Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 12

Yes, Drake did wicked things. But it���s idiotic to pretend he wasn���t a great Englishman

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

 

A primary school in London, named after Sir Francis Drake, has changed its name to something so dull I cannot remember it. The original BBC report of this decision (now amended) described Sir Francis as a slave trader and failed to mention much else about him.

Apparently the school has only just discovered this bad thing about the Elizabethan sailor, though I think it has been well known for years. The action is stupid.

While I readily admit t...

PETER HITCHENS: Yes, Drake did wicked things. But it���s idiotic to pretend he wasn���t a great Englishman

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Yes, Drake did wicked things. But it���s idiotic to pretend he wasn���t a great Englishman

A primary school in London, named after Sir Francis Drake, has changed its name to something so dull I cannot remember it. The original BBC report of this decision (now amended) described Sir Francis as a slave trader and failed to mention much else about him.

Apparently the school has only just discovered this bad thing about the Elizabethan sailor, though ...

Even if We all Stayed at School Till We Were 80, We Wouldn't Learn Much Unless We Were Properly Taught

For more than a century now, well-meaning people have clung to the idea that the longer we all stay at school, the better educated we will be. Up and up goes the school leaving age. Yet since it rose to 16 in 1972 (it���s now 18 in England and who knows if it will ever stop rising?) there has been no sign that the country is any cleverer. The growing numbers of exclusions and special schools tell us that many children actively hate being made to stay in classrooms where they learn little and liv...

Two forthcoming events , in Buckingham next Tuesday and in Oxford on February 9

 

Here are details of my talk next Tuesday evening (10th January) on the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the University of Buckingham 

https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/event/fireside-chat-peter-hitchens/

 

And here are details of my talk at Blackwell's Bookshop on Oxford on the evening of Thursday 9th February 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-hitchens-a-revolution-betrayed-with-nigel-warburton-tickets-484427083447

Why do we stir up trouble in foreign countries when we can't even run our own?

This is Peter Hitchens��� s Mail on Sunday column

What a twisted society we have become. We stir up wars in other people's countries and praise ourselves for doing it.

But there is no political reward for protecting our own people against crime and disorder on their streets and in their homes. It is no longer clear if anyone is governing the country at all, so busy are we putting other nations to rights.

Burglaries go unprevented, uninvestigated and unpunished, in colossal numbers. Our capita...

PETER HITCHENS: Why do we stir up trouble in foreign countries but can't even run our own?

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

What a twisted society we have become. We stir up wars in other people's countries and praise ourselves for doing it.

But there is no political reward for protecting our own people against crime and disorder on their streets and in their homes. It is no longer clear if anyone is governing the country at all, so busy are we putting other nations to rights.

Burglaries go unprevented, uninvestigated and unpunished, in colossal numbers. Our capital ...

What is so Good About Democracy? Who Really Picks the Candidates We Obediently Vote For? Us? No, the Big, Rich Parties.

What is so Good about Democracy?  

 

(Reprinted from a post of 2012, with some emendations) 

Again and again, in articles and discussion programmes,  I hear the phrase ���democratically-elected��� used as if it is a synonym for ���automatically good���. Thus, whatever one might say about the King, a President would be ���democratically-elected���. And so he would in some way be more legitimate than any other head of state.

Why do people believe this? What reason do they have to believe i...

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Fanatics feed on the (often ignorant and unself-aware) hostility of the West.

Given the state of this country I am often struck by how keen we are to go stamping around the world improving other people���s lands. In reply to our lectures - which often end in actual invasions or bombing raids on densely populated cities -  some of them might respond:  ���But your capital city is scarred by knife killings, your police do not even bother to pursue burglaries, though they do patrol Twitter. Your streets stink of marijuana. Speech at your universities is not free. Nor is your ...

This is not the Winter of Discontent. Mick Lynch is not Scargill. Sunak is not Thatcher. And Pat Cullen is definitely not Florence Nightingale.

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column 

This is not the Winter of Discontent. Mick Lynch is not Arthur Scargill. Rishi Sunak is not Margaret Thatcher. And, I might add, the nurses��� leader Pat Cullen is definitely not Florence Nightingale.

I can tell you most of this because I spent seven gripping years, from 1977 to 1984, writing about strikes, and unions, and pay deals, often in the middle of the night.

I can say this about Pat Cullen because my beloved aunt Ena, the best human bei...

PETER HITCHENS: If Rishi Sunak had been Mr Prudent during Covid, he���d have some cash left to pay our nurses

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column 

This is not the Winter of Discontent. Mick Lynch is not Arthur Scargill. Rishi Sunak is not Margaret Thatcher. And, I might add, the nurses��� leader Pat Cullen is definitely not Florence Nightingale.

I can tell you most of this because I spent seven gripping years, from 1977 to 1984, writing about strikes, and unions, and pay deals, often in the middle of the night.

I can say this about Pat Cullen because my beloved aunt Ena, the best human bein...