Fifty people who matter?

Thus the linked list of those with global influence - for good or ill - as voted by the few who still read the New Statesman.

That Rupert Murdoch comes in at number 1 simply confirms my suspicion that the NS is kept going by lefty media types, who fear for their jobs should the cold wind of competition be allowed to blow away their cosy sinecures.

What are Simon Cowell and Angelina Jolie doing on the list? And including the World Health Organisation's Margaret Chan is simply perverse. From her over-hyping of swine flu and the H1N1 to her praise of North Korean medical facilities (with hilarious understatement the NS write-up adds "even though malnutrition is a problem in that country"), the woman is even more discredited than her UN colleague, the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri, who I'm intrigued to see does not make the list.

Nor does Algore - come to think of it, none of the leading global warming gurus are on the list. But the man most associated with popping the AGW bubble, Steve McIntyre, is there at number 32. If even the lefties have given up on it, maybe the whole scam will now fade into the obscurity from which it should never have emerged.