always been an everyday story of the kind of countryfolk who have affairs straight out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover…as in Christine Archer falling for the alcoholic gamekeeper George Barford…or Footballers’ Wives…as with Jack Woolley’s first wife having affairs with the husbands of future stepdaughters Jennifer and Lillian. Here are some more.

Middle-aged publican Sid had adulterous sex in the shower; Ambridge’s token Gay Couple fell into each other’s arms in a polytunnel; a plane crashed into Dan Archer’s 5-acre field; Shula Archer lost her virginity to a journalist from the Barchester Echo; Tom Forrest was in the dock for shooting Clarrie Grundy’s poacher uncle Bob Larkin; unmarried Jennifer Archer had a baby…by another cowhand; Mrs Perkins’ nephew Bill was beaten to death outside The Bull…and the vicar had an affair with a Hindu parishioner.

So The Archers has always been racy, sometimes improbable but never dull…until now. Some of the dullest scenes in the programme’s history have been created about Ruth and Sam’s love in the cowshed. Internet message boards have been flooded. Here are some examples.

‘This is getting somewhat unbelievable. I’m getting very bored with this storyline.’
‘I feel bilious every time I hear Sam and Ruth kissing.
Are we expected to believe that Ruth will disappear into the sunset with Sam?’
‘This sordid little liaison is making me feel dirty already. It is a mere excuse for the ghastly cowman to get his wellie-booted leg over.’
‘I was almost physically sick after last night’s episode. I really can’t cope with any more slurping. Have mercy I sometimes listen during the evening meal.’
‘Are we really supposed to believe in Ruth’s passion for dour boring cowman Sam?’

The real scandal at The Archers is not the potential nookie between a member of Ambridge’s ruling family and a hired hand who thinks her name is Roof…the class and puritanical overtones in the internet postings would have amused D.H. Lawrence…but the fact that it had been so tedious drawing it out until yesterday’s 15 000th anniversary edition. Most diehard fans are sick to death…not to mention embarrassed…by the amateurish production of episodes consisting entirely of ‘Aww Sam! And ‘Oohh Roof!’…with background mooing from a compliant herd of cows.