"Climategate"

Not to pick on Sky news, they aren't the only ones guilty of this, but here's our first -gate story.

Sky's "climategate" story.

You'll probably recently have become aware of the scandal involving the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia.

To recap, it's a story about some scientists emails being hacked and leaked which, according to the sceptics, "prove" that everything about the idea that there is man-made climate change is an enormous conspiracy.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the importance of this story is being blown out of proportion anyway (can't think why), but quickly it started being described as "climategate."

So...a straightforward one to start with: basically a non-story given far too much credence because lazy journalists think that adding "-gate" to the end of a word related to the story makes them masters of style and fearless investigative journalists.

Over the coming weeks, with the help of a popular search engine, we shall fearlessly be hunting down ever more ridiculous examples of the use of "-gate."

Coming soon: "boozegate."