I’m talking to a foreign news organization about working up a UK version of their site, citizen journalism type stuff. All great, but one question thatthey asked has had all of us involved rather scratching our heads. "How will you do the fact checking?"

Umm, UK newspapers don’t actually do fact checking. Yes, I know, this will be difficult for others to understand, most especially the Americans, where the press make a fetish out of checking each and every minor point in a piece. To the extent that a story can appear days late as people run through encyclopedias trying to nail down one or other triviality. But seriously, if you write for a UK paper, the facts you present are those that you yourself have found. No one at the paper comes along behind you checking your figures for example.

Although I rather have the feeling that Niall Ferguson might wish they did:

Driving down the M40 on Friday, I passed petrol stations selling
regular unleaded at 97.9 pence per litre. That works out at $6.62 a
gallon. If a British outlet offered petrol at American prices – 44
pence a litre – there would be a queue from Beaconsfield to Birmingham.

US and Imperial gallons old boy. You’ve used US gallon sizes there, which may or may not be correct, as you’re comparing with US gas prices, but very confusing for us here.

At the same time, high oil prices do not deter people from buying gas-guzzling cars.

Well, I’ll give you the Hummer numbers but SUV sales have indeed fallen off a cliff.

At Ford, trucks and SUVs — the backbone of the company’s sales and
profits — struggled through September. Sales of F-Series pickup trucks
plunged 30 percent. Sales of Ford’s large SUVs, including the Ford
Explorer and Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator, sank by more than 55
percent each. At GM, overall sales of trucks, minivans and SUVs dropped
30 percent. Truck, SUV and minivan sales also fell at Toyota and Honda,
as well as at Chrysler.

The rest of the argument about ethanol powered cars rather fails on that point alone.