Questions to Which the Answer is No!

by John Rentoul

  Lord Soley, Lords of the Blog, 12 June 2010. Clive Soley, the Labour peer, asked on his blog if the Prime Minister ordered the England team to draw 1–1 with the United States team in the Group Stage of the World Cup in South Africa. He started his question badly: ‘I’m no football expert and I’m not paranoid but ...’ and blundered on: ‘... does anyone else think that Cameron told Robert Green to let the ball in deliberately so that the US didn’t feel totally trashed and oiled up by the Brits?’

  Press release, 15 June 2010. This was the subject line of a piece of ‘email spam’, by which I think he meant a press release, received by a fellow journalist. He said the answer is ‘Who cares?’ (see Beattie’s Law, page 7), but I said it was number 341 in my series.

  Mind you, it gave me an idea. A website where you could look up people with whom you went to school and reunite old friends. Any ideas for a name?

  Jesse Zwick, New Republic, 18 June 2010. Back with the football, Jesse Zwick at the New Republic asked another World Cup related Question to Which the Answer is No, after the Americans drew with Slovenia. Zwick wondered about the ‘fateful call’ in the 86th minute. Was it ‘offsides’, he asked? That was, of course, another one.

  Thomas Sowell, investors.com, 22 June 2010. A fine example of the genre, asked after Barack Obama had been president for nearly a year and a half. Sowell opened his diatribe with a reference to Adolf Hitler and managed to throw in Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’ in the third paragraph. ‘American democracy is being dismantled’, he said, not only ‘piece by piece’, but ‘before our very eyes’, and could he just tell you what the most amazing thing is? ‘Few people seem to be concerned about it.’ The implication is that the heinous crime – something to do with spending public money – is being committed in broad daylight; that it is a concealed operation that no one has noticed and that takes the extraordinary percipience of the wool-free eyes of Sowell to see. Or it was possible that ‘few people seem to be concerned about it’ because ...

  Guy Walters, Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2010. Wikipedia is not perfect, but it is useful and is subject to no consistent bias.

  Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, 2 July 2010. Not only a Question to Which the Answer is No, asked by Ephraim Hardcastle, the fictitious Daily Mail diarist, but one that used ‘the net closing in’, one of my favourite Blair-hating clichés from the glory years of the cash-for-honours imbroglio, the ‘impeach Blair’ looney tune and the anti-war ‘take him to the Hague’ daydream. Not only that, but the same edition featured a column by Tom Utley with a headline (one of those special long ones) that pretended the Mail knows what satire is: ‘If Mr Blair deserves a freedom medal for invading Iraq (and banning me from smoking) then satire IS dead.’ The Daily Mail. It’s the complete package. And they can use that in their advertising if they like.

  Parliamentary Written Question, 7 July 2010. Asked by John Spellar, the Labour MP for Warley West, and answered in the succinct negative by Anne Milton, the minister for public health, on behalf of Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State. The question may have been inspired by a report in the Sunday Times on 27 June that the Welsh Assembly had circulated guidelines to hospitals in Wales recommending ‘water, juice, seeds, dried fruit, sandwiches and some low fat cakes as healthy alternatives’ to sugared tea and coffee from vending machines, and suggested that cheddar cheese sandwiches should be avoided because they ‘contain too much fat’.

  Biblical Archeology Review, 8 July 2010. Not just number 361 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No, but one of the all-time Great Historical Questions to Which the Answer is No. Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, ‘nine years, almost to the day, after Roman legionaries destroyed God’s house in Jerusalem’, namely the Second Temple, in 70 AD.

  Richard Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 9 July 2010. A question asked about a report that said: ‘In an attempt to rid the country of “decadent Western cuts”, Iran’s culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval.’ It appeared the choice was between looking like Dustin Hoffman, Wayne Rooney with a lot of hair, or David Schwimmer.

  Jon Kelly, BBC News website, 17 July 2010. Asked in the headline on a ‘magazine’ feature on the BBC News website. Perish the thort, as Molesworth used to say.

  Hopi Sen blog, 24 July 2010. Hopi Sen, one of my favourite political commentators, had this as the title of a blog post. He speculated that Labour did worse in the election because the unusually cold January and February deferred some economic activity from the first to the second quarter. If better growth figures had been published during the election campaign in April, Sen asks whether Labour would have won more votes. No.

  Andy Beckett, Guardian, 24 July 2010. A gem, and the winner of the 2010 Guardian/Daily Mail Crossover award. The companion article, on the rampant expansion of the working and pauper classes, seems to be missing from my collection.

  Ian Leslie, communication with the author, 26 July 2010. As soon as Leslie, who wrote a brilliant book called Born Liars about why untruths come naturally to people, asked me this, he realised that it was a question that answered itself.

  Daily Mail, 12 August 2010. The Daily Mail not only asked this Question to Which the Answer is No, but provided a photo-montage of what it might have looked like. We’ve supplied our own version.

  Independent, 12 August 2010. The Independent asked another Question to Which the Answer is No in its headline on the same story, about the release of some wartime Ministry of Defence papers. In fact, Winston Churchill did cover it up. He said: ‘This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church.’ But it wasn’t a UFO encounter, so the answer is still no.

  Juli Weiner, Vanity Fair, 9 September 2010. This was runner-up in the Bizarre Political Comparisons category of the 2010 Questions to Which the Answer is No Awards. To be fair – a phrase horribly over-used by Tony Blair in his book – Juli Weiner was comparing the reaction to the publication of A Journey to that of Going Rogue, Palin’s memoir. But the answer was still no.

  Mike Smithson, politicalbetting.com, 12 October 2010. Mike Smithson of the Political Betting website wondered about the effect of the publication of the report by John Browne proposing the tripling of student tuition fees. He was referring to the pledge signed before the election by 54 of the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, including Nick Clegg: ‘I pledge TO VOTE AGAINST ANY INCREASE IN FEES in the next Parliament.’

  John Rentoul, Independent blog, 22 October 2010. I am afraid that I asked this one, when the Spectator asked another Question to Which the Answer is No: ‘Are transsexuals going to destroy women’s sport?’ This followed some discussion about the case of Caster Semenya, the South African middle-distance runner, who had been required to take a test proving her gender the year before.

  David Hellier, City AM, 28 October 2010. I think David Hellier knew the answer, but it is gratifying to look back and have it confirmed that this was a lot of wolf-crying from the financial services sector when the pitchforks were waved in their general direction.

  BBC Northern Ireland, 29 October 2010. Asked of a clip of The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin film made in 1928, in which a woman appears to be walking past while talking on a mobile phone. ‘My initial reaction,’ said George Clarke, who put it on YouTube, ‘was that’s a mobile phone, they weren’t around then; my only explanation – and I’m pretty open-minded about the sci-fi element of things – it was kind of like wow that’s somebody that’s went back in time.’ Which is the first explanation that might occur to anyone, is it not?

  James Murray, businessgreen.com, 15 November 2010. Winner of the 2010 Hyperbole Trophy. Asked by James Murray at Business Green, an environmental website. Zac Goldsmith was elected as a Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston in the election that year, and spent some of the time since threatening to resign and force a by-election if the Government went back on its pledge not to build a third runway at Heathrow airport.


  Vincent Graff, Daily Mail, 22 November 2010. I presume this, number 437 in the series, was about the failure of the Corporation to screen more repeats. Not having read it, I am forced to speculate that Graff failed to take into account the unfunniness of the ensemble.

  Mineral Products Today, 23 November 2010. This one, from a specialist magazine, is included just for the sheer oddity of it.

  BBC4, 23 November 2010. The title of Hannah Rothschild’s documentary. Well, obviously he was not the real Prime Minister by then, as Labour was out of office, but the implication was that he had been while Gordon Brown nominally held the post.

  Peter Kenyon blog, 27 November 2010. The 2010 winner in the Bizarre Political Comparison category was asked by Peter Kenyon, the indomitable Labour activist, on his blog. Something to do with Ed Miliband’s ‘blank sheet of paper’ on which he was going to set out his policies, and Rolf Harris’s catchphrase, ‘Can you tell what it is yet?’

  Richard Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2010. Asked by Richard Spencer, a Daily Telegraph Middle East correspondent. I like the subtle hedging of bets: CIA, Mossad, one or the other. For the purposes of conspiracy theories, they are the same thing.

  Iain Dale Diary blog, 29 November 2010. This should not count, because he offered it purposely to get into my list of Questions to Which the Answer is No, but the Committee was beginning to take a flexible view by this stage.

  Daily Mail, 1 December 2010. The Committee was unanimous, one vote to nil, in declaring this to be the best Question to Which the Answer is No of the year.

  The article quoted Phil Collins (the ‘millionaire musician’, in case any Mail readers thought it meant Tony Blair’s former speechwriter), who had recently said that he fought at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 in a former life. ‘I don’t want to sound like a weirdo, but I am prepared to believe.’

  The main character, though, was Chris Vicens, a 26-year-old shop assistant who told the newspaper that he once lived as Marilyn Monroe. ‘Yes, people have scoffed, but I know what I know,’ he was quoted as saying. ‘When I first awoke from my session and the therapist told me who I’d said I was, I thought: “No, that’s not possible – what are the odds of that happening?”’ Do not attempt to answer that question.

  Chris went on: ‘Each time I regress, I learn a little more. I like to think I am a sane and rational person. I am definitely not making this up. Why would I open myself up to ridicule?’ Do not attempt to answer that question, either.

  Martin Rosenbaum, Twitter, 1 December 2010. This was asked by my friend Martin Rosenbaum. I had no hesitation in declaring it the winner in that year’s Smart Alec category.

  Daily Mail, 6 December 2010. The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver is an essential plot device, because it can open any door or lock. It also allows the Doctor to ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow’ or, in other words, to save the characters from certain doom with a bit of pseudo-scientific hocus pocus. The Mail reported that engineers at the University of Bristol were working on a screwdriver that could use rotating ultrasound waves to turn screws from a distance. It quoted Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics, who said: ‘Whilst a fully functioning time machine may still be light years away, engineers are already experimenting with ultrasonic waves to move and manipulate small objects.’

  A pedant might point out that a light year is a measure of distance rather than time. For a bonus point, a pedant might point out to the Mail that Doctor Who does not take the contraction Dr, according to the BBC. This is something that I discovered years ago in the steam age of Google, before it had learned to search for different spellings or forms of words, when I searched for ‘Dr Who’ and could find little.

  Barack Obama, Mythbusters, 8 December 2010. I am not quite sure why, but this was asked by Barack Obama on the Discovery Channel. For some reason the President had agreed to launch an episode of Mythbusters. The programme tried to recreate the legendary feat, with what success I do not know.

  Steve Rose, Guardian, 8 December 2010. A top conspiracy theory from Steve Rose in the Guardian. The mascots (below). They’re aliens. Apparently.

  Steve Shaw, Left Foot Forward blog, 20 December 2010. I felt Shaw should really have asked if it were the most important law this millennium. But the answer is the same. I had no idea that there was a Sustainable Communities Act.

  Daily Mail, 28 December 2010. It hardly counts, because it was written by a computer programmed to churn out Daily Mail headlines to a Question to Which the Answer is No template. But as it was the season of pretending to believe in fiction for the sake of the children, it is on the list.

  Daniel Nalliah, catchthefire.com.au, 11 January 2011. I think it was someone at the BBC who described the flooding in Australia as being ‘of biblical proportions’. I should have known that there would be trouble. And so it came to pass that Daniel Nalliah, on the Catch the Fire Ministries website, asked number 483 in my series. (Biblical proportions are, of course, about 19 × 13 × 5 cm.)

  Reza Aslan, The Atlantic, 13 January 2011. Asked by Reza Aslan (a cool name for Narnia fans) in The Atlantic with a full-form supplementary question:

  Is it possible that Iran’s blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran’s most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalise, secularise, and even ‘Persianise’ Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country’s more conservative factions?

  In fact, the article made the serious point that the WikiLeaks leaks suggested that Ahmadinejad may be less of a tub-thumping fundamentalist in private, and that there are even more dangerous elements of the Iranian ruling theocracy than he. But the answer was still no.

  Soil Association, 18 January 2011. Asked by the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming. According to a Guardian report the previous day, donkey milk, which was ‘widely sold in the UK until the end of the 19th century’, contains more protein and less fat than cow’s milk.

  Time magazine, 18 January 2011. This was drawn to my attention by Will Cookson, who had just started his own collection of ‘Theological Questions to Which the Answer is No’.

  Daily Mail, 25 January 2011. You must admire the precision with which the Mail estimates the proportion of the United States that will be wiped out by an event a bit like one that may or may not have happened more than half a million years ago. With a special ‘How Journalism Works’ award for the use of ‘set to’.

  Policy Exchange seminar, 31 January 2011. The title of a seminar at Policy Exchange, the right-of-centre think tank, addressed by Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. I do not think it was a lecture on the semiotics of The Jam’s 1977 single.

  Daily Mail, 3 February 2011. The article elaborated, by asking: ‘Was da Vinci’s young male apprentice the model for that famous enigmatic smile?’

  New Scientist, 3 February 2011. This was the first of a miniseries of Unexpected Historical Questions about the Egypt Crisis prompted by the unrest in Tahrir Square that eventually toppled Hosni Mubarak’s government. The New Scientist reported a warning from scientists studying complex systems, who said that ‘ever-tighter coupling among the world’s finance, energy and food systems’ would result in ‘waves of political instability,’ and that ‘Some say that is now happening in the Middle East.’

  Alan Beattie (originator of Beattie’s Law) wrote to me to say: ‘Today’s events in Egypt surely show the folly of adopting sedentary agriculture in the Nile valley in the 8th millennium BC.’

  Devon DB, Global Research, 9 February 2011. The 2011 winner in the Loopy But A Bit Slow Anti-War category was Devon DB, at an outfit called Global Research. By the time he or she asked it, Barack Obama had been President for more than two years, and had therefore been a war criminal by definition for all that time – long enough for even the dimmest conspiracy theorist to notice.

  Jim Pickard, Financial Times, 11 February 2011. A question paraphrasing the argument of the Yes campaign in the
referendum on the Alternative Vote: ‘Around the wedding it will be a coming-into-summer, more optimistic, more of a yes mood.’ That insight into popular psychology (‘Hurrah for the happy couple; let’s tear up centuries of constitutional tradition’) was almost faultless.

  Tim Montgomerie, Daily Mail, 12 February 2011. Asked by the otherwise sensible Tim Montgomerie in an article about Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, in an article in the Daily Mail.

  Mirror, 19 February 2011. Not the Mail this time, but the Mirror. Bonus marks to Dr Ian Winfield, a lake ecologist at the University of Lancaster, who was quoted as saying: ‘It’s possible that it’s a catfish from Eastern Europe.’ Right. The lesser four-humped catfish of Wytrzyszczka, probably.

  Norman Tebbit, Telegraph blog, 21 February 2011. Asked by the unlikely blogger and Thatcherite former cabinet minister, on his Telegraph blog. Although this should perhaps belong to a new series of Questions to Which the Answer is No But We Wish it Were Yes.

  Daily Mail, 26 February 2011. The Daily Mail was reporting the publication of a book by Richard Wiseman, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. A clue to the answer lies in the full title of Prof Wiseman’s book, from which the two-page spread was extracted: Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There.