Oh, no, they didn't. Oh, yes, they did. Well, no, they didn't, actually.

Well, it seems that they didn't, um, row all the way. (They clambered over ice rubble for much of the way, hauling their craft behind them.)

Another challenge was floating ice which blocked their route, particularly towards the end of their journey as the ice closed in.

'As the ice closed in...' So very unexpectedly? What? But let us not dwell, etc.

They didn’t go anywhere near the actual, you know, North Pole. (That was never the plan.)

They were 800 miles off the current magnetic North Pole. (That was the plan, apparently. Well, maybe.)

So, er... we're all cheering these guys for what, exactly? Let's see, now. Ooo look. It's because they got there at all, having...

embarked on their expedition to highlight the effects of climate change on the region

But of course they did. Which is why they're in the papers today. And of course, were a major item in this morning's Today programme.

That sound you hear is Delingpole, choking with laughter because... mwahahahahahahahaha... the Telegraph has had to disable comments on this nugget of 'Earth News'. No, don't. Stop it. 

I particularly savoured this (my emphasis):

Mr Wishart, who is in his late 50s described how pulling over ice and rubble in the last miles of the journey (i.e. actually AT whatever they thought was the Pole, presumably) was a “hard reminder that we are mere mortal”.

For a moment there, I thought he was going to say 'a hard reminder that the northern polar regions are made of ice', but no. Only a non-earth-scientist could believe that the whole fucking north polar cap is composed of floating fucking ice. His obiter dictum turned out to be a philosophical reflection on the non-god status of himself and his envirocrapologist colleagues, rather than an historically important scientific announcement.  

Anyway, well done, lads. Remarkable feat of endurance and all that. But as Longrider puts it so pithily in his comment on the post, a lie is a lie.





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