Deal or No Deal

So there has finally been a breakthrough at the International Climate Change Talks in Bali, where I’ve been shadowing negotiations with a Green Piss delegation of single earth mothers - mostly from Totnes in Devon - at what the press pack are now referring to enigmatically as the Krypton Factor of global summits. At 5am this morning, as the UK’s Environment Minister, Hilary Benn, emerged from a sixty foot pineapple looking pie-eyed and spaz-faced, we knew something was afoot. In the event it was a false alarm: Benn was on a Mars Bar and Red Bull run. However, two hours later the pineapple finally bore fruit, as Benn came out again to announce a comprehensive roadmap of ambitious goals for a timetable of further climate change negotiations.

What this boils down to, in a nutshell, is a raft of measures designed to make concerted efforts towards facing up to the challenges of raising the awareness, of people, of the need for the sustained promotion of concrete action in tackling CO2 emissions. Although I wouldn’t wish to take credit myself for this historic agreement – basically because I wasn’t involved – I would hasten to add that I do feel personally vindicated by the knockers and detractors that said I was wasting my time going to Bali, since Java had much better rafting.

Today, as developers in the north of this idyllic Indonesian paradise frantically chop down forests and burn off peat land to make way for a huge environmental theme park, the eyes of the world are turning on Bali in the renewed hope that, finally, people will wake up tomorrow morning fully conscious of the need to promote the need for change.

And whether you’re Chris Martin from Coldplay or a humble Green Piss delegate shouldn’t detract from the fact that we’re all fare-paying passengers on the same lump of cosmic space dust. Now pass me that Red Bull before I dry heave. Diana Inquest Latest

Fresh light on Di Murder

It appears that there’s been a dramatic development at the Diana Princess of Hearts Inquest in London, as new photographic evidence this week emerged casting fresh light on the events shortly preceding the Princess’ tragic death. Although not yet widely reported I can now exclusively reveal to you the photographs thought to have been taken just minutes before the fateful car crash.

The first, a panoramic view across Paris taken from the Right Bank of the Seine, is alleged to reveal an assassin atop the Eiffel Tower aiming an unidentified weapon in the general direction of the tunnel where the Princess’ Mercedes spun out of control. In the second, a woman suspiciously eats ice cream on a park bench somewhere in the Paris metropolitan area.

I’m no expert, but like most of the evidence turned up so far at this trial, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that they don’t appear that conclusive. “Then again,” counters Al-Fayed’s legal team, “the fact that these images cannot prove a conspiracy does not prove in itself that they cannot NOT prove a conspiracy.”

That’s bound to make sense to someone. Let’s hope the legal beagles can get to the bottom of this complex case as soon as possible, if only to set so many British minds at rest.

(Originally published 16 December 2007)