India is not experiencing global warming, apparently - indeed, its winters are getting slightly cooler by the year. The reason is that the country uses lots of fossil fuels and the resultant black carbon and sulphur smog prevents a whole bunch of sunlight reaching the ground. In other words the stuff that causes global warming can also, in a rather crude manner, prevent it.

Global warming may also be slowing down the Gulf Stream, leading to a cooler climate in Scandinavia and Britain. Confused? I am. Almost everything to do with the debate about global warming is shrouded in a dense smog of non sequiturs, contradiction and anomaly. Never more so than when the world’s leaders hail such meetings as last week’s get together on the Baltic as the breakthrough that might save the planet.

Do you understand what, exactly, was agreed at Heiligendamm? Nothing, so far as I can gather. I suspected it would be nothing the more I heard George Bush telling the press how seriously and earnestly he took the whole business, his nose growing at a rate of one inch per second.

It seems to me that there was a firm and definite agreement by the United States to probably cut quite a lot of greenhouse gas emissions at some point in the future if China and India do likewise. China and India also announced that they were serious and earnest about it all but would not cut a single emission if it conflicted with their “development strategies”. There were no firm targets agreed to, just a sort of general consensus that it would be nice, in theory, if we could stop the temperatures rising by more than a couple of centigrade, this next half century. It’s rather like me telling my girlfriend that I take seriously her worries about my liver and will, at some point, cut down the amount of white wine I drink in an afternoon, probably, as I get the corkscrew.

And we cannot be certain that prevarication is not a rather commendable strategy. The Washington Post recently quoted the following from a scientist speaking in 1972: “We simply cannot afford to gamble. We cannot risk inaction. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored.”

This chap, though, was talking about global cooling - which was the apocalyptic consensus 35 years ago. In the past 100 years or so the scientific consensus has twice held that the earth is definitely cooling (1895-1930 and then 1968-75) and twice that it is instead warming up (1930-60 and 1981 to the present). In almost every case it has been our fault and something has been needed to be done about it.

Of course nothing has been done about it. Perhaps this time the scientists are right and their shrill prophecies that Essex will be a natural as well as a cultural desert by 2050 will prove true. But their track record suggests otherwise.

* * * * *

The strange, butter-faced celebrity heiress and drunk Paris Hilton is back in prison, due to public demand.

She had been let out on Thursday to finish her 45-day sentence at home, because - the prison authorities at first asserted - she has a medical condition and in any case showed great cooperation during her brief internment, which began last Sunday night, for serious traffic offences.

Sadly we have no more details on what precisely that medical condition might be, nor quite what “co-operation” took place; we must simply assume that she is a little poorly but still bent over backwards to accommodate her jailers at every available opportunity.

Now, however, a judge has bowed to the howls of outrage from the American public, almost all of whom hate Hilton and wish the woman to suffer and to be seen to suffer.

So, to summarise, with the benefit of a certain cynical hindsight: given a longer than usual prison sentence because she’s a famous slapper, let out earlier than usual because she’s a famous slapper, rearrested and banged up again because she’s a famous slapper. Perhaps Hilton’s medical condition has been brought on by being in a perpetual state of confusion.

Bono, the people's moaner

The G8 might be better rechristened the G9, since an inevitable presence at these convocations is the People’s Republic of Bono. Perhaps he should have a seat on the United Nations security council, too.

The incalculably pompous Irish singer in the perpetual wraparound shades was in Heiligendamm “holding private meetings with G8 leaders”. Why was he? What convinced them of the necessity to turn up and listen to his interminable, faux-humble, faux-naive “Oi’m only a rock star, but . . .” schtick?

Why didn’t they tell him to get stuffed, or punch him? Or just do what the rest of us do and ignore him entirely?

His eminence carped at the fact that the world’s richest nations are giving only £30 billion to fight disease in, primarily, Africa. The countries holding out were, he alleged, Italy and Canada: well, good for them.

There is no respite from this man’s megalomania, induced by the mysteriously impressive record sales from his lumpen rock band. One day soon he will announce that he is developing nuclear weapons. Perhaps then he will have at last found what he was looking for.

Oh, I see - the N-word is just fine in the ’hood

When is it socially acceptable to call someone a “nigger”? This is the question I posed to my posse of bitches and hos yesterday morning, in the wake of the latest Big Brother race row.

A fairly dense white woman, Emily Parr, was kicked off the programme for saying to her black housemate: “You pushing it out, you nigger?”

It is perfectly acceptable, I was told, if the person committing the niggering is black, in which case it is meant as an affectionate soubriquet signifying ironic solidarity.

However, it should always be spelled with an “a” at the end and without asterisks. The plural form usually takes a “z”.

What if a white woman says it, I asked? Ah, I was told, that’s okay only if the white woman in question is a “wigga”, which is to say a white person habituated to using black vernacular and Jamaican slang to the extent that they cannot themselves remember what colour they are. These are confusing times and it is important to sort stuff like this out, to avoid giving possible offence.

* * * * *

The Prince of Wales has run into a bit of bother with a planning application for his holiday home in Wales - both from some of the country’s most endearing inhabitants and indeed the Welsh.

Bats live in a barn Charles wants to convert - and these days they take precedence over royalty. So the building work must stop.

A Welsh couple living nearby are bitter that Carmarthenshire county council approved the plans in the first place when their home extension application was rejected. Kerry and Jacqueline Thompson insist they are properly Welsh, rather than some wacko satrap of the imperialist English who converses with moss.

Strung out between the bats and the Thompsons, Charles must sometimes feel like jacking it all in.

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