Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 182

Does Our Government Have Any Right to Rule Us?

Here is a recording of a meeting I spoke to at Bristol University on Monday evening (9th November)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV3rfd0JqGA

The subject was the government��s right to rule us.

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 13, 2015 15:08

My Response to Police Critics

This is an all-purpose reply to the attacks made constantly on me on Twitter by persons who either are or claim to be serving police officers.

I shall deal with all the standard lines of attack.

You know nothing. Why don��t you go out on patrol with us and see what it is really like?

Answer: I have done so, in London, Dallas and Johannesburg. It was these experiences which persuaded me that reactive policing (responding to trouble after it has happened) is almost totally useless, and creates a demand it can never possibly satisfy. I then spent two years on detailed research into what had happened to this country��s police forces, which I compressed into a book(see below) which, if nothing else, shows that I do know something of the subject.

How can we go back to the fairytale world of Dixon of Dock Green when our resources are hopelessly stretched? You��re wishing for a golden age.

Answer: For a full answer to this you��ll need to read my book ��The Abolition of Liberty�� (available from any good library, so don��t make stupid excuses about how you can��t afford it or claim I��m engaging in a commercial plug).But the facts (there��s a useful chart on p.59 of ��Abolition��) show that the modern police forces of England and Wales have much greater manpower than they had in the 1960s, both in absolute numbers and per head of the population.

What��s more, the police have since then been relieved of their statutory duty to safeguard commercial premises (now left to private security companies), likewise they have lost the task of deciding on prosecutions to the Crown Prosecution Service, and they no longer enforce parking regulations. They have also handed over (again to private security firms) the custody of unconvicted prisoners in court and the safeguarding of court buildings.

In the same period they have acquired thousands of non-uniformed back-up staff who handle much of the bureaucracy they complain of, and have all the advantages of modern computer and radio systems which they lacked in the 1960s. Small forces have also been merged into bigger ones. I regard this is a serious mistake, but those who favour it (and there are, alas, no plans to reverse the change) maintain that it increases efficiency and still lobby for a national force on the lines of that established in Scotland.

3.The world��s changed, buster, Criminals go about in cars and on motorbikes. How are we supposed to catch them if we��re on foot or riding bikes? You��re living in a dreamworld.

Answer: Actually, the job of the police is not primarily to ��catch criminals��. Robert Peel persuaded a reluctant Parliament to agree to set up a police force because it would *prevent* crime.

Each crime and each arrest represents a *failure* of the prime duty of the police, which is to prevent crime and the disorder which encourages it. The system of regular preventive patrolling was developed to create an atmosphere of safety on the streets, to deter crime and disorder. The huge growth of crime and disorder since the abandonment of regular, systematic foot patrolling( see ��Abolition of Liberty�� for details, but this dates to the late 1960s) suggests that the new ��fire-brigade�� or ��reactive�� method of policing adopted after 1967 has failed in this task. In fact, it simply cannot cope with the demands placed upon it. Chasing about after crimes that have already happened looks and sounds spectacular and makes good reality TV footage, but what good does it actually do? The burgled aren��t unburgled, the mugged aren��t unmugged, the injured and beaten up aren��t returned to their former state of body and mind. What these people need are paramedics, locksmiths, glaziers, insurance men and a shoulder to cry on. These are not the jobs we pay the police to do.

There is research back-up for this: James Q.Wilson��s famous ��broken windows�� theory of policing. This says that if police pay attention to ��minor�� or ��petty�� infractions (vandalism, riding bikes on the pavement, shouting and swearing in the street, blatant fare-dodging on public transport, etc) they create a general atmosphere of order in which fewer big crimes take place.

How is a man on foot going to stop wife-beating?

Answer: How is a woman driving by in a car at 30 mph, or sitting in a remote police office on an industrial estate going to do so? But in fact a constable patrolling in foot gets to know his or her area very well, picks up gossip, and is in a position to have a ��quiet word�� with those in his area who he suspects to be up to no good. He is readily accessible, and can be reached informally without the palaver and impersonality of a 999 call( an astonishing number of these calls are not dealt with ). And this only increases. The patrolling constable will be back, and knows the faces and habits of the local troublemakers, who are frightened of him �� whereas they scorn the car-borne coppers who make occasional forays into rough areas and then drive off into the night, never to be seen again. Mind you, I never said preventive foot patrol was perfect, only that it is far better than what we do now.

4. Well, crime is falling, so that puts a stopper on your claims.

Answer: is it, though? This article http://dailym.ai/1EvlkAp details the extensive and confirmed downward fiddling of crime figures. I am surprised that any serving officer is unaware of this [problem, but oh, well. As for the Crime Survey of England and Wales, it is a glorified opinion poll, not a compilation of actual facts, and is subject to the main fault of such polls �� the answers are influenced by the questions asked. Then there��s the blatant fact that huge numbers of actions considered criminal until quite recently are now barely noticed by the police or the courts. They haven��t stopped happening. They��ve just been reclassified as normal. In the rougher parts of the country, where insurance is too expensive and burglary epidemic, there��s no point in getting a crime number, so what reason does anyone have to report a crime, especially when they risk being classified as a ��grass��, which means ostracism and worse in such places ?

5.So how will you feel when you��re being burgled and you call 999 and they say the nearest officer will take an hour to walk round?

Answer: I don��t want to be burgled in the first place. I��m not sure that the police will be much use to me even if they arrive while the burglar is in my house, nor am I sure that they very often achieve this. As for the actual investigation of burglary, it��s rapidly going the way of the investigation of car crime �� a bureaucratic formality which rarely results in detection or conviction . This itself rarely results in severe punishment, and though this is not the police��s fault they have quickly grasped that the prisons are already quite full enough, and the courts would rather they didn��t bother them , and so don��t pursue the matter with much vigour. Prevention, which would be greatly strengthened by the reintroduction of regular and systematic foot patrol, is far better than this.

6.Why do you attack the police? It��s not our fault.

Answer: Actually, I don��t attack individual police officers, who are doing what their bosses tell them . (Though I do wish they had used some of the vigour they put into pay protests or barracking Home Secretaries) into objecting to these changes. But they didn��t. But if individual officers go online (as they so often do) to attack me, invariably using the excuses and evasions of the National Police Chiefs�� Council (NPCC), the left liberal sociology graduates and excuse-makers who lead this country��s police forces, I will defend myself. I regard them as Their Masters�� Voice, and urge them to stop defending the very people who have ruined, and continue to ruin, policing in this country.

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 12, 2015 15:13

A Question of Tone

Mr Aspinall asks for ��objectivity�� about his tone in his interrogation of me on my acknowledged failure to speak upon behalf of Christopher Jefferies.

Right:

Remember the origin of this was my own unprompted statement of regret that I did nothing to speak up for Mr Jefferies, which followed a TV dramatisation of his treatment. I had no need, other than my own regret, to confess this. I had no specific responsibility towards Mr Jefferies, any more than did dozens, perhaps hundreds of others who also failed him at this time. I thought it was right of me to admit this, not least because the shame I felt would be strengthened and I would be more careful to speak out in future in such cases.

So now look at this, from Mr Aspinall 6 days ago:

What I'd like to know is why Peter Hitchens hasn't waited for someone else in his trade to defend Bell and the principle of the presumption of innocence. I shall be careful, here. There was no article by Mr Hitchens entitled: 'Christopher Jefferies and the Presumption of Innocence.' Why defend this principle using the example of a dead person when Jefferies was then (and I assume he still is) alive? With Mr Jefferies, Mr Hitchens could have defended the principle AND aided an innocent man. (Zola didn't wait for someone else to write in defense of Dreyfus.) Why did Mr Hitchens choose to do nothing to help Mr Jefferies, yet he chooses to speak for Bell?

I responded, within the comment. ***PH writes. A good point. I have recently, in published work, expressed my shame and regret that I do not do so. It is partly for this reason that I am so engaged in this case***

I assumed this would be the end of it. But No. The following day Mr Aspinall returned to the subject. This is crucial in measuring the tone. A question once raised and once answered with (it seems to me) considerable frankness) is a question. But the same question then repeated (implying very specific personal cowardice of a deeply shameful sort for someone who does what I do) ceases to be a question and becomes an inquisition. The tone is not that of a person satisfying his curiosity, but of one seeking to expose wrong-doing or provoke a confession of it.

Mr Aspinall wrote (my subsequent responses are interleaved in his comment, marked*** as usual):

Peter Hitchens says that his decision to do nothing to help Christopher Jefferies - the man whose character was ruined by (some of) the press in the Joanna Yeates murder case - is partly why he takes such an active interest in the Bell case. This makes sense. I'm left wondering why Peter Hitchens *didn't* write in defence of the principle of the presumption of innocence and use Mr Jefferies as the example. He says he waited for someone else to stop it, which implies he was aware, as it was happening, that Mr Jefferies was being ruined, and was (perhaps?) poised, fingers hovering over the keys, waiting for the moment to start writing - but didn't. We know why he started writing for Bell - so what stopped him writing for Jefferies when the same principle applies? Was he instructed to write nothing by editors, because there was a clear Jefferies 'line' being taken?

**PH writes: No. ***

Was he worried Jefferies might have been guilty, and that his opponents would have smeared and misrepresented him as having been defending a killer instead of a principle? (Something they almost certainly would have done.)

***PH writes: I don't think it was as specific as that. I'd have had to have got a lot nearer doing something than I did to have had such a defined fear. It was just a general cowardice mixed with a consciousness that I was failing in my duty. Has Mr Aspinall never experienced any such thing? I really don't see why we need to get so profound about this. I failed, through my own fault, and have admitted this in public, in the place where I failed. I can't say it's much fun to do this, but if the only response is to be accused of following non-existent orders, I might think twice before making such public confessions again. Unrepentant people seem to get an easier time from this contributor.***

Mr Aspinall continued: I know (and acknowledged in my first comment about this) that Mr Hitchens has stated his regret for doing nothing and has publicly, and in print, apologised to Mr Jefferies. I am not looking to make mischief, here. I am just interested to know what prevented Mr Hitchens writing for Jefferies when he knew at the time it was the right thing to do.

*** First there the sentence ��I am just interested to know what prevented Mr Hitchens writing for Jefferies when he knew at the time it was the right thing to do.��

But I had and have clearly explained this. It was a failure of courage, not to my credit. I don��t wish to make a boast out of this, because it would be wrong, but are such confessions common in my trade? I think not.

I had of course technically invited the question by my own confession, but I do not think that good manners, as should exist between one sinner and the other , each with his own frailties, justified any further questioning. Mr Aspinall has not elected me to anything, nor appointed me to anything, and I owe him no special duty. He is certainly not my confessor. Never mind. The question had been asked, and I had answered it. But the questioning continued, with the clear implication that I was hiding something and not telling the full story. Why else continue to ask in this ill-mannered interrogative fashion?

It is of course this ��was he instructed��?�� sentence which is inquisitorial, suspicious and accusatory . Indeed, it contains, in the form of a question, a suggestion that I was acting under instructions which, made in any other way, would be definitely defamatory, especially as it is entirely baseless. It may actually be defamatory. As the late Sir John Junor once painfully discovered, his belief that it is never libellous to ask a question is not true in law. I replied to this, interspersing my comments in his original comment, and thought it would be the end of the matter. But no.

Mr Aspinall returned once again, this time to claim that my answer had been ��vague�� again the innuendo that am cocnealingsome important and guilty detail.

Here, with my responses interspersed, is his third comment:

Peter Hitchens has responded to my question about Christopher Jefferies. Though his answer is vague, he says ***PH writes: What does he mean 'vague'? It is a statement of the truth, which on such matters tends not to appear in itemised, specific accounts. I shall make no further responses to this tiresome, self-righteous nitpicking, and suggest Mr Aspinall examines his conscience for moral failures of his own (assuming that there are any such), from now on***** 'It was just a general cowardice mixed with a consciousness that I was failing in my duty. Has Mr Aspinall never experienced any such thing?' Probably, yes. It's almost certainly the case that I've been a coward in some matters in the past. I'm only asking about what it was Mr Hitchens was afraid of? ***PH writes: I was afraid of acting and felt safer in inaction. Mr Aspinall seems unable to grasp that nobody ever asked me to intervene, that nothing in my life suggested that I personally had any specific duty to do so. And that, had I never confessed to my failure and my regret for it, nobody would ever have known that I thought it might have been my duty or that I had failed in it. The insinuation, that I feared some identifiable punishment or threat, is baseless. Fear, as those who have experienced it well know, does not need to be specific. Most fear, in my experience, is a vague presentiment that something unpleasant lies around a certain corner or beyond a certain door, and that it is best not to turn that corner or open that door. This is why people are so reluctant to take the first small steps which would otherwise lead to major changes in life, such as changing their minds. They don't want their fears to take a specific shape, any more than the child which fears there is a monster under its bed wants to look to see if it is really there, in case it actually is. Instinct tends to guide this far more than reason. Indeed, reason is often the best way of conquering such fear*** Mathew Parris, in the Great Lives programme, praises Hitchens for his pugilism, and we all know that our host isn't scared of being in a minority, that he likes to argue, and that he cares more for principle than he does popularity. It's those facts which make the Jefferies question interesting. I am NOT looking to pour slime over our host - I'm genuinely interested. ***PH writes: I do not believe this assertion. I had no special reason to act on behalf of Mr Jefferies, any more than anyone else inside or outside my trade. I had never met him and knew nothing of the case.

(In the case of George Bell, it might reasonably said that having nominated his as a 'Great Life' I was personally bound either to retract my view or to defend it) . Mr Aspinall can only make these insinuations because I publicly confessed to having failed in what I now know to have been my duty, by waiting for someone else to do what I should have done. I could have kept this private. If I had never mentioned it, it would never in a million years have occurred to Mr Aspinall to raise the matter, or to think that I had any business intervening in this injustice, one of dozens every year in which people might or might not intervene. **** But there was no 'accusation' that Mr Hitchens was following orders, just a question about that as a possibility. ***PH says: He should not be so disingenuous. I have too high an opinion of Mr Aspinall's intelligence to believe that he really thinks this was not an accusation, though, as such accusations have to be, it was cunningly couched, so that he could deny having made it, as he has done*** I know that our host is repentant about his lack of action, which is why I quoted his apology to Mr Jefferies in my first comment. 'I might think twice before making such public confessions again. Unrepentant people seem to get an easier time from this contributor.*** ' Well, he shouldn't think twice, and I hope he doesn't think I'm giving him a hard time - because, on my word of honour, I not trying to. I don't know who the people are to whom I seem to give an easier time; one regular contributor is getting to the point where he won't discuss anything with me because my attempts at precision are conveniently dismissed as 'pedantry.' ***PH writes: Well, whoever that is, I begin to feel some sympathy with him ***

Not content with this, he came back a *fourth* time, once again, to repeat , oh so innocently, the insinuation that I was acting under orders, which he of course asserted was not any such insinuation, which seems to me to fall into that fine old category, identified by Alexander Pope, of being 'willing to wound, but afraid to strike' . Even though he had made it before, and I had rebutted it before, and yet here he was, making it again. :

On the Jefferies / Bell question, I��m happy to leave the discussion where it is. I was asking only because I thought it was interesting. I (wrongly, obviously) assumed there would have been a specific reason behind our host��s choice to say nothing on the presumption of innocence principle for Jefferies; if there was no specific reason, then there wasn��t �� that��s that. I used two speculations about what this reason *might* have been: one was to ask if there was any editorial line being followed �� quite a vague speculation because I didn��t offer any guess as to why such a line *might* have come down from the brass. The second was a specific question about how Mr Hitchens��s opponents might have smeared him as defending a killer and not a principle (which I think they would have done) had Mr Jefferies been found guilty. I offered these as being two ends of the ��who knows?�� spectrum. They were not offered as disguised accusations.

This is what I mean by his tone. I am sorry he cannot see it. I shall not, in any case, respond to him in any fashion ever again.

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 11, 2015 15:08

The General and the Beardie Lefty

Shortly after a now-retired (but then active) senior general criticised our involvement in Iraq (which I rejoiced over) I ran into an old acquaintance , a very senior former diplomat, who was spitting teeth and blood over the general��s performance. The man was a complete fool to step so far outside his own responsibilities. It didn��t matter what he had said (the diplomat was inclined to agree with him). Generals just didn��t make political statements in a law-governed country run by the Queen in Parliament, and that was that.

Chastened, I realized I��d been guilty of one of the great sins of politics �� forgetting principles for a temporary advantage.

So I moderated my sympathy for the general (who later turned out to be a bit of a disappointment in other ways). In the end, constitutional rectitude was more important than hearing something you agreed with from an important person, especially from a senior soldier.

There��s an argument for saying that this country last underwent a major military intervention in politics in 1688, when John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough rather trickily helped Dutch William remove James II from the throne. Then there was the so-called Curragh Mutiny against the Liberals�� Irish Home Rule policy (which was quite serious) , and there were various wild mutterings during Harold Wilson��s years, but I don��t think these can be taken seriously.

So when General Sir Nicholas Houghton, head of the Armed Forces, Chief of the Defence Staff, appeared on TV on the Andrew Marr programme on Sunday ( a transcript can be found here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/08111503.pdf ), I must admit I wasn��t sure he should be there at all. This is a programme on which politicians are interviewed. The general isn��t one. Very important questions arise. Does anyone know the answers? What was he doing there? Who had authorised him, if anyone? Had he consulted with Ministers or other officers before agreeing to do this? Whose idea was it? Is there a precedent?

Sir Nicholas is, ultimately, the employee and subordinate of the Queen in Parliament. There are other countries where this does not apply, but that is their problem. Here, it is so. The government decides what he must do and what policy he must follow. If he does not like it, he can protest to ministers, up to the Prime Minister, to whom he has access. And if they ignore him, he can either do as they say, or resign.

That��s it, and that��s as it should be. As for his private politics and beliefs, he may be, if he so wishes, a nudist, a vegetarian or a Warmist, a socialist or a liberal or a conservative. It would be interesting to see if he could, even in private, be a Muslim or a UKIP member in practice. I can see either causing difficulties. . He couldn��t be a pacifist because it would make it impossible for him to do his job. By the way, id not think Jeremy Corbyn, who will feature in this post later, is an actual pacifist, just a man very reluctant to support war (as I am). If I am wrong, I should be grateful for chapter and verse.

The general (though he isn't) might well be an opponent of the replacement of Britain��s (to my mind ridiculous, unusable and absurdly large) Trident nuclear ��deterrent��. I qualify the word ��deterrent�� because for some years I have been unable to answer the question ��Who or what does Trident actually deter, who is a) interested in a nuclear attack on Britain and b) capable of mounting one?��

Quite a few senior officers in all three services are, I believe, privately against this renewal, as they are aware that this country��s conventional armed forces are a shell - an array of ageing equipment, in diminishing quantities, manned by shrinking numbers of servicemen and women who increasingly lack the necessary training to handle them well in times of need, as the most experienced are most likely to leave, and the pressure this places on those who remain then drives more away.

I noticed (it is alas behind a paywall) the retired Major-General Sir Patrick Cordingley (he retired 15 years ago and so is free to speak as he wishes) wrote an article in ��The Times today (11th November) making the case for getting rid of Trident. We don��t really control it, in effect it is part of the US Fleet. Its running costs are ��4,000,000,000 a year and the replacement costs could run to ��100,000,000,000 over thirty years, a strange expenditure for a country with an annual deficit of billions and an accumulated state debt of ��1,500,000,000,000. I think these noughts are right. We could make much better use of this money.

Plainly, Sir Nicholas Houghton doesn��t agree with this, as I��ll discuss in a moment. He��s also very onside with the Cameron view of ISIS as an ��existential threat to this country ( a view I think questionable. How much do they really care about us?) , saying: ��And I think when the Prime Minister speaks like that, I don��t think he necessarily means in terms of they��re going to come and take our territory off us, but I think in terms of to undermine our way of life, our freedoms, our liberty, you know the values we stand for. I think that��s the true nature of the existential threat that a threat like ISIS does or has the potential to present.��

An interesting opinion but should we know he has it? If so, why? What would happen if he didn't have it, and instead said that he thought further interventions in the Middle East were a silly and dangerous waste of time? Would it be all right for him to say that on the BBC on Sunday morning?

Then there��s this :�� And if you��d indulge me, I think from a national perspective the only thing that we can unilaterally own as a country is a strategy about ISIS that keeps the country and the people of this country safe, and that��s why our national strategy is all about border security, the remarkable work of our intelligence services in intelligence led operations within the country, reaching out through the Muslim society within the country to assist them in deradicalising and delegitimising ISIS.��

This also sounds like the normal talk of a Tory cabinet minister �� but is it right that it should be said by a senior serving general? Why should we know he thinks this? Would we be any worse off if he kept quiet?

What��s interesting is how vague and roundabout he becomes as soon as the really hot issue of his job �� military spending �� is discussed.

For example, this passage:

Sir Nicholas ��but I think the domestic situation has changed. I think we do have to sort of base as we look forward to this defence review, which should be one that is primarily about confidence and optimism and a reassurance to the people of the country, that there��s got to be a bit of realism in the fact that the world has become a somewhat more dangerous place. If you like, the latent threats have become patent ones.

ANDREW MARR: ��So on defence spending George Osborne has promised you the NATO 2 percent, the extra spending, but are you concerned the Chancellor and the Treasury might start to kind of nibble away at that by adding things like military pensions into it?��

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��Well I think it would be a miracle if the Defence and the Treasury did not submit to NATO those things that it is permissible under the NATO rules to claim as national defence expenditure. My concern is that however the figures are done, there is real additional spending available for defence, and that is absolutely the case. And so if you like for the first time in a long time, probably 25 years, what this forthcoming SDSR is about is not the management of decline but the management of betterment.��

This hesitancy and qualification ( be honest - it''s not exactly a headlong charge in the general direction of the Treasury, is it?) slightly fade away when the subject of Trident and Jeremy Corbyn comes up.

ANDREW MARR: ��...Of course we now have the leader of the opposition who says quite openly he would never press the nuclear button. Does that worry you? ��

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��Well it �� it would worry me if that, er, thought was translated into power as it were because ��

ANDREW MARR: ��So if he wins, he��s a problem?��

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��Well there��s a couple of hurdles to cross before we get to that.��

ANDREW MARR: ��Of course��.

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��But the reason I say this �� and it��s not based on a personal thing at all, it��s purely based on the credibility of deterrence. The whole thing about deterrence rests on the credibility of its use. When people say you��re never going to use the deterrent, what I say is you use the deterrent you know every second of every minute of every day and the purpose of the deterrent is that you don��t have to use it because you successfully deter.��

ANDREW MARR: ��So no point at all in spending billions and billions of pounds if our enemies think we��d never use it?��

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��Yeah because deterrence is then completely undermined. And I think people have got to �� You know politic�� Most of the politicians I know understand that and I think that, dare I say, the responsibility of power is probably quite a sobering thing and you come to a realisation ��I understand how this thing works��.��

Well now: First of all there��s that ��When people say you��re never going to use the deterrent, what I say is you use the deterrent you know every second of every minute of every day and the purpose of the deterrent is that you don��t have to use it because you successfully deter.��

Really? Once again, who and what are we deterring? Why do we need this vast American-controlled apparatus to do so, a complex and vastly technical thing whose main purpose is to bomb Moscow, which we no longer have any need to do, since the vast Soviet Army has been disbanded, the Warsaw Pact has ceased to exist and Moscow no longer dominates Europe in the absence of nuclear deterrence. as it so definitely did before 1989? By all means (here I differ with Sir Patrick Cordingley��s vapourings about the UN and setting an example, which are absurd) hang on to a few free-fall atomic bombs and fit our submarines with submarine-launched nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. But Trident? What is it for? Whose is it? Whom does it deter? How?

But then there��s the deep unwisdom of being drawn into political discussion. When asked about Mr Corbyn (or ISIS, or anything else) Sir Nicholas could perfectly easily have said that these were matters for politicians, about which he, a simple soldier, was not entitled to comment.

But this exchange :

ANDREW MARR: ��So no point at all in spending billions and billions of pounds if our enemies think we��d never use it?��

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��Yeah because deterrence is then completely undermined��

And this one:

ANDREW MARR: ��...Of course we now have the leader of the opposition who says quite openly he would never press the nuclear button. Does that worry you?

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: Well it �� it would worry me if that, er, thought was translated into power as it were because ��

ANDREW MARR: ��So if he wins, he��s a problem?��

GENERAL SIR NICHOLAS HOUGHTON: ��Well there��s a couple of hurdles to cross before we get to that.��

...are serious breaches of the wise rule that generals stay out of politics. Andrew Marr has a story to get, and knows how to get it. The general, who could no doubt outfox a pincer attack in the field, fell straight into Field Marshal Marr��s trap and gave him the headline he wanted. 'Top General attacks Corbyn��s pledge not to use bomb.' Etc etc.

Of course a lot of pro-Tory Blairite politicians and media were really relaxed about this. But that��s because they think the public is right behind Trident (a thing most of them barely understand, and worship as a sort of fetish of machismo).

But what if the General had said instead that Trident was a colossal waste of money, was bleeding the defence budget dry, and served no observable military purpose.

Why, then the air would have been thick with yells about political generals speaking out of turn, and demands for his sacking. Well, if he��s allowed to say what he said on the Marr show, then he (or his successors) should equally well be allowed to say that Trident is a heap of worthless junk. You can��t have it both ways. Me, I still think generals should keep out of politics, always. Once you breach that principle, you endanger the constitution.

I also wonder what Mr Cameron really, really thinks in those long dark nights, when he ponders what he would do if he had to decide whether to retaliate to a nuclear attack ( I can��t think where it might come from, but never mind). I��d like to see someone press him hard on that.

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 11, 2015 15:08

BBC Radio 4 'What the Papers Say'

Some of you may be interested in this edition of BBC Radio 4's 'What the Papers Say',

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06npkft

broadcast on Sunday 8th November 2015

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 09, 2015 15:10

Hedonism, a 2011 Debate

This YouTube version of a debate on hedonism(at the 'How the Light Gets In' Festival at Hay on Wye, a rival to the main event) has recently surfaced on the web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1-zH7wN-uM

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 09, 2015 15:10

Another Voice Defends the Presumption of Innocence

Some of you may be interested in this discussion of the George Bell case, on the 'Archbishop Cranmer' blog

http://archbishopcranmer.com/bishop-george-bell-and-the-tyranny-of-paedomania/

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 09, 2015 15:10

Warmists armed with windmills are the REAL threat to Britain

This is Peter Hitchens��s Mail on Sunday column

As we squeak and gibber about the distant danger of terrorism, this country stands on the brink of a real threat to its economy, its daily life and its order.

It is a threat we have brought on ourselves by embracing an obsessive, pseudo-scientific dogma, a dogma that is also destroying irreplaceable industries and jobs week by week.

Last week we came within inches of major power blackouts, though official spokesmen claim unconvincingly that all was well.

Experts on the grid have for some time predicted a crisis of this sort, but had not expected it anything like so soon, or in such warm weather conditions. It is the fact that they were taken by surprise that warns us there may be worse to come.

Though Wednesday was mild for the time of year, the National Grid had to resort to emergency measures to keep Britain��s lights on. These included paying industries to reduce their power consumption and giving electricity generators up to 50 times the normal wholesale price to produce additional supplies �� plainly emergency measures.

Forests of hideous, useless, vastly subsidised windmills predictably failed to help �� because there was no wind. Acres of hideous, useless, vastly subsidised solar panels predictably failed to help, because it was dark.

Several perfectly good coal-fired power stations failed to help because we recently shut them down and blew them up. We did this in obedience to European Union regulations that prevent Britain from generating power from coal.

Meanwhile, China builds a new coal-fired power station every few weeks and fills the atmosphere with soot and carbon dioxide. If man-made CO2 really does cause global warming, then this policy of destroying Britain��s coal-fired power stations is not affecting that.

Even on its own terms, the action is mad.

Craziest fact of all: if things get really desperate, the Grid will resort to banks of back-up diesel generators, perhaps the least green form of energy there is. And if they can��t cope, a country almost wholly dependent on electrically powered computers will go dark and silent, as our competitors laugh.

You will not be comforted to know that two more perfectly good coal-fired British power stations are already doomed by Euro-decree. They will be shut and irrevocably destroyed in the next six months.

And our last deep coal mine, at Kellingley, sitting on a huge reserve of high-quality coal, is to be shut for ever.

The UK��s exceptionally high electricity prices, forced up by green taxes to pay for useless windmills and solar panels, are destroying manufacturing industry. Having closed much of what remains of our steel industry, high power charges last week claimed their latest victim, the Michelin tyre plant in Ballymena, Northern Ireland.

As I have pointed out here in the past, the world has seen this sort of madness before, when dogma has been allowed to veto common sense.

This is what happened to the Soviet Union, which destroyed its economy and its society by trying to create Utopia. As usual, the result was hell.

The inflexible, intolerant cause of Warmism is not as bad as Leninism. There is no Gulag, only a lot of self-righteous spite for any who dare to dissent. And who cannot sympathise with those who genuinely think they are saving the planet? But they aren��t.

Do they really think, once the free Western countries sink into decay thanks to their policies, that a mighty China will pay any attention to their cries of protest?

They are just hustling us into the Third World, while saving nothing at all.

The State shouldn't poke its nose into my emails - or yours

Actually, I don��t at all see that terrorism gives the Government an excuse to sift through all our private activities.

Most of the cases of so-called terrorists picked up as a result of such surveillance involve groups of loopy fantasists and/or dope-smokers who talk about committing various dreadful crimes but haven��t really got very far.

The evidence against one such group included the devastating information that they had spent some time looking at the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

Maybe they would have done something terrible. Maybe they wouldn��t. Experience suggests that our huge, expensive ��security�� services aren��t actually that good at detecting or preventing serious outrages, despite their boasts. This is mainly because, however much power we give them, they��re not clairvoyant.

Terror works by surprise. It learns to go off the grid, and can afford to do so, unlike most of us.

It also works by driving societies mad, like a wasp at a picnic. Terrorists are overjoyed when we shut down our freedoms and turn ourselves into a police state, and when we retaliate, swatting the Middle East with useless bombs, or rounding up the wrong suspects and locking them up without charge.

This is what they want us to do, because in the end we will make ourselves so miserable that we end up by giving in to them �� as we always do. As we did in Cyprus, in Kenya and in Northern Ireland.

Mrs Theresa May��s most interesting revelation last week was that, thanks to hidden provisions in a 1984 law, her officials had for years been trawling through our phone and email records without our knowledge. What similar provisions are hidden in her vast new Bill, or will be by the time it becomes law? Call me old-fashioned. I am old-fashioned. But I still think the presumption of innocence is vital, and that the police and MI5 should stay out of my business unless they have a good reason, which they can explain to an independent judge, to do otherwise.

If all coppers looked like this, maybe they'd get more respect

The funeral of PC Dave Phillips in Liverpool��s majestic Anglican cathedral was a very moving occasion in many ways, the dignity, eloquence and bearing of his family in particular, and one just hopes that all those who witnessed it will now understand just how much grief a single, callous action can cause.

But one unexpectedly affecting part of it was the sight of so many police officers in the dignified and very British uniform of helmet and tunic, which used to be so familiar and has now almost vanished, replaced by high-viz yellow, baseball caps, stomping boots, tasers and belts hung with menacing equipment.

Did any of us ask for this change, or approve of it? Wouldn��t most of the police, as well as most of the public, prefer to return to the times �� not long ago �� when we respected each other, rather than (as is so often the case now) mistrusting each other? And wouldn��t a return to the old uniform be a major step towards this?

I��ll regret this, I know I will. I always do when I try optimism. But I do feel something approaching joy that my home town, Oxford, has just acquired a new railway station and a new route to London.

For decades I��ve watched the thoughtless building of new roads, and the ripping up of perfectly good railway lines, a grave policy mistake that has messed up our landscape and wrecked a great British industry. Could this serial blunder at last be over? I doubt it. But for a few weeks, I��ll hope so.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

View more on Peter Hitchens's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 08, 2015 15:09

Warmists armed with windmills are the REAL threat to Britain

This is Peter Hitchens�� Mail on Sunday column