Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 193

A Recent Debate about Russia and Ukraine

Here is the recording, in two parts of the Russia-Ukraine debate in London in which I recently took part, together with Professor Richard Sakwa, Edward Lucas and Orysia Lutsevych

 

My first contribution is at about 28 minutes into the first of these two links:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfIc7oq4AN4

 

I am sorry about the sound quality in the second section, and its abrupt ending, and am in touch with the organisers to see if anything can be done.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgc2KTJ96MA

 

Sex Education and Civil Liberty - some recordings of PH

I offer readers a couple of recordings they may wish to listen to and (in the second case) watch

 

The first is a fairly interview on the subject of sex education with Jonathon Van Maren, a Canadian broadcaster

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Xr2ekw8Cg&feature=youtu.be

 

I start talking at about 8 minutes in.

 

 

The second is from a  brief period when I was allowed to make TV documentaries for Channel Four TV.  I think it must be from 2006, a C4 dispatches Documentary on ���Stealing Your Freedom��� .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ-DfNmZ99A

 

Another programme I made for them, about David Cameron and called ���Toff at the Top��� has yet to swim on to the Internet.

 

 

'Addiction is not a Disease' says somebody other than Peter Hitchens

Readers interested in the subject of alleged ���addiction��� may be interested in this article, from ���Salon��� magazine  http://bit.ly/1NpGR1X

 

The author of the book it reviews, Marc Lewis, is a psychologist and former 'addict'. The book is called: ���The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease.���) He comes from the disciplines of  ���Psychology��� and ���Neuroscience���, about whose claims to be hard sciences I am highly sceptical. I've no doubt he's pretty sceptical about people like me. And yet, we seem to agree, more or less. 

For what���s really striking about the review article by Laura Miller is this statement: ���For several decades now, it���s been a commonplace to say that addicts have a disease. However, the very same scientists who once seemed to back up that claim have begun tearing it down.���

 

And also this passage from the book which she quotes : 

'���The brain changes with addiction,��� he writes. ���But the way it changes has to do with learning and development ��� not disease.��� All significant and repeated experiences change the brain; adaptability and habit are the brain���s secret weapons. The changes wrought by addiction are not, however, permanent, and while they are dangerous, they���re not abnormal.'

I do hope that all those who shouted and yelled at me for doubting the 'disease' theory of addiction during my televised conversation with Matthew Perry, the noted actor, at Christmas 2013, will not now chase after Laura Miller, and the author whose book she is reviewing,  in the same way.

But, if they don���t  (and they shouldn���t) perhaps they should consider whether they were right to be so self-righteous and arrogantly over-confident when they assailed me.

The Guardian Gets a Scoop

I do think this very good exclusive story in the ���Guardian���

 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/26/david-cameron-eu-campaign-risky-impact-uk-exit

 

 

ought to have had much wider currency. The BBC is normally very quick to pick up stories in the ���Guardian��� but I don���t recall them, or the supposedly ���Eurosceptic��� press making all that much of this.

 

The clear revelation that Mr Cameron really doesn���t have much in the way of aims in his EU ���renegotiation���, and that he plans to use fear of ���risk��� to keep us in the EU, is no surprise to me. But surely it should be to all those ���Eurosceptic��� Tory loyalists who keep telling us that they trust the Premier���s good intentions

Yes, the Tunisian Killer was on Cannabis Too. So What?

Look, I don���t want to go on about it, but I thought I would mention that my own newspaper reported as follows on Sunday morning:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3141867/The-cannabis-smoking-fanatic-massacred-tourists-cold-blood-Killer-attended-radical-mosques-signing-ISIS.html

 

It contained, in an almost throwaway line, the following fact: ���Last night, a Tunisian Interior Ministry source said that while [the Sousse murderer Seifeddine] Rezgui did not have a criminal record, he was known to authorities for "low level radicalism" and was once stopped by police for smoking cannabis.���

 

Just in case anyone thinks I played any part in this, they are vry much mistaken. The reporter on the spot (we still do that on the MoS) discovered the fact and recorded it, unprompted by me and unknown to me.

 

Now, I suspect you���d have to be pretty dogged about smoking cannabis in Tunisia for the police to bother you or keep a record of it. So I doubt if this was a first offence.

 

So what?

Well, so, there seems to be a bit of a pattern here.

 

Let me just restate: the culprits of the 2011 Tucson massacre,at which Congreswoman Gabrielle Giffords was terribly wounded and six people died,  the culprits of the beheading of Jennifer Mills Westley in Tenerife, of the beheading of Mrs Palmira Silva in London, of the grotesque murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, of the Charlie Hebdo and related killings in Paris, of the killings of two Canadian soldiers in the past year, of the bludgeoning to death of Sheffield church organist Alan Greaves, not to mention a large number of other notably violent and deranged, irrational crimes  ( see: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/07/high-and-violent.html  ) have all been revealed to be cannabis users. Now this killer has been revealed to be a cannabis user too.

 

What does this mean? What claim am I making?

 

It means that there appears to be a correlation between the use of this drug and violent, irrational acts, a correlation so strong and so frequently observed in prominent events that it seems to me that we need a proper inquiry to see if it is significant. We know about the correlation because such horrors are much more intensively covered by the media and investigated by the authorities than other crimes. It is reasonable to contend that if other, less noteworthy crimes of violence were subjected to the same scrutiny, similar correlations might well emerge. 

 

It���s not the only such correlation. There is, for instance, a well-established and widely-acknowledged correlation between alcohol and violence, so strong that we all accept unhesitatingly that causation is involved - which is not disputed and which nobody needs to point out. Imagine, though, if the powerful alcohol lobby and its willing dupes waged a campaign against any journalist who sought to suggest such a correlation. That's how it is with cannabis.  Just say this and a howling storm of lies and abuse will gather round your head. 

 

This correlation informs the law���s attitude (criminal and civil) towards alcohol, and the media���s attitude, and our culture���s attitude. But at present there is a widespread belief in our culture that cannabis is harmless, and that it promotes peaceful and indeed passive behaviour. If this were to be found to be untrue, the attitudes of law, media and culture would need to change quite sharply.

 

Above all, the highly successful and well-funded campaign for cannabis legalisation would face a new and serious hurdle, just as it seemed to be in sight of success. This point explains the large number of vituperative and unresponsive comments this information will attract here and has already attracted on Twitter.

 

 

The correlation is significant because the drug is indisputably mind-altering, which is why people take it.

 

It is significant because it is also correlated with mental disturbance in general .

 

This is why such remarks as ���these killers all breathed air���, or ��� these killers all had eggs for breakfast��� are childish obfuscation. Air and eggs don���t alter the mind, cannabis does. That���s why the correlation is potentially meaningful rather than coincidental. 

 

Air and eggs aren���t correlated meaningfully with mental disturbance. Cannabis is.

 

For example : http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/16/skunk-cannabis-triples-risk-psychotic-episodes-study

 

So, am I saying that everyone who smokes cannabis is a mass killer? Of course not, though, again, the cannabis comment warriors will be quick to suggest that this is my case, in the hope of fooling as many people as they can.

 

I am suggesting that these worrying and frightening instances are extreme examples of a general problem which is quite serious in its mildest form: that cannabis is correlated with the unpredictable alteration of the personality of those who use it.

 

This would surely put a stop to any talk of general legalisation of this drug. It would also damage its cunningly-created image as a ���soft��� drug, and as a potential medicine. What���s ���soft��� about a lifetime on the locked ward, or taking powerful antipsychotic drugs?  Nothing. Who���d take a medicine with such potential side-effects? Only a fool.

 

Causation is extremely problematic here for two reasons. The first is that our knowledge of the workings of the brain, and of the relation between brain and mind, are almost unbelievably scanty and crude.

 

Trying(for instance) to draw conclusions about a person���s thinking or mental states from brain scans is like trying to work out what someone is saying in the Dog and Duck in Hampstead by studying a satellite picture of London by night. The brain does indeed alter physically after many experiences, from learning the ���Knowledge���(the London Taxi drivers��� demanding test of their detailed knowledge of London streets) to taking drugs. But that is all we know. The brain alters. We can say *that* this has happened. But we are stuck to explain how, or why, or what it means.

 

And ,as James Davies points out in detail in his book ���Cracked���, the diagnosis of mental illness is amazingly flexible, vague and subjective.

 

It may even be that, in the end, correlation (the basic tool of epidemiology, after all) is what we are left with. Those who wish to claim there���s nothing to be learned from these coincidences will chant ���Correlation is not Causation���, like a brigade of Red Guards singing the praises of Chairman Mao.   

 

But we can say softly back ���Indeed it is not. But correlation is also not necessarily *not* causation, either���.

 

And we can say, after the horrors of Sousse, and the many lesser horrors being played out among young people, in this country whose cannabis use has been followed by many and various disturbing symptoms, that those who listen to warnings are wiser than those who ignore them.

 

And that, with a billion-dollar market about to open up before their eyes, and a huge tax take as well,  those who try to silence such warnings may not have the purest of motives. 

The EU reigns over our borders, our laws... ��and now our Queen

This is Peter Hitchens Mail on Sunday Column

Like you and me, whether she likes it or not, the Queen is a citizen of the European Union.

As far as our rulers in Brussels are concerned, Her Majesty can stand for the European Parliament and vote in the elections for it. She doesn't but she could.

She may claim to be ���By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith��� but in the eyes of the EU (which doesn���t believe in God or Faith) she���s just Citizen Liz.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, President Joachim Gauck and his partner Daniela Schadt. German Foregin Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier shakes hands with the President before a banquet
 

Under EU law (Article 20, Paragraph Two of the Treaty of Rome, since you ask), she is ���subject to the duties��� which the EU decides to require of its citizens. There aren���t any yet. But I can promise you that there will be as ���ever closer union��� plods steadily on.

When this country was still independent, the Queen was the one who had subjects. Now, she is subject to others. Forget the Coronation Oath and a thousand years of the British constitution. Our sovereign is someone else���s subject.

Can she, in that case, still be our sovereign?

I wonder if she has noticed this change, or been worried by it. I suspect not. It has just happened to her, as it has happened to everyone else. We have quietly become a different people in a different country.

Like most of us, she has probably heard the slow advance of the EU into our national life as background noise, a dreary constant swoosh, like distant traffic.

Buckingham Palace insists, against all the evidence, that Her Majesty���s EU citizenship ���in no way affects her prerogatives, rights and responsibilities as the Sovereign and Head of State.��� Given that the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is the final arbiter of law in this country now, and that Parliament and our so-called ���Supreme Court��� are subject to it, that simply isn���t so.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Berlin's Mayor Michael Mueller speak to wellwishers on Pariser Platz in Berlin
 

This sort of thing may appear mystical but actually it matters. It���s why armies defend their standards to the end, why we have Royal symbols on state documents, postage stamps, the cap-badges of soldiers and policemen, coins and seals.

The EU���s leaders know it matters. That���s why they made her an EU citizen. And how pleased they must have been to hear her, in Berlin on Wednesday, trotting out their standard propaganda line that ���division��� in Europe is a bad thing and that ���unity��� is the source of safety.

Really? For centuries, it was firm British policy to keep the Continent divided, to make sure its great powers left us alone. The safest period of my lifetime was the Cold War, when Europe was more sharply divided than ever.

As she spoke, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, nodded enthusiastically. And if Mrs Merkel thought the Queen was making a political point, I���d back her judgment against any statements or briefings from British officials.

Could Downing Street, the Foreign Office and Buckingham Palace have imagined for a second that such a speech would not be interpreted as an endorsement of Britain���s continued EU membership?

Yet all would have seen it in advance and the Government could have stopped it if they wanted.

They didn���t. Without doubt, the Queen���s personal acceptance of her role as a loyal EU servant was one of the great symbolic moments of our history. A bit like Magna Carta, but backwards.

 
Farewell to the ultimate Englishman
 

I'm not sure I have ever enjoyed anything on TV as much as I liked watching Patrick Macnee playing John Steed in The Avengers, especially when Diana Rigg was at his side. 

Here was an Englishman - funny, chivalrous, fundamentally gentle, yet deadly to his enemies.

From his obituaries, I gather that he was really like that. What a pleasant change it makes from all those actors, famous for playing noble roles, who turn out to have been secretly mean and nasty. 

Real gentleman: Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee in The Avengers in 1965. What a pleasant change to hear that people genuinely did see him as a gentleman and it wasn't purely an act
 

Crazed killers: The clue everyone ignores

When I lived in the suburbs of Washington DC, I was rather proud that my landlord was almost the only African-American in my unofficially segregated neighbourhood (the other one was the adopted child of our admirable next-door neighbours).

Like many American houses, ours had a small flagpole over the front door, normally used for the Stars And Stripes.

I asked the owner if he���d object if I flew a Union Jack from it.

���Not at all,��� he replied. ���You can fly any flag you like there, from anywhere in the world, as long as it isn���t the Confederate Battle Flag.���

For him, it was a nasty symbol of cruelty and hate.

From then on, I always took seriously the arguments of those who said the Confederate banner was a real issue, not just a bit of nostalgia.

And if it no longer flies in the grounds of the South Carolina State Capitol, I for one won���t be grieving. It���s one good effect of the Charleston massacre.

But what a pity that this dispiriting event has not led to any examination of the role of legal and illegal mind-altering drugs in rampage killings, an issue which is in my view much more pressing.

It���s still going on. Authority doesn���t look or doesn���t care. Two and two are not put together.

The Charleston suspect, as I���ve pointed out, appears to have been a drug abuser.

Now we have another ��� British ��� case which ought to have made people think, but hasn���t.

The gruesome murder of the blameless 82-year-old mother and grandmother, Palmira Silva (her killer cut her head off), received less coverage than it should have. But it had much in common with two other recent crimes ��� the murder of Lee Rigby in 2011 by two obviously crazed men in London and the beheading of Jennifer Mills-Westley in Tenerife in 2011, also by a crazed individual.

All these killers had one thing in common ��� heavy cannabis use.

The frightful injuries they inflicted on their victims were signs that they were not sane.

The killer���s cannabis use was, in all cases, reported as a footnote or a side-issue. What if it is a cause?

But we will never find out if we do not look or ask.

There are no car chases or sex scenes in the interesting new film Mr Holmes. Instead, we see the great detective living out his final lonely years as a pottering beekeeper, played by Sir Ian McKellen in a silk top hat, left. It���s a quiet, rather kind story full of thought. And it contains one heartfelt line from Holmes, who complains passionately that in real life, logic is very rare. So it is, and it is his steely attachment to reason and facts, while all about him jump to conclusions, that makes Holmes live on from age to age, in a hundred different incarnations. 
 



Ian McKellen outside the famous 221B Baker Street as detective Sherlock Holmes in new movie Mr Holmes
 

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Why There's No Such as a British Passport

I have been pursuing the fascinating issue of exactly why there is no ���British passport holders��� queue at UK ports of entry. Of course, the actual fundamental reason is that there is no such thing as a British Passport in general use.

 

First, here's the basic European Law dating from 23rd June 1981 which defines what an EU passport should look like, what it should contain:

 

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:41981X0919:EN:HTML

 

Note the primacy of 'European Community' later 'Union' in the format. 

  

Oddly enough some anomalous passports are issued by the British passport office to persons who have no right of abode in Britain, or who are not UK citizens for other reasons, which are British passports, but not EU passports (British Overseas territories, British Overseas Citizens, British Protected Persons) .  You wouldn���t want one of these, as it gives you no freedom to live here and is just a travel document. As it���s not an EU passport, it doesn���t have the words ���European Union��� on it, and it requires you, on entering the UK, to join the second-class queue.

 

This is because of

 

Regulation (EC) No 562/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 establishing a Community Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders (Schengen Borders Code) [See amending act(s)].

 

The details of this are currently (but not for much longer) to be found here;

http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_security/free_movement_of_persons_asylum_immigration/l14514_en.htm Soon you will only be able to find it at a site called EUR-Lex

 

The provision is as follows;

When crossing an external border, European Union (EU) citizens and other persons enjoying the right of free movement within the EU (such as the family members of an EU citizen) undergo a minimum check. This minimum check is carried out to establish their identity on the basis of their travel documents and consists of a rapid and straightforward verification of the validity of the documents and a check for signs of falsification or counterfeiting. Non-EU country nationals are subject to thorough checks. These comprise a verification of the conditions governing entry, including verification in the Visa Information System (VIS) and, if applicable, of documents authorising residence and the pursuit of a professional activity.

 

AS far as I can understand, this applies to the UK because we form part of the EU���s *external* border, even though we are not subject to the provisions of the Schengen agreement on internal borders. Government spokesmen seem to think so, and it makes sense to me.

Thus, a ���British passport��� queue would be open to non-EU citizens who hold British passports, who are subject to ���thorough checks���, and would therefore be against regulations for that reason alone.

It would also be a breach of the regulations which require two distinct forms of checks, one for EU passports and one for all others. A third queue, for ���British EU citizens��� is not legislated for and might well be found in the courts to breach the part of the law which says: ���When performing their duties, border guards must fully respect human dignity and may not discriminate against persons on grounds of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.���

I am attacked by a Teenage Scribbler and a Grande Dame

In the past couple of days I have been attacked by a teenage scribbler here

 

https://health.spectator.co.uk/do-antidepressants-cause-gun-massacres-peter-hitchens-wants-to-know/

 

Though I can���t find his name on the article (on later examination, I now see that there is a tiny byline to one side) , it appears to be the work of someone called Daniel Jackson, about whom I know absolutely nothing.  

 

And a Grande Dame of the Left (the majestic Polly Toynbee)here

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/25/working-mothers-good-children-guilt-trips

 

 

 

The first of these seems to me to be a good example of unresponsive and ungenerous debate. Here���s a sample

 

���He (that���s me) would like to see an inquiry into the possible connection, with special focus on his b��te noire, ���antidepressants��� (which he mysteriously puts in inverted commas). Indeed, he needs an inquiry because the evidence is thin on the ground. ���

 

 

He fails to notice my accompanying interest in cannabis, which for some reason he does not even mention. I don���t think the evidence is ���thin on the ground��� at all. As any reader of my original posting http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/06/what-are-you-afraid-of-.html can see, there is a great deal of evidence that rampage killers of various sorts have been taking ���antidepressants��� or cannabis. I put ���antidepressants��� in inverted commas because (as regular readers here will know, and anyone who uses the index here will find) I regard the claims made for these drugs as open to serious doubt, and (more importantly) so do many medically qualified persons.  Given these doubts, I think the description is questionable. I believe inverted commas are a normal way of expressing such a view.

 

He then goes on to add ; ���As he admits himself, some notorious mass murders have been carried out by people who weren���t on antidepressants so far as we know:���

 

He then quotes a passage from my article in which I concede that we do not *know* if Derrick Bird was unhinged by legal or illegal drugs. Generally, people who concede ignorance or admit conflicting evidence are doing so out of a desire to be scrupulous in argument. To take advantage of this scruple in this way is, in my view, to be unscrupulous. The fact that we don���t know that Derrick Bird was unhinged by drugs of any kind does not mean that we know that he wasn���t. So far as we know. My point is that we have made no great effort to find out because we are determined not be interested ( as he is) and so may never know. 

 

This is the main passage which he quotes, out of more than 3,000 words of detailed argument, facts and references. He can quote as and how he likes, But likewise, I can think what I like about him. I am interested that this material is hosted by the Spectator, a magazine for which I have some respect.

 

He then details his annoying pursuit of me on Twitter, in which he, at that stage an even more total unknown to me than he is now,  appeared to be trying to trap me into making a claim I couldn���t substantiate. I declined to fall into the trap. This is what he means by ���not giving a straightforward answer���. Had I said ���Yes, I think there���s a link���, I would have been unsurprised to find that he was accusing me of prejudging the inquiry for which I was calling. His tone was clearly hostile, and I couldn���t think of any other reason for this pursuit.  What I think or suspect, on a scientific matter in which there is no settled fact or proof,  is of interest only to me. It���s perfectly obvious that I *suspect* there is a link.  I am here concerned with what can be established.

 

His account of our final exchange is partially accurate. After I challenged him to withdraw I gave him several minutes in which to respond, followed by three tweets  'Going���' , 'Going���'and 'Gone', to which he offered no response, after which I blocked him. I have taken to doing this to unresponsive timewasting bores who don���t know how to argue. Otherwise I should end up like the man in the ���New Yorker��� cartoon, Tweeting deep into the night  because ���Someone is wrong on the Internet���.  (**Correction. I am now told this cartoon did not appear in the 'New Yorker' but is the work of Randall Munroe of the website 'xkcd'. I apologise to Mr Munroe, who seems to me to be a fine cartoonist and original thinker)Arguing with these people is like playing chess with a squirrel. They have no idea of the rules.

 

If I have ever said that drugs are the reason students don���t read Dickens, I���d like the reference. As for my saying:��� ���Well, it���s what I���ve always dreamed of ��� of being the kind of person who gets written about. I dreamed of being part of the exciting people who were in the arguments.���, I like to tell the truth, and this is true. Many others presumably have the same desire but don���t admit it. I think it���s more fun, and more illuminating, to acknowledge my real desires.

 

Now to Polly Toynbee, bless her. I like Polly, and think she���s a dogged and original journalist who goes off into the world and finds things out , and who knows what she fights for and loves what she knows. I just disagree with her.  I think she is hopelessly wrong about David Cameron, who is actually rather keen on her and her way of thinking if only she���d realise he was an ally. Her anti-Tory tribalism is a mirror image of the pro-Tory tribalism of British conservatives who continue to vote for a party that prefers Polly���s opinions to theirs. But we���ve been through that already a thousand times.

 

Prompted by this document:

 

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/15-094_4daac072-cfe4-4943-b446-92338c7b493f.pdf

 

Polly has a little go at me, saying:

 

'Just check the press archives and see the stream of guilt-inducing headlines suggesting working mothers do irreparable damage to their children. ���Stay-at-home mothers ���have the most worthwhile lives������, reports the Telegraph. ���Decline of the stay-at-home mother��� bemoans the Mail, plus this ���Here���s absolute proof mothers are better off staying at home��� from their columnist Peter Hitchens. He writes, ���One ���family-friendly��� policy is taxpayer subsidies for the network of day orphanages where abandoned children are detained without trial for long hours while their mothers are chained to desks miles away.��� Don���t expect the Mail and Telegraph yearning for a return to a fantasy 1950s to end any time soon.���

 

The report itself seems to be mainly about the attitudes to employment of the offspring of earlier generations of wage slave mothers (the expression ���working mother���, like ���antidepressant���, is suspect. Is work at home, raising the next generation, not work, just as much as work in an office, a call centre or a factory?

 

Take, for example, this passage :  ���Our analyses find that sons raised by an employed mother are more involved at home as adults, spending more time caring for family members than men whose mothers stayed home fulltime. Daughters raised by an employed mother  spend less time on housework than women whose mothers stayed home fulltime, but maternal employment has no effect on adult daughters��� involvement in caring for family members.���

 

Right, so children whose mothers went out to work follow the example set for them by their parents, an example of which the authors of this study pretty certainly approve.  

 

Then there���s this : ���We find a strong association between maternal employment and adult egalitarian gender attitudes, for both men and women across 24 countries. Second, we show that maternal employment is associated with multiple positive outcomes in the labor market for women only; maternal employment has no significant effects on men���s labor market outcomes.���

 

Again, the ���positive��� outcomes which they trumpet are positive according to their idea of the ideal society. Once you have broken the idea that it is normal and laudable for women to raise their own children, subsequent generations will continue along the same lines. I don���t doubt it. Modern western societies in many cases (though by no means all, see my article to which Polly links) provide major material advantages to successful two-earner families.  They generally penalise one-earner families.

 

Only three sorts of household will contain mothers who don���t go out to work: the super-rich ( a negligible number) , middle-class conservative eccentrics (a small group in this country, perhaps a bit bigger in the Evangelical Christian home-schooling belt of the USA) , and fatherless families where the mother is on benefits. The third category will be the largest. Intergenerational comparisons between families with a wageslave mother and families with a stay-at-home mother need to take those distinctions into account.

 

I am not sure this survey says what it is being portrayed by The Guardian and Polly as saying.

 

How do we measure the effect on their children of absent wageslave mothers? By trying to find out what they would have been had they been nurtured at home?  But how? We shall never know.

 

As for the guilt felt by such mothers, my experience suggests that it takes no prompting from me for them to feel it. The awful scenes as they tear themselves away from their tiny, pleading children at the nursery door, and slog off to work , are more worrying than any article I could ever begin to write.

 

I will end by reproducing these verses from G.K.Chesterton���s ���Songs of Education���, which somehow seem appropriate :

 

I remember my mother, the day that we met,
A thing I shall never entirely forget;
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,
I should know her again if we met in a tram.
But mother is happy in turning a crank
That increases the balance at somebody���s bank;
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free
From the sinister task of attending to me.

They have brightened our room, that is spacious and cool,
With diagrams used in the Idiot School,
And Books for the Blind that will teach us to see;
But mother is happy, for mother is free.
For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors,
For love of the Leeds International Stores,
And the flame of that faith might perhaps have grown cold,
With the care of a baby of seven weeks old.

For mother is happy in greasing a wheel
For somebody else, who is cornering Steel;
And though our one meeting was not very long,
She took the occasion to sing me this song:
���O, hush thee, my baby, the time soon will come
When thy sleep will be broken with hooting and hum;
There are handles want turning and turning all day,
And knobs to be pressed in the usual way;

O, hush thee, my baby, take rest while I croon,
For Progress comes early, and Freedom too soon.��� 

A Recent Review of 'The Cameron Delusion'

Some of you may be interested in this recent review of 2010 book 'The Cameron Delusion'

 

http://www.educationumbrella.com/curriculum-vital/book-review-the-cameron-delusion

 

Some of you may not 

 

 

 

How Impartial Is The Queen?

How politically neutral is Her Majesty the Queen? In my view Royal neutrality is a bit of a myth. Her Majesty���s very public endorsement of the 1998 surrender to the IRA, well-publicised in the weeks between the instrument of surrender and the far-from-fair and far-from-frank referendum which endorsed the surrender, was a direct intervention in contentious politics. When I called the Palace at the time and asked them to explain, they told me to ���consult a constitutional expert���. I asked them if they had a list of approved ones, and the line went quiet.

 

Of course it did. There is no court of appeal on such things.

 

Then, in her 2004 Christmas broadcast she proclaimed 'diversity is indeed a strength' - a Royal endorsement of the multiculturalism many oppose and dislike. I thought then, and think now, that this was a breach of impartiality too. And I was worried by her apparent intervention in the Scottish referendum. Was this proper?

 

 

What about the Monarch���s apparently warm attitude towards the EU, and her seeming endorsement of its disputed and dubious claim to be a force for peace and harmony,   which many believe was exposed in this Berlin speech on Thursday, delivered to an enthusiastically nodding Angela Merkel? Division in Europe dangerous?  Who says? The safest period of my life was the Cold War, far more peaceful than now, as the EU rampages around the Balkans and the Ukraine.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3137519/When-Angela-met-Queen-Majesty-pays-respects-victims-war-dictatorship-watched-Chancellor-Merkel.html

 

 

Well, what is the monarch���s standing in the EU?  Buckingham Palace���s website makes an interesting statement on this, here

 

http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/QueenandGovernment/Queenandvoting.aspx

 

What���s interesting is that under English or United Kingdom law and precedent, the Queen , being part of Parliament (���The Queen in Parliament��� ) is simply not able to vote for members of another part of the legislature. This is part of the wiring of our ancient constitution, not a rule later invented, but a fact.

 

This is also, as far as I can work it out, why she cannot issue herself with a passport, which (although it is an EU document with a flatulent, vestigial rubric on it about an (unidentified, see below) Secretary of State ���requesting and requiring��� Johnny Foreigner to do this or that, which these days he generally doesn���t) still  bears her insignia.

 

UK passports are still issued under Royal Prerogative, the simplest source of state authority, rather than under Parliamentary law. This may also be why Her Majesty does not have to have a licence plate on her car, though I���m happy to be corrected by anyone who understands this better. I think it���s also why she used not to pay any tax.

 

However, compare and contrast : ���Under the Maastricht Treaty, The Queen and other members of the Royal Family would be entitled to vote for the European Parliament, or to stand for election to that Parliament.

���However, The Queen would only exercise these rights on the advice of her Ministers. Their advice would invariably be that she should neither vote nor stand for an elected position so as not to compromise her neutrality.���

 

But , as she���s not part of the European Parliament, which actually has sovereignty over this country and legislates for it, under the guidance of the Commission , the European Council and the European Court of Justice, her abstention is a choice, not a constitutional fact.

 

This is quite interesting, if you like poking about in the hidden wiring of our constitution. For it turns out(and Buckingham Palace has confirmed this to me today) that the Queen, by virtue of being a British *national* (she is not a British *citizen*, and of course was not, in the days when the rest of us had that lost privilege,  a *subject* of herself) is a *citizen* of the European Union.

 

Though born in the then colony of Malta, I was by right of British parentage a British subject from 1951 to 1982. I did not notice that I had lost this historically rather moving and exceptional status until , trapped in some airport by delays,  I studied my passport more carefully than usual and found that I had at some point become a citizen, with the ���right of abode��� in my own country.  This happened in 1982. At the same time the passport ceased to say what your occupation was, so anyone who claims that it ���says in their passport��� that they are something or other ( as people often do) is making up it up. 

 

Not long afterwards, I���d guess 1984 or 1985, I was at a political lunch with the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, recently deceased, who arrived late explaining that he had been at a ceremony in which the issuing of passports was transferred from the Foreign Office to the Home Office. This was presumably because the passport was about to become an EU document, issued on behalf of the EU by the Home Office, rather than by an independent country declaring that it recognised and protected its people when travelling abroad. The old rubric about ���Her Britannic Majesty���s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs��� requesting and requiring all those whom it might concern to afford the bearer all necessary whatsit, etc etc  was altered to ���Her Majesty���s Secretary of State���, unspecified. For all anyone knew, it might be the Secretary of State for Wales, or Drains. I can remember Leon Brittan explaining that this would now mean him, as Home Secretary.  I think they left that out because it might alert people to the fact that they were now carrying an EU document. One side-effect of this was that the ancient system under which the SIS (MI6) officer in every embassy was officially the Passport officer had to be abandoned and they had to think of a new cover story.

 

In 1988 the old stiff blue passport began to be replaced by the Building Society passbook which we have had since, first bearing the words European Community and then , in 1997, ���European Union��� (the lettering in which ���European Union��� is stamped on the front cover grows marginally bigger as the years pass, though you need to be observant to notice this). My last proper blue passport, containing a lovely collection of Warsaw Pact visa stamps and my Moscow residence permit, was stolen from a jacket pocket in the old ���Daily Express ��� office soon after I returned from Russia in 1992.

 

Well, now that I and Her Majesty are both EU citizens, whether we want to be or not, What does EU citizenship entail? All is explained here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_2.1.1.html

 

So, at the moment, it���s just a few not especially wonderful rights. But then there���s the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (This began life as the original Treaty of Rome but has been substantially revised over the years. It is the core of the EU���s constitution and can be studied in its ��� consolidated version��� here

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT&from=EN )

 

In its Part Two, you will find that Article 20, paragraph 2 reads (my emphasis):

 

Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship. 2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties provided for in the Treaties.

It adds that there are, as yet, no duties. But when they think of some, the Treaty already obliges us to be subject to them. All they have to do is devise them and ram them through the EU���s decision-making process.  So as far as I can see,  the Queen, technically, is a subject of the EU, which, as a Sovereign, she cannot be. A Palace spokesperson told me today that the Queen���s EU citizenship ��� in no way affects her prerogatives, rights and responsibilities as the Sovereign and Head of State.���

 

But I���m really not sure that can be so. I���ll see if I can find a constitutional expert.