Monday 26 August 2013

Pseudologia fantastica, a possible case

No one, in my opinion, is better able to sum up a medical case, solve it and save the patient more brilliantly than Dr Gregory House. And nothing he has ever done was better than his summation of human behaviour than that everybody lies.  I suspect they do, but most people give up their lies when they get caught out lying and publicly have it pointed out.

Though not everyone. Now, I am no more a psychiatrist than I am a climate scientist so you can take or leave my opinion on these matters, but I am beginning to wonder if Christopher Monckton, 3rd Vicount of Brenchley, might be a pathological liar.  Strong stuff, I know, but you have to think twice when someone has their lies corrected and yet continues to repeat them.

On WUWT today Monckton repeats his attack on Michael Mann that I dissected the other day. He hasn't changed an typing that I can tell and still gets humpy about being told he is not a member of the House of Lords.  He isn't. He never has been. The law changed before he inherited the title and the composition of the House of Lords was altered, not without controversy, to become a little more like the twenty first century democracy that the United Kingdom says it is.

If he doesn't want to believe me, he ought to believe this from the Clerk of the Parliaments. I think it is clear that Monckton has been told t stop repeats his claim and that was made clear to him in 2011. Well, it's two years later and he is still doing it. 

As I said, I'm not a psychiatrist but I do know how to spot a lie - it's when someone says something they know is untrue. Christopher Monckton keeps doing that. There's more all over the net on this odious man but this link is amusing and factual (and contains a better cartoon than any by Tosh over at WUWT).

Update: here is he judgement in the Mereworth v Ministry of Justice case that is the basis for the statement that Monckton is not a member of the Housenof Lords (and thus should stop claiming otherwise). Pretty definitive if you ask my untrained legal mind. Monckton did ask a legal brain for their opinion and got a piece of paper with no force at all saying just what he wanted. I am guessing that Monckton decided not to throw money earned selling puzzles on the basis of this opinion because I haven't found any trace of such a case. If Monckton had won, we'd never hear the last of it.
There is more at HotWhopper and Wotts Up With That Blog

Further Update: Monckton got an opinion from a legal mind known as Hugh O'Donoghue, described as a leading constitutional expert on WUWT.  Not by himself though. Click that link and you can read his CV.

2 comments:

  1. One more spell check, slowly :-)

    This syndrome's preferred route of infection is through the exchange of bank notes.

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  2. Note that Monckton now also got a bit of pushback from one of the WUWT commenters on that House of Lord membership (I don't want to link there, so see
    http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/08/monckton-makes-bigger-mess-at.html#houseoflords)

    ReplyDelete