Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Encyclopedia
Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (born 14 February 1952) is a British politician, public speaker, former newspaper editor and hereditary peer
. Formerly a member of the Conservative Party
, Monckton has been the Head of the Policy Unit for the UK Independence Party since November 2010. He was Deputy Leader of the Party under Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He served in Conservative Central Office and worked for Margaret Thatcher
's Number 10 Policy Unit
during the 1980s. He also worked for The Universe
, The Sunday Telegraph, Today
and Evening Standard
newspapers.
Monckton became known in the 1990s for his invention of the Eternity puzzle
, a mathematical puzzle for which he offered a prize of one million pounds to the first person who could solve it within four years. In recent years he has come to public attention for holding sceptical views about man-made climate change
..
and Marianna Letitia (nee Bower), former High Sheriff of Kent
and a Dame of Malta. He has three brothers, Timothy, Jonathan and Anthony and a sister, Rosa
, wife of journalist Dominic Lawson
. His father raised the family as Roman Catholics after converting at Cambridge.
Monckton was educated at Harrow School
and Churchill College, Cambridge
, where he received an MA in classics in 1974, and at University College, Cardiff
, where he obtained a diploma in journalism studies. In 1990, he married Juliet Mary Anne Malherbe Jensen. In 2006, on the death of his father, he acceded to the title of viscount
.
Monckton is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Broderers
, an Officer of the Order of St John of Jerusalem
, a Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and a member of the Roman Catholic Mass Media Commission. He is also a qualified Day Skipper with the Royal Yachting Association
, and has been a trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband
of the Atlantic since 1986.
He suffers a mild form of Graves' disease
.
in 1974 at the age of 22, where he worked as a reporter and leader-writer. From 1977 to 1978, he worked at Conservative Central Office as a press officer, becoming the editor of the Roman Catholic newspaper The Universe in 1979, then managing editor of The Sunday Telegraph magazine in 1981. He joined the London Evening Standard newspaper as a leader-writer in 1982.
In 1979, Monckton met Alfred Sherman
, who co-founded the pro-Conservative think tank
the Centre for Policy Studies
with Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph
in 1974. Sherman asked Monckton to take the minutes at the CPS's study group meetings. Monckton subsequently became the secretary for the centre's economic, forward strategy, health and employment study groups. He wrote a paper on the privatisation of council housing by means of a rent-to-mortgages scheme that brought him to the attention of Downing Street. Ferdinand Mount
, the head of the Number 10 Policy Unit
and a former CPS director, brought Monckton into the Policy Unit in 1982. He was recruited as a domestic specialist with responsibilities for housing and parliamentary affairs, working alongside Mount and Peter Shipley on projects such as the phasing out of council housing. He left the unit in 1986 to become assistant editor of the newly established, and now defunct, tabloid newspaper Today
. He was a consulting editor for the Evening Standard
from 1987 to 1992 and was its chief leader-writer from 1990 to 1992. In 1989 Monckton claimed damages for libel over the article "Rosa's bit of cheek" in the 9 March edition of the Daily Mail
. In 1991, Monckton won a libel case over a 28 September 1990 article about his financial affairs in Private Eye
.
Since 2002 Monckton has had several newspaper articles published critical of the IPCC and current scientific consensus on climate change, in addition to more light hearted pieces related to his bowler hat wearing.
, Chelsea.
In 1999, Monckton created and published the Eternity puzzle
, a geometric puzzle that involved tiling a dodecagon
with 209 irregularly shaped polygon
s called polydrafter
s. A £1 million prize was won after 18 months by two Cambridge mathematicians. By that time, 500,000 puzzles had been sold. Monckton also launched the Eternity II puzzle
in 2007, but, after the four-year prize period, no winner came forward to claim the £2 million prize.
, which provided that hereditary peers would no longer have an automatic right to sit and vote in the House of Lords
. Monckton asserts that the Act is flawed and unconstitutional, and has referred to himself as "a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature" in a letter to US Senators, and also as "a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote."
The House of Lords authorities have said Monckton is not and never has been a member and that there is no such thing as a non-voting or honorary member of the House. In July 2011 the House took the "unprecedented step" of publishing online a cease and desist
letter to Monckton from the Clerk of the Parliaments
, which concluded, "I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not."
Notwithstanding his criticism of the House of Lords Act, Monckton has offered himself as a candidate for one of the retained seats for hereditary peers which it provides. He stood unsuccessfully in four by-elections for vacant seats created by deaths among the 92 hereditary peers remaining in the Lords after the reforms. He stood for a Conservative seat in a March 2007 by-election; of the 43 candidates, 31 received no votes, Monckton included. He subsequently stood in the crossbench by-elections of May 2008, July 2009, and June 2010, again receiving no votes. He was highly critical of the way the Lords was reformed, describing the procedure in the March 2007 by-election, with 43 candidates and 47 electors, as "a bizarre constitutional abortion."
He has also considered standing for election to the House of Commons (which hereditary peers are entitled to do if they are not members of the House of Lords). At the 2010 general election he was nominated as the UK Independence Party
(UKIP) candidate for the Scottish constituency of Perth and North Perthshire
, but withdrew in accordance with UKIP's policy of not opposing other Eurosceptic parliamentary candidates.
In June 2010, UKIP announced he had been appointed its deputy leader, to serve alongside David Campbell Bannerman.
In 2011 he stood as lead party-list candidate for UKIP in the Scottish Parliament constituency of Mid Scotland and Fife
. Despite failing to gain representation in the Scottish Parliament, UKIP improved its performance in Mid Scotland and Fife, gaining 1.1% of the region's vote.
Monckton questions much of the science that is used as the basis for the IPCC predictions for global warming. His position on the correlation between CO2 and global warming appears contradictory — at times he implies that he believes there is a greenhouse effect, and that CO2 contributes to it, at other times he appears to believe that marked changes in global temperature cannot be caused by CO2 because "there is a startling absence of correlation between the CO2-concentration trend and the temperature trend, necessarily implying that—at least in the short term—there is little or no causative link between the two", and that there is "a close correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature: but it was temperature that changed first".
At times Monckton agrees that humanity is adding CO2 to the atmosphere and that some warming will result, but he questions how much CO2 is being added, how much warming will occur, how much damage it will do, and whether addressing it by taxing or regulating CO2 is cost-effective. In a 2006 article he questioned the appropriateness of using a near-zero discount rate
in the Stern Review
, which, he wrote, had underestimated the costs of mitigation and overstated its benefits. He said that mitigation was "expensively futile without the consent of the Third World's fast-growing nations".
After a presentation by Monckton at Bethel University (Minnesota)
in October 2009, Professor John P Abraham
of University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
produced a rebuttal to Monckton's claims. John Abraham investigated the origins of many of the claims by contacting the authors of those papers Monckton had cited and concluded that "he had misrepresented the science". Monckton responded to Abraham's statement soon after, stating, "he looks like an overcooked prawn", and expressing the view that Abraham had repeatedly misquoted him to third-party scientists and had then obtained understandably hostile comments from them, which he had improperly used against Monckton. John Abraham's responses to Monckton's criticisms were that Monckton "dealt with a small number of very peripheral issues", and that it did not address the "many serious scientific lapses which were present in your [Monckton's] presentation".
Monckton "initiated the process of having Abraham hauled up before whatever academic panel his Bible College can muster, to answer disciplinary charges of wilful academic dishonesty amounting to gross professional misconduct unbecoming a member of his profession", and asked that Abraham's talk be removed from the University servers, and a donation of $10,000 and $100,000 be made respectively by Abraham and the University to the "United States Association of the Order of Malta for its charitable work in Haiti". The university responded that "The University of St Thomas respects your right to disagree with Professor Abraham, just as the University respects Professor Abraham's right to disagree with you. What we object to are your personal attacks against Father Dease, and Professor Abraham, your inflammatory language, and your decision to disparage Professor Abraham Father Dease and The University of St Thomas", and it refused all of Monckton's demands.
Since 2008 he has toured Britain, the US and Australia delivering talks to groups related to the subject. In 2009 he was invited on three occasions before Congress to speak on the behalf of Republican representatives. He followed this up with his July 2010 tour of Australia. Between 2009 and 2010 the film maker Rupert Murray
followed Monckton on his climate change tour. The film was later broadcast on 31 January 2011 on BBC Four titled "Meet the sceptics". Prior to its broadcast its depiction of Monckton was described by fellow sceptic James Delingpole
as "another hatchet job". Previously in 2008 Monckton had appeared in another BBC production "Earth: The Climate Wars" that he accused of making him look like a "potty peer". Monckton went to the High Court to gain an injunction against the "Meet the sceptics" broadcast, complaining of breach of contract and requesting a ruling that his three minute or 500 word rebuttal should be added to the programme. He did not obtain the injunction, the judge ruled that Monckton's interpretation of clarity in the contract was incorrect, and the "balance of justice" favoured refusal of the injunction.
) the right to buy their homes
." Criticizing the campaign to save the Ravenscraig
ironworks, Monckton wrote, "The Scots are subsidy junkies whingeing like crumpled bagpipes and waiting for a fix of English taxpayers' money."
He has been associated with the Referendum Party
, advising its founder, Sir James Goldsmith
. In 2003 he helped a Scottish Tory breakaway group, the Scottish Peoples Alliance
. In 2009 he joined the UK Independence Party; he is now deputy leader.
Monckton was a sponsor of the anti-homosexual Conservative Family Campaign in the 1990s.
In 1997, Monckton criticised works at the Fotofeis (the Scottish International Festival of Photography) and Sensation as "feeble-minded, cheap, pitiable, exploitative sensationalism perpetrated by the talent-free and perpetuated by over-funded, useless, muddle-headed, middle-aged, pot-bellied, brewer's-droopy quangoes which a courageous Government would forthwith cease to subsidise with your money and mine."
entitled "AIDS: A British View", he argued that "there is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month ... all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently." This would involve isolating between 1.5 and 3 million people in the United States
("not altogether impossible") and another 30,000 people in the UK ("not insuperably difficult"). Monckton's article concluded, however, that current Western sensibilities would not allow this standard protocol for containing a new, fatal and incurable infection to be applied: therefore, he said, many would needlessly die. The article was controversial and The American Spectator's then assistant managing editor, Andrew Ferguson
, denounced it in the letters column of the same issue. Monckton appeared on the BBC
's Panorama
programme in February 1987 to discuss his views and present the results of an opinion poll that found public support for his position.
Monckton has since stated "the article was written at the very outset of the AIDS epidemic, and with 33 million people around the world now infected, the possibility of [quarantine] is laughable. It couldn't work." He also said that this standard protocol could have worked at the time; that senior HIV investigators had called for it; and that many of the lives that have been lost could have been saved.
an auto-immune disease thought to have been triggered either by a one-time virus or bacterial infection, and said he was researching a "broad-spectrum cure" for infectious diseases. UKIP's CV for Monckton states that "patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves' Disease, multiple sclerosis
, influenza
, and herpes simplex 6. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue."
There are no other sources than UKIP for the claims, and some scepticism has been expressed about their validity.
Two patent applications in Monckton's name are registered at the UK Intellectual Property Office.
for many years; as he put it in a 2007 interview, he would "leave the European Union
, close down 90 per cent of government services and shift power away from the atheistic, humanistic government and into the hands of families and individuals." In 1994, he sued the Conservative government of John Major
for agreeing to contribute to the costs of the Protocol on Social Policy agreed in the 1993 Maastricht Treaty
, although the UK had an opt-out from the protocol. The case was heard in the Scottish Court of Session
in May 1994. His petition for judicial review
was dismissed by the court for want of relevancy.
The Science and Public Policy Institute
, of which Monckton is policy director, has published nine non peer-reviewed articles by Monckton on climate-change science.
Hereditary peer
Hereditary peers form part of the Peerage in the United Kingdom. There are over seven hundred peers who hold titles that may be inherited. Formerly, most of them were entitled to sit in the House of Lords, but since the House of Lords Act 1999 only ninety-two are permitted to do so...
. Formerly a member of the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
, Monckton has been the Head of the Policy Unit for the UK Independence Party since November 2010. He was Deputy Leader of the Party under Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He served in Conservative Central Office and worked for Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
's Number 10 Policy Unit
Number 10 Policy Unit
The Number 10 Policy Unit is a body of policymakers in 10 Downing Street in the British government. Originally set up to support Harold Wilson in 1974, it has gone through a series of guises to suit the needs of successive Prime Ministers, staffed variously by political advisers, civil servants or...
during the 1980s. He also worked for The Universe
The Universe (newspaper)
The Universe is a newspaper for Roman Catholics in Britain and Ireland. It was founded on 8th December 1860 and has been in continuous publication since...
, The Sunday Telegraph, Today
Today (UK newspaper)
Today was a national newspaper in the United Kingdom, which was published between 1986 and 1995.-History:Today, with the American newspaper USA Today as inspiration, launched on Tuesday, 4 March 1986, with the front page headline, "Second Spy Inside GCHQ". At 18 pence, it was a middle-market...
and Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
newspapers.
Monckton became known in the 1990s for his invention of the Eternity puzzle
Eternity puzzle
Eternity is a tiling puzzle created by Christopher Monckton and launched by the Ertl Company in June 1999. Consisting of 209 pieces, it was marketed as being practically unsolveable, with a £1 million prize on offer for whoever could solve it within four years. The prize was paid out in October...
, a mathematical puzzle for which he offered a prize of one million pounds to the first person who could solve it within four years. In recent years he has come to public attention for holding sceptical views about man-made climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
..
Personal life
Monckton was born the eldest son of the late Major-General Gilbert Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of BrenchleyGilbert Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Gilbert Walter Riversdale Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley CB, OBE, MC served in the British Army from 1939 to 1967, retiring with the rank of Major-General...
and Marianna Letitia (nee Bower), former High Sheriff of Kent
High Sheriff of Kent
The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilities associated with the post have been transferred elsewhere or are now defunct, so that its functions...
and a Dame of Malta. He has three brothers, Timothy, Jonathan and Anthony and a sister, Rosa
Rosa Monckton
Rosamond Mary Monckton, married name Rosamond Mary Lawson, is a British business woman and charity campaigner, usually known as Rosa Monckton....
, wife of journalist Dominic Lawson
Dominic Lawson
Dominic Ralph Campden Lawson is a British journalist.-Background:Educated at Westminster School and then Christ Church, Oxford, he is the elder son of a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson and socialite Vanessa Salmon, heir to the Lyons Corner House empire, who died of...
. His father raised the family as Roman Catholics after converting at Cambridge.
Monckton was educated at Harrow School
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
and Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.In 1958, a Trust was established with Sir Winston Churchill as its Chairman of Trustees, to build and endow a college for 60 fellows and 540 Students as a national and Commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill; its...
, where he received an MA in classics in 1974, and at University College, Cardiff
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
, where he obtained a diploma in journalism studies. In 1990, he married Juliet Mary Anne Malherbe Jensen. In 2006, on the death of his father, he acceded to the title of viscount
Viscount
A viscount or viscountess is a member of the European nobility whose comital title ranks usually, as in the British peerage, above a baron, below an earl or a count .-Etymology:...
.
Monckton is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Broderers
Worshipful Company of Broderers
The Worshipful Company of Broderers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. Broderers were workers in embroidery; the organization of Broderers existed in at least 1376, and was officially incorporated by a Royal Charter in 1561. As the craft of embroidery has lost its importance as a...
, an Officer of the Order of St John of Jerusalem
Venerable Order of Saint John
The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem , is a royal order of chivalry established in 1831 and found today throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, Hong Kong, Ireland and the United States of America, with the world-wide mission "to prevent and relieve sickness and...
, a Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and a member of the Roman Catholic Mass Media Commission. He is also a qualified Day Skipper with the Royal Yachting Association
Royal Yachting Association
The Royal Yachting Association is the national governing body for certain watersports in the United Kingdom. Activities it covers include:* Sailing* Windsurfing* Motor cruising* Sportsboats* Personal watercraft* Powerboat racing...
, and has been a trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband
Blue Riband
The Blue Riband is an unofficial accolade given to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the record highest speed. The term was borrowed from horse racing and was not widely used until after 1910. Under the unwritten rules, the record is based on average speed...
of the Atlantic since 1986.
He suffers a mild form of Graves' disease
Graves' disease
Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease where the thyroid is overactive, producing an excessive amount of thyroid hormones...
.
Journalism
Monckton joined the Yorkshire PostYorkshire Post
The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...
in 1974 at the age of 22, where he worked as a reporter and leader-writer. From 1977 to 1978, he worked at Conservative Central Office as a press officer, becoming the editor of the Roman Catholic newspaper The Universe in 1979, then managing editor of The Sunday Telegraph magazine in 1981. He joined the London Evening Standard newspaper as a leader-writer in 1982.
In 1979, Monckton met Alfred Sherman
Alfred Sherman
Sir Alfred Sherman, KBE, was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he began life as a Communist soldier in the Spanish Civil War but later...
, who co-founded the pro-Conservative think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
the Centre for Policy Studies
Centre for Policy Studies
The Centre for Policy Studies is a British right wing policy think tank whose goal is to promote coherent and practical public policy, to roll back the state, reform public services, support communities, and challenge threats to Britain’s independence...
with Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph
Keith Joseph
Keith St John Joseph, Baron Joseph, Bt, CH, PC , was a British barrister and politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet under three Prime Ministers , and is widely regarded to have been the "power behind the throne" in the creation of what came to be known as...
in 1974. Sherman asked Monckton to take the minutes at the CPS's study group meetings. Monckton subsequently became the secretary for the centre's economic, forward strategy, health and employment study groups. He wrote a paper on the privatisation of council housing by means of a rent-to-mortgages scheme that brought him to the attention of Downing Street. Ferdinand Mount
Ferdinand Mount
Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet , usually known as Ferdinand Mount, is a British writer and novelist, columnist for The Sunday Times and commentator on politics, and Conservative Party politician...
, the head of the Number 10 Policy Unit
Number 10 Policy Unit
The Number 10 Policy Unit is a body of policymakers in 10 Downing Street in the British government. Originally set up to support Harold Wilson in 1974, it has gone through a series of guises to suit the needs of successive Prime Ministers, staffed variously by political advisers, civil servants or...
and a former CPS director, brought Monckton into the Policy Unit in 1982. He was recruited as a domestic specialist with responsibilities for housing and parliamentary affairs, working alongside Mount and Peter Shipley on projects such as the phasing out of council housing. He left the unit in 1986 to become assistant editor of the newly established, and now defunct, tabloid newspaper Today
Today (UK newspaper)
Today was a national newspaper in the United Kingdom, which was published between 1986 and 1995.-History:Today, with the American newspaper USA Today as inspiration, launched on Tuesday, 4 March 1986, with the front page headline, "Second Spy Inside GCHQ". At 18 pence, it was a middle-market...
. He was a consulting editor for the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
from 1987 to 1992 and was its chief leader-writer from 1990 to 1992. In 1989 Monckton claimed damages for libel over the article "Rosa's bit of cheek" in the 9 March edition of the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
. In 1991, Monckton won a libel case over a 28 September 1990 article about his financial affairs in Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
.
Since 2002 Monckton has had several newspaper articles published critical of the IPCC and current scientific consensus on climate change, in addition to more light hearted pieces related to his bowler hat wearing.
Entrepreneurship
In 1995, Monckton and his wife opened Monckton's, a shirt shop in King's RoadKing's Road
King's Road is a street in Chelsea, London, England.King's Road or Kings Road may also refer to:* King's Road * King's Road * King's Road * King's Road...
, Chelsea.
In 1999, Monckton created and published the Eternity puzzle
Eternity puzzle
Eternity is a tiling puzzle created by Christopher Monckton and launched by the Ertl Company in June 1999. Consisting of 209 pieces, it was marketed as being practically unsolveable, with a £1 million prize on offer for whoever could solve it within four years. The prize was paid out in October...
, a geometric puzzle that involved tiling a dodecagon
Dodecagon
In geometry, a dodecagon is any polygon with twelve sides and twelve angles.- Regular dodecagon :It usually refers to a regular dodecagon, having all sides of equal length and all angles equal to 150°...
with 209 irregularly shaped polygon
Polygon
In geometry a polygon is a flat shape consisting of straight lines that are joined to form a closed chain orcircuit.A polygon is traditionally a plane figure that is bounded by a closed path, composed of a finite sequence of straight line segments...
s called polydrafter
Polydrafter
In recreational mathematics, a polydrafter is a polyform with a triangle as the base form. The triangle has angles of 30°, 60° and 90°, like a set square—hence the name. The polydrafter was invented by Christopher Monckton, whose Eternity Puzzle was composed of 209 hexadrafters.The term...
s. A £1 million prize was won after 18 months by two Cambridge mathematicians. By that time, 500,000 puzzles had been sold. Monckton also launched the Eternity II puzzle
Eternity II puzzle
The Eternity II puzzle, aka E2 or E II, is a puzzle competition which was released on 28 July 2007.The competition ended at noon on the 31st of December 2010.It was published by Christopher Monckton, and is marketed and copyrighted by TOMY UK Ltd...
in 2007, but, after the four-year prize period, no winner came forward to claim the £2 million prize.
Political career
Although Monckton inherited a peerage, he did so after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999House of Lords Act 1999
The House of Lords Act 1999 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was given Royal Assent on 11 November 1999. The Act reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats;...
, which provided that hereditary peers would no longer have an automatic right to sit and vote in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
. Monckton asserts that the Act is flawed and unconstitutional, and has referred to himself as "a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature" in a letter to US Senators, and also as "a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote."
The House of Lords authorities have said Monckton is not and never has been a member and that there is no such thing as a non-voting or honorary member of the House. In July 2011 the House took the "unprecedented step" of publishing online a cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
letter to Monckton from the Clerk of the Parliaments
Clerk of the Parliaments
The Clerk of the Parliaments is the chief clerk of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The position has existed since at least 1315, and duties include preparing the minutes of Lords proceedings, advising on proper parliamentary procedure and pronouncing the Royal Assent...
, which concluded, "I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not."
Notwithstanding his criticism of the House of Lords Act, Monckton has offered himself as a candidate for one of the retained seats for hereditary peers which it provides. He stood unsuccessfully in four by-elections for vacant seats created by deaths among the 92 hereditary peers remaining in the Lords after the reforms. He stood for a Conservative seat in a March 2007 by-election; of the 43 candidates, 31 received no votes, Monckton included. He subsequently stood in the crossbench by-elections of May 2008, July 2009, and June 2010, again receiving no votes. He was highly critical of the way the Lords was reformed, describing the procedure in the March 2007 by-election, with 43 candidates and 47 electors, as "a bizarre constitutional abortion."
He has also considered standing for election to the House of Commons (which hereditary peers are entitled to do if they are not members of the House of Lords). At the 2010 general election he was nominated as the UK Independence Party
United Kingdom Independence Party
The United Kingdom Independence Party is a eurosceptic and right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. Whilst its primary goal is the UK's withdrawal from the European Union, the party has expanded beyond its single-issue image to develop a more comprehensive party platform.UKIP...
(UKIP) candidate for the Scottish constituency of Perth and North Perthshire
Perth and North Perthshire (UK Parliament constituency)
Perth and North Perthshire is a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
, but withdrew in accordance with UKIP's policy of not opposing other Eurosceptic parliamentary candidates.
In June 2010, UKIP announced he had been appointed its deputy leader, to serve alongside David Campbell Bannerman.
In 2011 he stood as lead party-list candidate for UKIP in the Scottish Parliament constituency of Mid Scotland and Fife
Mid Scotland and Fife (Scottish Parliament electoral region)
Mid Scotland and Fife is one of the eight electoral regions of the Scottish Parliament which were created in 1999. Nine of the parliament's 73 first past the post constituencies are sub-divisions of the region and it elects seven of the 56 additional-member Members of the Scottish Parliament...
. Despite failing to gain representation in the Scottish Parliament, UKIP improved its performance in Mid Scotland and Fife, gaining 1.1% of the region's vote.
Climate change
Monckton questions the magnitude of global warming expected by the majority of climate scientists in response to anthropogenic increases in CO2 concentration.Monckton questions much of the science that is used as the basis for the IPCC predictions for global warming. His position on the correlation between CO2 and global warming appears contradictory — at times he implies that he believes there is a greenhouse effect, and that CO2 contributes to it, at other times he appears to believe that marked changes in global temperature cannot be caused by CO2 because "there is a startling absence of correlation between the CO2-concentration trend and the temperature trend, necessarily implying that—at least in the short term—there is little or no causative link between the two", and that there is "a close correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature: but it was temperature that changed first".
At times Monckton agrees that humanity is adding CO2 to the atmosphere and that some warming will result, but he questions how much CO2 is being added, how much warming will occur, how much damage it will do, and whether addressing it by taxing or regulating CO2 is cost-effective. In a 2006 article he questioned the appropriateness of using a near-zero discount rate
Discounted cash flow
In finance, discounted cash flow analysis is a method of valuing a project, company, or asset using the concepts of the time value of money...
in the Stern Review
Stern Review
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released for the British government on 30 October 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and also chair of the Centre...
, which, he wrote, had underestimated the costs of mitigation and overstated its benefits. He said that mitigation was "expensively futile without the consent of the Third World's fast-growing nations".
After a presentation by Monckton at Bethel University (Minnesota)
Bethel University (Minnesota)
Bethel University is a Christian higher education institution with approximately 6,000 students from 36 countries enrolled in undergraduate, graduate, seminary, and adult education programs...
in October 2009, Professor John P Abraham
John Abraham (professor)
Dr. John Abraham is an Associate Professor of thermal and fluid Sciences at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, Minnesota. His area of research includes thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid flow, numerical simulation, and energy...
of University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
The University of St. Thomas is a private, Catholic, liberal arts, and archdiocesan university located in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States...
produced a rebuttal to Monckton's claims. John Abraham investigated the origins of many of the claims by contacting the authors of those papers Monckton had cited and concluded that "he had misrepresented the science". Monckton responded to Abraham's statement soon after, stating, "he looks like an overcooked prawn", and expressing the view that Abraham had repeatedly misquoted him to third-party scientists and had then obtained understandably hostile comments from them, which he had improperly used against Monckton. John Abraham's responses to Monckton's criticisms were that Monckton "dealt with a small number of very peripheral issues", and that it did not address the "many serious scientific lapses which were present in your [Monckton's] presentation".
Monckton "initiated the process of having Abraham hauled up before whatever academic panel his Bible College can muster, to answer disciplinary charges of wilful academic dishonesty amounting to gross professional misconduct unbecoming a member of his profession", and asked that Abraham's talk be removed from the University servers, and a donation of $10,000 and $100,000 be made respectively by Abraham and the University to the "United States Association of the Order of Malta for its charitable work in Haiti". The university responded that "The University of St Thomas respects your right to disagree with Professor Abraham, just as the University respects Professor Abraham's right to disagree with you. What we object to are your personal attacks against Father Dease, and Professor Abraham, your inflammatory language, and your decision to disparage Professor Abraham Father Dease and The University of St Thomas", and it refused all of Monckton's demands.
Since 2008 he has toured Britain, the US and Australia delivering talks to groups related to the subject. In 2009 he was invited on three occasions before Congress to speak on the behalf of Republican representatives. He followed this up with his July 2010 tour of Australia. Between 2009 and 2010 the film maker Rupert Murray
Rupert Murray
Rupert Murray is a film director working in London. Murray began by making television documentaries for Channel Four's Cutting Edge series including Playing For England and Seconds To Impact , and short films Outsiders and This Was My War, co-directed with Beadie Finzi.In 2005 he directed British...
followed Monckton on his climate change tour. The film was later broadcast on 31 January 2011 on BBC Four titled "Meet the sceptics". Prior to its broadcast its depiction of Monckton was described by fellow sceptic James Delingpole
James Delingpole
James Delingpole is an English columnist and novelist. A self-described libertarian conservative, he writes for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He has published several novels and four political books, most recently Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors [2011]...
as "another hatchet job". Previously in 2008 Monckton had appeared in another BBC production "Earth: The Climate Wars" that he accused of making him look like a "potty peer". Monckton went to the High Court to gain an injunction against the "Meet the sceptics" broadcast, complaining of breach of contract and requesting a ruling that his three minute or 500 word rebuttal should be added to the programme. He did not obtain the injunction, the judge ruled that Monckton's interpretation of clarity in the contract was incorrect, and the "balance of justice" favoured refusal of the injunction.
Social and economic policy
Eddy Shah: Today and the Newspaper Revolution describes him as "a fervent, forthright and opinionated Roman Catholic Tory" who has been closely associated with the "New Right" faction of the Conservative Party. As one of Margaret Thatcher's policy advisors, he has been credited with being "the brains behind the Thatcherite policy of giving council tenants (public housingPublic housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...
) the right to buy their homes
Right to buy scheme
The Right to buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom which gives tenants of council housing the right to buy the home they are living in. Currently, there is also a right to acquire for the tenants of housing associations...
." Criticizing the campaign to save the Ravenscraig
Ravenscraig
Ravenscraig is an area of land located in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. Ravenscraig was previously inhabited by steel industry workers, as it was formerly the site of Ravenscraig steelworks...
ironworks, Monckton wrote, "The Scots are subsidy junkies whingeing like crumpled bagpipes and waiting for a fix of English taxpayers' money."
He has been associated with the Referendum Party
Referendum Party
The Referendum Party was a Euro-sceptic, single issue party in the United Kingdom formed by Sir James Goldsmith to fight the 1997 General Election. The party called for a referendum on aspects of the UK's relationship with the European Union.-Policy:...
, advising its founder, Sir James Goldsmith
James Goldsmith
Sir James Michael "Jimmy" Goldsmith was an Anglo-French billionaire financier and tycoon. Towards the end of his life, he became a magazine publisher and a politician. In 1994, he was elected to represent France as a Member of the European Parliament and he subsequently founded the short-lived...
. In 2003 he helped a Scottish Tory breakaway group, the Scottish Peoples Alliance
The New Party (United Kingdom)
The New Party is a neoliberal political party in the United Kingdom. The party describes itself as "a party of economic liberalism, political reform and internationalism"...
. In 2009 he joined the UK Independence Party; he is now deputy leader.
Monckton was a sponsor of the anti-homosexual Conservative Family Campaign in the 1990s.
In 1997, Monckton criticised works at the Fotofeis (the Scottish International Festival of Photography) and Sensation as "feeble-minded, cheap, pitiable, exploitative sensationalism perpetrated by the talent-free and perpetuated by over-funded, useless, muddle-headed, middle-aged, pot-bellied, brewer's-droopy quangoes which a courageous Government would forthwith cease to subsidise with your money and mine."
Views on AIDS
In a 1987 article for The American SpectatorThe American Spectator
The American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors...
entitled "AIDS: A British View", he argued that "there is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month ... all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently." This would involve isolating between 1.5 and 3 million people in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
("not altogether impossible") and another 30,000 people in the UK ("not insuperably difficult"). Monckton's article concluded, however, that current Western sensibilities would not allow this standard protocol for containing a new, fatal and incurable infection to be applied: therefore, he said, many would needlessly die. The article was controversial and The American Spectator's then assistant managing editor, Andrew Ferguson
Andrew Ferguson (journalist)
Andrew Ferguson is an American journalist and author.He is senior editor of The Weekly Standard and a columnist for Bloomberg News based in Washington, D.C.....
, denounced it in the letters column of the same issue. Monckton appeared on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Panorama
Panorama (TV series)
Panorama is a BBC Television current affairs documentary programme, which was first broadcast in 1953, and is the longest-running public affairs television programme in the world. Panorama has been presented by many well known BBC presenters, including Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, David Dimbleby...
programme in February 1987 to discuss his views and present the results of an opinion poll that found public support for his position.
Monckton has since stated "the article was written at the very outset of the AIDS epidemic, and with 33 million people around the world now infected, the possibility of [quarantine] is laughable. It couldn't work." He also said that this standard protocol could have worked at the time; that senior HIV investigators had called for it; and that many of the lives that have been lost could have been saved.
Resurrexi Pharmaceutical
Resurrexi Pharmaceutical is stated on the UK Independence Party (UKIP) web site to be a company of which Monckton is a director. In the BBC documentary, "Meet the Sceptics" (2011), Monckton, said he had cured himself of Graves' diseaseGraves' disease
Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease where the thyroid is overactive, producing an excessive amount of thyroid hormones...
an auto-immune disease thought to have been triggered either by a one-time virus or bacterial infection, and said he was researching a "broad-spectrum cure" for infectious diseases. UKIP's CV for Monckton states that "patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves' Disease, multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
, influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
, and herpes simplex 6. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue."
There are no other sources than UKIP for the claims, and some scepticism has been expressed about their validity.
Two patent applications in Monckton's name are registered at the UK Intellectual Property Office.
European integration
Monckton has been an advocate of EuroscepticismEuroscepticism
Euroscepticism is a general term used to describe criticism of the European Union , and opposition to the process of European integration, existing throughout the political spectrum. Traditionally, the main source of euroscepticism has been the notion that integration weakens the nation state...
for many years; as he put it in a 2007 interview, he would "leave the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, close down 90 per cent of government services and shift power away from the atheistic, humanistic government and into the hands of families and individuals." In 1994, he sued the Conservative government of John Major
John Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...
for agreeing to contribute to the costs of the Protocol on Social Policy agreed in the 1993 Maastricht Treaty
Maastricht Treaty
The Maastricht Treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty...
, although the UK had an opt-out from the protocol. The case was heard in the Scottish Court of Session
Court of Session
The Court of Session is the supreme civil court of Scotland, and constitutes part of the College of Justice. It sits in Parliament House in Edinburgh and is both a court of first instance and a court of appeal....
in May 1994. His petition for judicial review
Judicial review
Judicial review is the doctrine under which legislative and executive actions are subject to review by the judiciary. Specific courts with judicial review power must annul the acts of the state when it finds them incompatible with a higher authority...
was dismissed by the court for want of relevancy.
Published works
- The Laker Story (with Ivan Fallon). Christensen, 1982. ISBN 0950800708
- Anglican Orders: null and void?. Family History Books, 1986.
- The AIDS Report. 1987
- European Monetary Union: opportunities and dangers. University of St. Andrews, Department of Economics. 1997
- Sudoku X. Headline Publishing Group, 2005. ISBN 0755315014
- Sudoku X-mas. Headline Publishing Group, 2005. ISBN 0755315022
- Sudoku Xpert. Headline Publishing Group, 2006. ISBN 0755315294
- Junior Sudoku X. Headline Publishing Group, 2006. ISBN 0755315286
- Sudoku Xtreme. Headline Publishing Group, 2006. ISBN 0755315308
The Science and Public Policy Institute
Science and Public Policy Institute
The Science and Public Policy Institute is an organization which concerns itself with issues related to carbon dioxide and global warming. It is based in Virginia, USA and was founded around 2007. It describes itself as:...
, of which Monckton is policy director, has published nine non peer-reviewed articles by Monckton on climate-change science.
External links
- Apocalypse Cancelled (PDF)
- Greenhouse warming? What greenhouse warming? by Christopher Monckton
- Gore Gored (PDF) Monckton's response to Gore
- Monckton saves the day!, The Observer, 6 May 2007