Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 243

Am I a Paid Agent of the Kremlin? And Other Questions

A few short additions to earlier debates. First, the Grey Coat School now confirms that it was a grammar school until September 1977. The school  declines to share its language aptitude test with me, or you. It says : ‘The aptitude for languages test is the same each year, so to avoid any applicant having an advantage over another, we do not allow copies in advance.  The test is based on a fictional language which builds from simple words to longer sentences and hence knowledge of a particular foreign language is not necessary.’

 

No, I am not a paid agent of the Russian government, not that such denials would convince anyone daft enough to believe any such thing. I might point out that I appeared on RT on Wednesday (an appearance for which I received no payment, was offered none and requested none, and for which I travelled to and from the studio on my bicycle), and perhaps ( see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJNnVj8dVfE ) disappointed any who thought I might take a straight Kremlin line. Note the long silence when I say that both sides are guilty of interference.

 

 

I have, as it happened, never ceased to criticise the Putin government for its lawlessness and corruption. I just don’t think that, in these matters, it is notably worse than many other governments with which we are happy to do business, and against which we do not create alliances (eg China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan) . It’s the same problem as one gets with Israel. In both cases the critics attack the country for things that plenty of other countries do (but they don’t criticise those countries as well).  The real reason for the criticism is elsewhere. The disdain for the Putinocracy is a pretext. My interest remains the globalism versus national sovereignty conflict.

 

It might be said that the intervention of Russia in sovereign Ukraine rather knocks this down.  I don’t agree. As I’ve said before, Ukraine’s sovereignty is a pretty nebulous thing, and is a temporary consequence of Russian weakness. If Gorbachev had handled things better in 1991, Ukraine and Belarus would still be run from Moscow and nobody would care very much. Now, of course, the return of Ukraine to direct Moscow rule is more or less unthinkable. But it’s quite possible for Ukraine to return to Russia’s sphere of influence, or even for large parts of the country to be given so much regional autonomy that it is effectively partitioned (a feasible outcome of the current crisis). That would make it much easier for the Western Ukraine to get closer to the EU.

 

 I stress this isn’t a sneer at Ukraine or Ukrainians. I also regard my own country’s sovereignty as more or less non-existent, and what’s left of it fast disappearing. It’s just a statement of fact. The issue only arises because Russia, uniquely,  still more or less has a large population, certainly has oil and gas, and still possesses nuclear weapons and a security council veto, plus a well-educated professional diplomatic corps trained in the pursuit of national self-interest and good intelligence services.  It also has sizeable armed forces, though how these measure up against (say)those of the USA is open to question. Thus it can still function as a medium-sized power, despite the existence of the two superpowers China and the USA.

 

It was this status, of medium-sized power, which Britain and France tried and failed to retain in the Suez episode in 1956. They were obstacles, and they were removed, Russia is not such an easy conquest, not least because its empire was contiguous rather than scattered about the globe.

 

What about thus planned referendum on Crimean independence? Well, Kosovo held one of those and got a 99% yes vote, but nothing happened for years. Then Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, and was recognised by the USA and much of NATO (though not all). Russia refused. This leads to an amusing situation where Russia could claim Kosovo as a precedent for Crimean secession, and the West can point out that, since Russia didn’t recognise Kosovar independence, it can’t consistently recognise Crimean independence either. I do wonder how they will sort this out. This is why I suspect that enhanced autonomy, within Ukraine, may end up as the outcome. There’s no doubt that almost everything about Crimea is an anomaly . A sensible Ukrainian government ( and sensible statesmen from anywhere) would see that it was so, and be willing to discuss special arrangements which saved face.

 

But the arrogant aggression of the Western politicians who supported the destabilisation of the Kiev government wasn’t sensible, and appeared to be driven by pique over the refusal of Viktor Yanukovych  to sign a deal with the EU. Pique, and moralising, are not good bases for foreign policy. Other countries have interests . Unless you are prepared to go to war to overcome those interests, you just have to learn to live with them. And there are lots of different forms of aggression and interference. Russia’s are more obvious and traditional, but that doesn’t necessarily make them worse.

 

What Sort of School is Michael Gove's Daughter Going To?

What sort of school is Grey Coat Hospital, where Michael Gove’s daughter Beatrice is said to have obtained a place?  He has received generally supportive coverage of his decision to send her to a state secondary school (as I noted here http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2008/02/cameron-puts-pr.html six years ago, he and his friend David Cameron obtained places for their children at a highly sought-after and utterly untypical state primary in Kensington. My hopes that the school would instead allocate its places to children of families who couldn't afford fees were dashed).

 

Grey Coat Hospital is very unusual in that actually calls itself a ‘comprehensive’ in its own official title. Most schools are now 'Specialist Aacdemies of Interplanetary Rocketry and Hairdressing' or some such combination, and the word 'comprehensive', seldom used in school titles in any case, has gone out of fashion a bit. One has to wonder why this particular school (which unlike almost all modern comprehensives is single sex, and which is also quite rare in being a C of E secondary) feels the need to emphasise this part of its status.

 

When I bicycled past it this morning, I noticed how very smart and fresh the painted notice was, which proclaimed: ‘The Grey Coat Hospital : Church of England Comprehensive School for Girls’.

 

Its admissions policy, as in so many of the better state schools, requires a combination of Albert Einstein and St Thomas Aquinas to decode it.

 

Here it is:

'This section should be read by everyone thinking of applying for a place at The Grey Coat Hospital

 

THE GREY COAT HOSPITAL - ADMISSIONS POLICY FOR 2014/2015

 

1.1 The Grey Coat Hospital is a voluntary aided Church of England Comprehensive

Academy for girls, which has a special relationship with Westminster Abbey.

 

1.2 In September 2014, the Governors intend to admit one hundred and fifty one girls within the full age range of ability and from a wide range of backgrounds, into Year Seven.

 

1.3 Girls admitted to the Hospital, and their parents and guardians, are required to abide by school regulations and to co-operate with the staff on matters of attendance, discipline, homework and dress.

 

1.4 Parents are expected to attend the annual Abbey Service with the school and to encourage their daughters to contribute to, and benefit from, the school’s Christian and Church of England tradition.

 

1.5 Applicants are strongly urged to visit the school on one of the Open Days so that they may learn as much as possible about the school and its ethos.

 

1.6 The school is participating within co-ordinated admission arrangements with other maintained secondary schools in Westminster.

 

1.7 Governors may offer a place to a girl who has an exceptional medical, social or educational need for a place at The Grey Coat Hospital. Applications will only be considered under this category if they are supported by a written statement from a medical consultant, senior social worker or other appropriate professional. In each case, there must be a clear connection between the girl’s need and The Grey Coat Hospital and an explanation of the difficulties that would be caused if the child were to attend another school.

 

1.8 In the event of oversubscription, places will be allocated in accordance with sections 2 – 4 below. ‘

 

Then we move on to this : ‘SECTION TWO - LANGUAGE COLLEGE PLACE

 

 

If you are applying for a Language College place, please read the following section.

 

 

Admissions Criteria – Language College place

 

Up to fifteen places will be offered to girls solely on the strength of their aptitude for languages as shown by a test given for this purpose on the Languages Assessment Day. The Languages Assessment Day is towards the end of the summer term of Year 5. It is in advance of the completion of the common application form and is on a different day to the banding assessment day. The Languages Assessment is for applicants who are applying for a Languages place. No previous knowledge of a foreign language is expected or required. No other criteria for admission apply to these fifteen places.’

 

(My own note ***I am absolutely riveted by the statement that ‘No previous knowledge of a foreign language is expected or required.’ I shall see if I can obtain a sample of this test, which measures aptitude for languages without, unless I have misunderstood matters entirely, actually requiring any knowledge or experience of any foreign tongue. I am trying to think of any other subject for which aptitude could be tested in this way. But anyway, we here move on to):

 

SECTION THREE

 

 CHURCH OF ENGLAND PLACES

 OTHER CHURCH PLACES (CHURCHES TOGETHER IN BRITAIN AND

IRELAND/EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE)

 

 

If you are applying for a Church of England place, or an Other Churches place (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland/Evangelical Alliance), please read this section.

 

Admission criteria – Church of England, Other Churches (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland or Evangelical Alliance)

 

3.1 To fill places other than Language places and to ensure a balanced intake, the Governors will refer to the results of literacy and non-verbal reasoning tests given on Assessment Day. Consequently, applicants must sit the assessment test on Assessment Day. Applicants will have been placed into three ability bands and the Governors will allocate 25% of these places to girls of above average ability (the top band), 50% to girls of average ability (the middle band) and 25% to girls of below average ability (the lower band).

 

3.2 Once applicants have been placed in a band, governors will allocate church places as follows:

 

 

Church of England places

 

Up to 80 places will be given to girls from practising Church of England families living in the area covered by the dioceses of London and Southwark. Applications must be supported by a clergy reference. First priority will be given to Looked after Children+ and previously Looked after Children+. After this, priority will be given to sisters* of current Grey Coat pupils who are of statutory school age at the time the application is made and who will be on roll in years 7 to 11 at the school at the time of admission. Other applicants in this category will be ranked according to the church commitment of each family.

 

 

Other Churches (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland or EvangelicalAlliance) Places.

 

Up to 28 places will be given to girls from families active in other churches which are full members of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland or the Evangelical Alliance and who live in the area of the dioceses of London and Southwark. Applications must be supported by a clergy reference. First priority will be given to Looked after Children+ and previously Looked after Children+. After this, priority will be given tosisters* of current Grey Coat pupils who are of statutory school age at the time the application is made and who will be on roll in years 7 to 11 at the school at the time of admission. Other applicants in this category will be ranked according to the church commitment of each family.

   

In establishing family church commitment, only family members living together at one address and who have legal responsibility for the child will be taken into account. Assessing the commitment of the child and her family will be carried out as follows:

 

Weekly church attendance of five years and:

 

Applicants ranked by points awarded to a maximum of 10 (5 for parent and 5 for child). Only one point may be scored under each heading.

 

 Parent holding elected office in the church

 Parent being a communicant member

 Parent on the church’s electoral or other membership roll

 Regular practical involvement by a parent in the church

 Parent having a role in public worship/ministry

 Regular involvement in other aspect of church life

 

 Child being a regular communicant

 Baptism of child

 Confirmation of child

 Attendance by child at Sunday School

 Child having a role in public worship

 Attendance by child in a church organisation

 Involvement in other aspect of church life by child

 

If there are insufficient candidates to fill the places available in a category after the five year rule has been applied, applicants will be considered from those who have under five years’, but at least one year’s, weekly church attendance who will then be ranked by points awarded to a maximum of 10 (5 for the parent and 5 for the child), according to the criteria listed above.

 

If it is necessary to decide between applicants who have equal claims to a place under one of the above criteria in any band, the governors will apply the following tie breaker:

 

 

Where the order of priority is otherwise equal, preference will be given to a child who lives the shortest distance from the school. Home address is defined as the address at which the child resides for 50% or more of the school week. Distances are measured by a straight line from the address seed point (determined by Ordnance Survey data) of the child’s home address to the main school gate for pupils, as measured by the Local Authority’s computerised measuring system. Where it is necessary to differentiate between applicants living in flats using the same street entrance, priority will be given to the applicant(s) living closest to the ground floor and then by ascending flat number order. Where it is necessary to further differentiate between applicants living the same distance from the school,  priority will be decided by random allocation. ‘

 

 

And finally:

 

SECTION FOUR

 

OPEN PLACES

 

4.1 To fill places other than Language places and to ensure a balanced intake, the governors will refer to the results of literacy and non-verbal reasoning tests given on Assessment Day. Consequently, applicants must sit the assessment test on Assessment Day. Applicants will have been placed into three ability bands and the governors will allocate 25% of these places to girls of above average ability (the top band), 50% to girls of average ability (the middle band) 25% to girls of below average ability (the lower band).

 

4.2 Once applicants have been placed in a band, governors will allocate open places as follows:

 

Up to 28 places will be open places (where no religious criteria apply). Applications

will be ranked in this order of preference

 

First priority will be given to Looked after Children+ and previously Looked after Children+. After this, priority will be given to sisters* of current Grey Coat pupils who are of statutory school age at the time the application is made and who will be on roll in years 7 to 11 at the school at the time of admission. Priority will then be given to, firstly,

 

(i) applicants living within the geographical area which makes up the parishes of St Margaret’s, Westminster, St Matthew’s, Westminster and St Stephen with St John,Westminster who also attend either Millbank Academy, Westminster, or St Matthew’s Primary School, Westminster or Burdett Coutts Primary School, Westminster, and then, secondly, to

 

(ii) applicants living within the geographical area which makes up the parishes of St Margaret’s, Westminster, St Matthew’s, Westminster and St Stephen with St John, Westminster.

 

 

If it is necessary to decide between applicants who have equal claims to a place under one of the above criteria in any band, the Governors will apply the following tie breaker:

 

Where the order of priority is otherwise equal, preference will be given to a child who lives the shortest distance from the school. Home address is defined as the address at which the child resides for 50% or more of the school week. Distances are measured by a straight line from the address seed point (determined by Ordnance Survey data) of the child’s home address to the main school gate for pupils, as measured by the Local Authority’s computerised measuring system. Where it is necessary to differentiate between applicants living in flats using the same street entrance, priority will be given to the applicant(s) living closest to theground floor and then by ascending flat number order. Where it is necessary to further differentiate between applicants living the same distance from the school,priority will be decided by random allocation.   

SECTION FIVE – ADMISSION PROCEDURES

 

Admissions procedures

 

This applies to anyone wishing to apply for a place at The Grey Coat Hospital regardless of the category

 

5.1 Applicants must complete the school’s supplementary information form which should be sent back to the school with a passport sized photograph attached (this is for assessment test use only). Applicants should state under which categories they are applying

 

 Languages places

 Church of England places

 Other Church places (Churches together in Britain and Ireland/Evangelical

Alliance places

 Open places

 

 

Those unsuccessful in one category may be considered for another appropriate category. For example, those applying for a language place will be considered under the Church of England category if they meet the criteria as outlined above.

Those who do not submit the supplementary information form cannot be considered for a Church place.

 

5.2 Those applying for a Church of England place and those applying for an Other Church (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland/Evangelical Alliance) place should enclose, with their completed supplementary information form, a completed clergy reference form. If references are required from more than one member of the clergy, please ask for additional forms.

 

5.3 If, as is customary, there are more applications than places, the admissions criteria explained in sections 2 - 4 above will determine which girls are to be offered places. The same procedures will be applied when there are applicants for casual vacancies that arise in Years Eight to Eleven.

5.4 Applicants must attend the Assessment Test at our St Michael’s building.

Assessment Test date to be confirmed. Those who do not sit the test will need to provide evidence from their Primary School of their ability level. Those who do not return a supplementary information form will seriously weaken the chance of gaining a place.

 

5.5 Applicants who are applying for a languages place must attend the language assessment test at our St Michael’s building. Language Assessment Test date is on June 25th 2013. Those who do not sit the test will not be considered for a languages place. The outcome of the languages test will be communicated by letter early in October 2013.

 

Please note: this policy does not apply to pupils who have a (statutory) statement ofspecial educational needs.

 ..........................................

+ Looked after and previously Looked after Children means a child who is looked after, or has been looked after by a local authority in accordance with section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989 at the time an application for her admission to a school is made and who the local authority has confirmed will still be looked after at the time when she is admitted to the school.

 

*Sisters mean children who reside together at the same address and who have at least one parent in common by birth or legal adoption.

 

.............................

 

I have reproduced all this information,  which is presumably for public consumption as it is posted in full of the school’s official website.

 

I make no comment on it at this stage, except to say that some parents who have themselves not received this sort of schooling might find it daunting or demanding, and it might perhaps require some persistence and background knowledge to understand it properly and to complete it. Others might easily grasp its nature and its requirements. I'm, also struck by the fact that a child's entire future life could be decided by which floor of a block of flats she lives on. And they call the eleven-plus arbitrary.

 

One or two other points. The school’s own version of its history, again to be found on its website, goes into some detail about its foundation, and its buildings, and about a pupil’s rebellion in 1801. But the actual text is mysterious about whether the school was in fact ever openly selective by ability, or when, if so, this ceased to be the case.  It is curious how reluctant existing schools often are to discuss such things, and how in fact the whole 1944-65 selective era, whose revolutionary effects I increasingly regard as one of the most important social developments of our time, and which indirectly had an immense effect on my own life,  is almost totally forgotten.

 

And yet, perhaps by accident,  perhaps intentionally, the truth slips out at the bottom of the ‘History’ page. This reproduces two charming sketches of the old school buildings, one  from 1975 and one , by Geoffrey Fletcher, from the Times Education Supplement of May 1955 (another world). In the tiny text beneath this, the words ‘grammar school’ can just be made out. 

I shall be returning to this interesting matter later.

What about the Comprehensive Failures?

A thought-free (but often successful) tactic of the anti-selection lobby is to ask grammar school supporters to consider the plight of 11-plus failures, suffering cruel rejection at a key moment in their lives.

 

Readers here will know that I favour mutual agreement rather than a sudden-death examination for selection, but why are these people never asked about the cruel rejection suffered by so many thousands of children each year, thanks to the operation of the 'comprehensive' system?

 

Today is 'National Offer Day', on which half a million children in England are told which secondary school they will go to. One in five will not get into their first choice, probably about 100,000. As a result, they will in many cases be cruelly robbed of a good education, by an arbitrary division far more cruel than the 11-plus because it is based mainly on their parents' wealth and their willingness to use sharp elbows.

 

In some places, the matter is actually being decided by lottery , a more or less mad way of allocating school places, though not much madder than the one we have.

In any system there will be selection, winners and losers. Even in the most just such system, some of the decisions will be the wrong ones. But it seems to me that selection by ability is immensely more just than what we now have.

It is not that I favour selection and my pro-comprehensive opponents are against it. It is that we favour different kinds of selection. They should be made to defend theirs, a system which many of them have learned to work and manipulate to their own advantage.

 

 

 

 

Further Thoughts on Russia

Let us first raise the level of debate:

This will take a bit of muscular effort.  For the level of some contributions is quite low. For instance, Mr ‘skh.pcola’ writes: ‘Herr Hitchens is an anachronism. He would have fit right in the gang with Neville and the other quislings back in 1939 or so. Idiots that don't learn from history doom the rest of us to repeat it. What a misanthropic microencephalitic moron Hitchens is.’

 

And I took part (at about 9.30 this morning) in a brief discussion on BBC Radio 5 Live, in which a listener raged for some time against Russia and Russians, diagnosing that country as ‘paranoid’(I do not know what her qualifications were to make this diagnosis).

 

By contrast, I would urge readers to study an article by Sir Rodric Braithwaite,  the best ambassador this country ever sent to Moscow, profoundly knowledgeable about Russia, who is also more than fluent in Russian,  and the author of ‘Afgantsy’, a fine study of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, writing in yesterday’s ‘Independent on Sunday’.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ukraine-crisis-no-wonder-vladimir-putin-says-crimea-is-russian-9162734.html

 

Sir Rodric gives a well-informed and thoughtful explanation of the origin of the dispute, and a cool assessment of our ability to intervene in it. How refreshing this is when compared to the temperature-raising coverage by journalists who cannot even pronounce ‘Simferopol’ , and the alarmist pronouncements of various schoolboy foreign ministers, who really ought to be forced to wear short trousers when speaking in public. 

 

And I would also urge them to look at an article by Sir Christopher Meyer, who also served twice in Moscow (though not as H.M. Ambassador) and later became British ambassador to the USA,  in today’s London ‘Times’. Alas, it is behind a paywall, but it contains a good deal of cool, clear thinking, and points out that it is up to us how much of a crisis we make of this event.

 

Jonathan Steele in the Guardian is also interesting and a corrective to much of the shouting and screaming going on:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukraine-nato-should-back-off

 

He rightly points out that public opinion polls in Ukraine have shown a consistent nationwide opposition to NATO membership, not just among Russian-speakers, but in general.

 

 

Mr ‘pcola’ has done me a favour by making ( as someone was bound to do) the Hitler-Chamberlain-Czechoslovakia parallel.

 

I have argued unceasingly here that the World War Two myth has made serious discussion of foreign policy very difficult. So few people really understand what happened during that era, but that does not stop them from believing that they do.Thus they say idiotic things, over and over again. Worse, they think these things are clever.

 

If we really did believe that Czechoslovakia was such a good cause, and the world should have been plunged into years of slaughter, misery, privation and destruction for the sake of the inviolability of its frontiers, why is nobody nowadays interested in the following facts?

Czechoslovakia (a country I often visited and very much liked when it was still there) has ceased to exist. It simply doesn’t have enough of the features of sovereignty to make this claim, though it is polite to pretend otherwise just as we like others to pretend that we here in the Ukay are a sovereign country. 

 

It no longer has any national borders, though I believe Slovakia still enforces some sort of border with Ukraine.  In its Slovak section it no longer even has its own currency. The traveller can cross into and out of the divided chunks of former Czechoslovakia  from Austria and Germany (from my personal experience) without any customs or border checks. I imagine it is the same with its other EU borders, thanks to the astonishing Schengen Agreement, which has abolished all the Versailles frontiers which World War Two was supposedly fought to restore, and quite a few other borders as well. I am always amazed that this Treaty is not more studied, or more understood as what it is – an immense revolution in European diplomacy and power.

 

The former Czechoslovakia’s defence, economic and other policies are entirely subject to the EU.  It has been cut into two pieces not dissimilar from the partition imposed on it by Germany in March 1939. Its far eastern province, Transcarpathia,  is now (quite amusingly) part of Ukraine, having been stolen by Hungary in 1939 and then re-stolen by Stalin in 1944-5.

 

Similar things could be said of Poland, which is also an EU vassal, and whose borders bear almost no relation to those it possessed in September 1939. Once again, the objectives for which we went to war in 1939 have not merely not been fulfilled, but actually trampled upon, first by the Yalta redivision of Europe, imposed by Stalin, and later, when the USSR collapsed,  by the almost immediate absorption of former Warsaw Pact countries into the EU.

 

And nobody cares at all. Nor did they care when both those countries were subjected, for more than 40 years,  to Communist secret police tyranny. Nor did they care when the Sudeten Germans (pretext for the original row) were driven with kicks and blows from their ancestral homes after 1945, in scenes of terrible cruelty which we had promised, as a nation, to prevent.  I think we can make a new rule: The more people posture about foreign affairs, the less they really care about the people involved

 

So Neville Chamberlain’s unwillingness to go to war over either matter  (it was Halifax, as far as I can discover, who got us into the Polish guarantee) seems, in retrospect, to have some merits, and to be in line with our own modern behaviour. I might add that Mr Chamberlain understood, as modern commentators in this matter often don’t, that in 1938 and 1939 the British Army was a tiny, feeble thing, and we had no means of imposing our will on continental Europe anyway.

 

To call him a ‘Quisling’ is a simple insult. Chamberlain was a patriot who acted honestly according to his own view of national interest. Vidkun Quisling was an active traitor to his country, during a period of foreign occupation.

 

So that’s that dealt with.

 

Now, what about Russian ‘paranoia’?

 

As I sometimes point out, Russia has good reason to be nervous. It has many possible threats to face. One contributor recently chided me for saying that the USSR faced a threat from Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This is a forgivable error. Very few people are even aware of the undeclared war between Japan and the USSR which raged from 1938-1939. It ended (temporarily) at the widely-unknown battle of Khalkin Gol (also known as Nomonhan) in which Georgi Zhukov made his name and learned how to use tanks. Few also recall the severe tensions between the USSR and China which erupted in the 1970s, and may well erupt again, as China regards much of far eastern Russia as stolen territory, and eyes it keenly. Then of course there is the little problem with Germany, as often discussed here.

 

Any visitor to Sevastopol will find it contains many monuments to genuinely heroic defences of that city against invasion (one of those invasions was our more or less incomprehensible incursion into the Crimea 160 years ago, which achieved a good deal less than nothing and cost a great deal of lives). The biggest memorials commemorate the 1941-44 invasion by Germany, which was resisted and eventually expelled at great human and material cost, in battles whose names and nature are unknown to most in the ‘West’.

 

If they knew more about it, they might understand why Russians are ‘paranoid’. The country has no natural defensible borders. A street in southern Moscow, Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordinka (the street of the Great Horde) commemorates to this day the five-yearly visits to Moscow of the Great Horde, to collect tribute from that frontier city. We tend to think that the Urals, supposedly mountains but really rather unimpressive hills, form Russia’s eastern boundary. But it isn’t really true. From every direction, the heart of Russia lies open to invaders. Moscow has been invaded or occupied by Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, The Golden (or Great)  Horde, Crimean Tatars, Napoleon,  No wonder the Russian word for ‘security’ (Byezopasnost) is a negative construction (‘Byez’ means ‘without’ ; ‘Opasnost’ means ‘danger’). The natural state of things is danger.

 

This is why Russians were alarmed and perturbed by the NATO meddling in the Balkans, the outer edge of Slavic, Orthodox influence. And several readers have rightly pointed out that the NATO intervention in Kosovo (1998-9) provides an interesting precedent for Russia’s intervention in Crimea. The province was lawfully part of Serbia. But its majority population desired independence. NATO thereupon lent its air force to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), so securing Kosovar independence from Serbia (recognised by the USA, Britain and most EU states),  which will perhaps end in a merger with Albania.

 

One might add that states which supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attack on Libya, cannot really get very hot under the collar about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. It’s also interesting that Ukraine, while giving Crimea a great deal of autonomy, always strove to prevent a referendum on the region’s future, knowing for certain that it would lead to open calls for a return to Russian rule. Were I a Ukrainian politician or citizen, I would actively support the return of Crimea to Russia, because it was always bound to lead to trouble . Khrushchev’s transfer of the area to Ukraine in 1954 was a gesture, utterly unimportant in the days of the USSR. It made no real difference. But actual Ukrainian independence meant that it was always bound to lead to trouble. I can, (unlike most of the current 'experts’) show that I was aware of this difficulty years ago, here

 

This is why I knew instantly that the immediate decision of the Kiev putsch government, to attack the official status of the Russian language, was a significant act of aggrandisement and stupidity. If anyone doubted that fanatics were now in charge in Kiev, this decision dispelled all such doubts. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it didn’t trigger Mr Putin’s sarcastic counter-putsch in Simferopol and Sevastopol. 

 

What continues to strike me about this whole row is the inability of most people to view Russia as a country, or Russians as people. Russia is portrayed as a bogeyman, and its people as either oppressed or as tools of a new Hitler.

 

Let me remind readers that Russia existed as a civilisation long before Lenin turned it into a Communist slum. This is the country of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky  as well as of Stalin. The Leningrad Radio orchestra gave an astonishing performance of Shostakovich’s seventh symphony, in August 1942, after the city had endured months of starvation and bombardment (several musicians actually died of hunger during rehearsals, some collapsed during the performance, all were shivering from malnutrition). The Russians broadcast it through loudspeakers to the besiegers (they had shelled them first to silence their batteries during the concert) which was when the more intelligent Germans realised that they would never take the city, and that they had lost the war. For me, there are few more moving episodes in the history of warfare.

 

Russia still contains a large, educated, cultured middle class, who of necessity care more about history, literature and patriotism than their complacent, spoiled, semi-conscious western equivalents.  They, their parents and their grandparents have seen with their own eyes what can go wrong with a happy life, how suddenly it can happen, how little you can do about it, if invaders come, or if fools are in charge of your country, or both.

 

For years now, trivial-minded, historically ignorant, efficient, glinting people have tried to turn Ukrainian independence into an attack on Russia. They did it in the ‘Orange Revolution’ and failed because the victors turned out to be as corrupt and divided as those they replaced (a problem which may well emerge again now they have had a second go). And now they have done it again.

 

And they feign surprise, and outrage, when Russia eventually takes the opportunity to stand up for its interest, certainly no more aggressively than the pious ‘West’ has acted in Kosovo, Iraq and Libya

 

I ask again, what Washington would do if, in a moment of national weakness, the lands the USA seized from Mexico by force in 1848 seceded, and Russian politicians came to Albuquerque to give their open support for rallies supporting an alliance between the new state and Moscow?

 

Or what we would think and do, if Russian politicians turned up in Belfast, Cardiff or Edinburgh, openly supporting those who wanted those parts of the country to break away from London’s control?

 

You only need to ask to know. 

 

I still hope this will end without tears or blood, but the overblown, piously shocked rhetoric of western politicians and media is making that much harder.

 

But I must just address one question that is (rightly) bound to be put to me. I have said many times that Vladimir Putin stands against globalism and for national sovereignty. How , in this case, can he be said to be supporting Ukraine’s national sovereignty.

 

To begin with , I suspect that Mr Putin, and most Russians do not really regard Ukraine as a proper sovereign state, and I think they may be on to something.  They view its existence  as an artificial and accidental result of a moment of Russian weakness, which has since been maintained, for cynical reasons, by Western interference. Is Ukraine really sovereign, economically, diplomatically, militarily or in any other important way? Has it ever been?  

 

I might add that Russia, bound by the modern rules of diplomacy, has refrained from compelling Ukraine to return to Moscow rule by naked force, as it would not have hesitated to do 50 or 100 years ago.  Instead the Russians have sought to ensure that Ukraine remains very much under their influence, while Kiev retains formal independence. Something very similar can be said of the EU’s treatment of many of the former countries now under its rule, including our own. The polite fiction of sovereignty is maintained for the convenience of ruler and ruled.

 

 

But, because of the EU’s (and NATO’s, and the USA’s) aggressive and repeated attempts to disrupt this tactful arrangement,  Russia feels the need to take some firm concrete action, both to stop this going further, and to deter future attempts to disaffect areas which Moscow believes are in its sphere of influence.

 

Such disaffection has gone quite far enough already, thanks to the weird, selective anti-Russian prejudices of so many in the USA. What exactly do these people see as the concrete reason for their hostility to Russia? What is it actually about?  They don’t seem to care at all (for instance) about China’s takeover of Tibet and its very aggressive colonisation of Sinkiang.  Is there any *American* interest involved? Or does it flow from the USA’s new role (often conducted against that country’s own best interest) as the pioneer of the new global border-free world? That, I think, remains the real issue. No British or American national interests are involved here (though German ones may be) . If they were, I’d be all in favour of defending them. This is about globalism versus national sovereignty, and the curious anomaly of Russia, an old-fashioned European country that is too big to be sucked into the EU, too small to be a superpower (and so invulnerable, like China) , too patriotic to be persuaded to dissolve itself. 

Peter Hitchens vs Edward Lucas on the Crimea confrontation

Both these short articles appeared in the Mail on Sunday today. My friend Ed Lucas  (a fellow former Moscow Correspondent and now a distinguished writer for the Economist) and I also hope to discuss this matter in New York City on Wednesday 12th March, at a debate organised by Intelligence Squared:

 

My view:

 

We have been rubbing Russia up the wrong way for nearly 25 years.

It is hard to see why.

Moscow could have been our friend if we had wanted that.

We rightly viewed the old Soviet Union as a global menace to freedom.

But Russia is no such thing, just a major regional power sick of being humiliated and pushed around by ignorant outsiders.

I watched the old Soviet menace vanish on the streets of Moscow in August 1991 when a KGB putsch failed, the Communist Party was shattered in pieces, and the USSR collapsed in a cloud of rust.

Russians always believed there was an unspoken agreement that, in return for this, they would be allowed their dignity. They now believe that agreement has been broken.

What was left after 1991 was Russia, a proud and courageous people living amid the wreckage left by 74 years of Marxism and hoping to revive their ravaged country. We could have helped them.

By indulging Boris Yeltsin’s debauched reign (during which he shelled his own parliament while the West looked on complacently), we made Russian voters see Vladimir Putin as an attractive alternative.

The Putin government is squalid, but nothing like as bad as that of China, with whom we are on good terms.

 
Rather than recognising that the Cold War was over, we re-started it for no good reason, encouraging Russia’s neighbours to join the EU or Nato as if the USSR still existed.

In recent months, the EU and the United States have been willing to wound but afraid to strike.

They have aggressively sought to detach Ukraine from Russia and draw her into the EU orbit, knowing very well that this would infuriate Moscow.

 

Rather than recognising that the Cold War was over, we re-started it for no good reason, encouraging Russia's neighbours to join the EU or Nato as if the USSR still existed

 

 

We have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world, who knows where it will lead?

 

 

 

Senior American, German and EU figures have gone to Kiev to egg on the anti-Russian crowds. Imagine how you would feel if Russia’s Foreign Minister turned up at SNP rallies in Edinburgh, backing Scottish independence.

Putin’s Crimean games are a sarcastic response.

The unspoken message is: ‘You like breakaway movements and meddling in other people’s business? Try this for size.’

And now, having raised hopes we cannot fulfil, we have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world and who knows where our vainglorious folly will now lead?

 

 

And Edward Lucas's view:

 

 

Out of our own self-interest we promised to protect Ukraine.

 

Now we have failed the country – and I fear we will suffer for it.

 

Putin’s attempt to recreate the Soviet empire threatens not only Ukraine, but the peace of Europe. Our supine reaction is suicidally risky.

 

 

 

 

Boris Yeltsin's Russia was friendly when Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear weapons in exchange for peace. How were they to know a quiet bureaucrat in St Petersburg called Putin would change that?

 

 

 

 

 

Britain, the US and Russia promised that Ukraine would not be subject to aggression or economic coercion

 

 

 

Britain, the US and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 – a deal in which Ukraine gave up its ex-Soviet nuclear weapons, thus ensuring they would not be stolen or misused.

 

In return the three outside powers promised that Ukraine would not be subject to aggression or economic coercion and that its borders would be inviolable.

 

 

 

 

 

Ukraine had no need for doomsday weapons and gave them up gladly.

 

Memories of the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 were still raw.

 

Boris Yeltsin’s Russia was friendly in those days.

 

After Chernobyl, the Ukrainians were willing to dispose of their nuclear arms - they chose to be safe not sorry

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody had heard of a quiet bureaucrat in St Petersburg called Vladimir Putin with close links to the city’s organised crime groups. Nobody knew that he would one day rule Russia.

 

Even in 1994, Ukrainians wanted to be safe not sorry.

 

Soviet rule had been nightmarish: millions perished in the artificial famine of the 1930s.

 

After the war, Stalin crushed resistance with brutal repressions.

 

So Ukraine sought solemn assurances that in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons, the country’s borders would be inviolable.

 

Imagine if the Ukrainian negotiators could have seen the news of the past few days.

 

 

 

Now they are at the mercy of the Russians' broken word that could affect peace across Europe

 

 

 

The Budapest Memorandum has been flagrantly breached by Russia.

 

 

 

 

 

First by a series of targeted and crippling trade sanctions against Ukraine to prevent it signing a deal with the European Union, which is backed by a clear majority of the population.

 

Second, by backing the regime’s crackdown in the capital Kiev. And then with the occupation of Crimea.

 

The Russians broke their word – but so did we. Britain has spinelessly funked even mild measures such as visa bans and asset freezes to punish the Kremlin for its behaviour.

 

Would the Ukrainian government of the day have blithely given up their nuclear weapons in exchange for our solemn assurances had they known Russia would attack and we would do nothing?

 

Of course not. Mr Putin has learned that aggression goes unpunished. Which country will he menace next?

 

 

A Conversation with Laura Ingraham

Some readers might be interested in this interview I gave to the American radio host Laura Ingraham on Friday.

Any Questions on Mob Rule?

Friday night's 'Any Questions' on BBC Radio 4, repeated on Saturday afternoon and then available on i-player) opened with a very interesting question about the legitimacy of the new Kiev government. I don't have the exact wording to hand but I think it could be fairly summed up as 'How big does a mob have to be to supplant an elected government?'

 

The panel was pretty mainstream and dominated by conventional wisdom, and rather struggled with the point of the question (which I thought very sharp and carefully-crafted). They didn't particularly want to consider the possibility that the Euromaidan crowd were anything other than spotless heroes of freedom. Eventually a sort of consensus was reached that the Yanukovych government had lost legitimacy because it had opened fire on what was repeatedly described as a peaceful crowd.

 

Once again I need to say here that I am not *defending* the actions of the Yanukovych state. It was corrupt, ill-governed and not very bright. The shooting of demonstrators is almost always wrong, and invariably a mistake in an open society (Though the Kazakh government, whose society is not exactly open,  recently got away with it , and was subsequently blessed by a visit from Mr Cameron) .  But everyone seems to have forgotten (or maybe it has been shown that this was untrue, in which case I'd welcome information) that 13 Ukrainian policemen, acting under the lawful authority of a legitimate government, were shot dead and another 130 suffered gunshot wounds, and it was only after this that the Yanukovych government authorised the use of lethal weapons by the police. Demonstrators were also seen and filmed carrying firearms.  I might add that many policemen were injured in previous clashes with demonstrators, who used firebombs and clubs without much hesitation.

 

It simply cannot be said, given these facts, that the demonstration was peaceful. I don't claim that this fact resolves any issues. But surely people in public life ought to know that? I think it is a reflection on the very poor coverage of these events by British media,  that nobody on the panel, or even the chairman, seemed to be aware of such an important fact.

 

 

Dyslexia is NOT a disease. It is an excuse for bad teachers

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

I doubt there has ever been a society so easily fooled by pseudo-science and quackery as ours is.

Millions of healthy people take happy pills that  do them obvious harm, and are increasingly correlated with inexplicable suicide  and worse.

Legions of healthy children are drugged into numbness because they fidget during  boring lessons, and countless people are persuaded that they or their children suffer from  a supposed disease called ‘dyslexia’, even though there is no evidence at all that it exists.

A few weeks ago I rejoiced at the first major cracks in this great towering dam of lies. Dr Richard Saul brought out his courageous and overdue book, ADHD Does Not Exist.

I also urge everyone to read James Davies’s book Cracked, on the inflated claims of psychiatry since it sold its soul to the pill-makers.

Now comes The Dyslexia Debate, published yesterday, a rigorous study of this alleged ailment by two distinguished academics – Professor Julian  Elliott of Durham University, and Professor Elena Grigorenko of Yale University.

Their book makes several points. There is no clear definition of what ‘dyslexia’ is. There is no objective diagnosis of it. Nobody can agree on how many people suffer from it. The widespread belief that it is linked with high intelligence does not stand up to analysis.

And, as Parliament’s Select Committee on Science and Technology said in 2009: ‘There is no convincing evidence  that if a child with dyslexia is not labelled as dyslexic, but receives full support for his or her reading difficulty, that the child will do any worse than a child who is labelled dyslexic and then receives special help.’

 This is because both are given exactly the same treatment. But as the book’s authors say: ‘Being labelled dyslexic can be perceived as desirable for many reasons.’ These include extra resources and extra time in exams. And then there’s the hope that it will ‘reduce the shame and embarrassment that are often the consequence of literacy difficulties. It may help exculpate the child, parents and teachers from any perceived sense of responsibility’.

I think that last point is the decisive one and the reason for the beetroot-faced fury that greets any critic of ‘dyslexia’ (and will probably greet this book and article). If it’s really a disease, it’s nobody’s fault. But it is somebody’s fault. For the book also describes the furious resistance, among teachers,  to proven methods of teaching children to read. Such methods have been advocated by  experts since Rudolf Flesch wrote his devastating book Why Johnny Can’t Read almost 60 years ago.

There may well be a small number of children who have physical problems that stop them learning to read. The invention of ‘dyslexia’ does nothing to help them. It means they are uselessly lumped in with millions of others who have simply been badly taught.

It also does nothing for  that great majority of poor readers. They are robbed of one of life’s great pleasures and essential skills.

What they need, what we all need, is proper old-fashioned teaching, and who cares if the silly teachers think it is ‘authoritarian’? That’s what teaching is.

The sign of an honest butcher

I wondered when the Soppy Lobby would get  round to trying to ban butchers’ shops displaying the recognisable carcases of dead animals. The first attempt, in the Suffolk town of Sudbury, has failed. But it won’t be the last. How sad.

Now that most meat is  sold ready packaged in supermarkets, many children grow up with no idea where  it comes from. Proper butchers are rarer and rarer. My own view is that you shouldn’t eat meat if you don’t know what it is and how it came to be on your plate.

The spread of cheap, unrecognisable hypermarket meat has helped to create hideous meat factories, where animals are imprisoned and tortured in unspeakable conditions before being cruelly massacred. I’d rather eat lentils than support such methods.

Proper butchers know the names of the farms that supply them, and can tell you where the animals were humanely slaughtered. It’s the hidden cruelty we should object to, not the honesty of the remaining butchers.

Here's the real IRA scandal

What a lot of twaddle we have heard about the  dropping of the case against the alleged Hyde Park bomber, John Downey.

On page 56 of the judge’s ruling, point 32 states ‘even  if convicted of all the offences he [Downey] would, in consequence of the 1998 Act, serve no more than two years in prison’. So, even if a jury had found him guilty of that ghastly crime, two footling years would have been his lot.

The 1998 Act was part of Britain’s grovelling  surrender to the Provisional IRA, made under fierce American pressure.

I said at the time that this was a total and unmitigated defeat, but I have been told over and over again by  pious persons that it is the price of ‘peace’.

Well, we have not got peace. We have been utterly humiliated by a criminal gang, at the behest of our supposed allies in the ‘War on Terror’.

And what do you think will happen if we ever dare prosecute another IRA man, let alone put him in jail? They haven’t gone away, you know.

How’s the ‘liberation’ of Ukraine going  for you? Gullibly welcomed by 99.9 per cent of the British media, it doesn’t look quite so simple now, does it?

Beginning to have doubts about Britain taking sides? You should. Apart from all the worrying developments in Crimea, which are no surprise to any informed person, it comes to something when that old class warrior, Dennis Skinner MP, speaks for Britain.

But his brief outburst was the most telling thing anybody in Parliament has said about  this. He asked William Hague, Secretary of State for Foreign Meddling: ‘Have I got it right, or not, that a Tory Foreign Secretary has come to the House to take money out of the pockets of people in Britain – flood-ravaged and austerity-riddled Britain – to hand it over to the EU fanatics in Ukraine?’ Yes, he has got it right.

More from Mike Barton, Chief Constable of Durham and advocate of free heroin for abusers. I suggested his job was to enforce the law. He retorted: ‘When you say that my job is to enforce the law, between 18 and 22 per cent of my work is law enforcement and crime-fighting. Fifty per cent of my work is concern for safety. That’s what I’m in, so when you accuse me of being a social worker, I’m proud to be a social worker as well as a tough law enforcer.’

What odd figures, and what a strange sort of pride. And I think the people of Durham should be the judges of whether he is a ‘tough law enforcer’.

If you wish to comment, please scroll down

 

Dyslexia is not a disease. It is an excuse for bad teachers

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

I doubt there has ever been a society so easily fooled by pseudo-science and quackery as ours is.

Millions of healthy people take happy pills that  do them obvious harm, and are increasingly correlated with inexplicable suicide  and worse.

Legions of healthy children are drugged into numbness because they fidget during  boring lessons, and countless people are persuaded that they or their children suffer from  a supposed disease called ‘dyslexia’, even though there is no evidence at all that it exists.

A few weeks ago I rejoiced at the first major cracks in this great towering dam of lies. Dr Richard Saul brought out his courageous and overdue book, ADHD Does Not Exist.

I also urge everyone to read James Davies’s book Cracked, on the inflated claims of psychiatry since it sold its soul to the pill-makers.

Now comes The Dyslexia Debate, published yesterday, a rigorous study of this alleged ailment by two distinguished academics – Professor Julian  Elliott of Durham University, and Professor Elena Grigorenko of Yale University.

Their book makes several points. There is no clear definition of what ‘dyslexia’ is. There is no objective diagnosis of it. Nobody can agree on how many people suffer from it. The widespread belief that it is linked with high intelligence does not stand up to analysis.

And, as Parliament’s Select Committee on Science and Technology said in 2009: ‘There is no convincing evidence  that if a child with dyslexia is not labelled as dyslexic, but receives full support for his or her reading difficulty, that the child will do any worse than a child who is labelled dyslexic and then receives special help.’

 This is because both are given exactly the same treatment. But as the book’s authors say: ‘Being labelled dyslexic can be perceived as desirable for many reasons.’ These include extra resources and extra time in exams. And then there’s the hope that it will ‘reduce the shame and embarrassment that are often the consequence of literacy difficulties. It may help exculpate the child, parents and teachers from any perceived sense of responsibility’.

I think that last point is the decisive one and the reason for the beetroot-faced fury that greets any critic of ‘dyslexia’ (and will probably greet this book and article). If it’s really a disease, it’s nobody’s fault. But it is somebody’s fault. For the book also describes the furious resistance, among teachers,  to proven methods of teaching children to read. Such methods have been advocated by  experts since Rudolf Flesch wrote his devastating book Why Johnny Can’t Read almost 60 years ago.

There may well be a small number of children who have physical problems that stop them learning to read. The invention of ‘dyslexia’ does nothing to help them. It means they are uselessly lumped in with millions of others who have simply been badly taught.

It also does nothing for  that great majority of poor readers. They are robbed of one of life’s great pleasures and essential skills.

What they need, what we all need, is proper old-fashioned teaching, and who cares if the silly teachers think it is ‘authoritarian’? That’s what teaching is.

The sign of an honest butcher

I wondered when the Soppy Lobby would get  round to trying to ban butchers’ shops displaying the recognisable carcases of dead animals. The first attempt, in the Suffolk town of Sudbury, has failed. But it won’t be the last. How sad.

Now that most meat is  sold ready packaged in supermarkets, many children grow up with no idea where  it comes from. Proper butchers are rarer and rarer. My own view is that you shouldn’t eat meat if you don’t know what it is and how it came to be on your plate.

The spread of cheap, unrecognisable hypermarket meat has helped to create hideous meat factories, where animals are imprisoned and tortured in unspeakable conditions before being cruelly massacred. I’d rather eat lentils than support such methods.

Proper butchers know the names of the farms that supply them, and can tell you where the animals were humanely slaughtered. It’s the hidden cruelty we should object to, not the honesty of the remaining butchers.

Here's the real IRA scandal

What a lot of twaddle we have heard about the  dropping of the case against the alleged Hyde Park bomber, John Downey.

On page 56 of the judge’s ruling, point 32 states ‘even  if convicted of all the offences he [Downey] would, in consequence of the 1998 Act, serve no more than two years in prison’. So, even if a jury had found him guilty of that ghastly crime, two footling years would have been his lot.

The 1998 Act was part of Britain’s grovelling  surrender to the Provisional IRA, made under fierce American pressure.

I said at the time that this was a total and unmitigated defeat, but I have been told over and over again by  pious persons that it is the price of ‘peace’.

Well, we have not got peace. We have been utterly humiliated by a criminal gang, at the behest of our supposed allies in the ‘War on Terror’.

And what do you think will happen if we ever dare prosecute another IRA man, let alone put him in jail? They haven’t gone away, you know.

How’s the ‘liberation’ of Ukraine going  for you? Gullibly welcomed by 99.9 per cent of the British media, it doesn’t look quite so simple now, does it?

Beginning to have doubts about Britain taking sides? You should. Apart from all the worrying developments in Crimea, which are no surprise to any informed person, it comes to something when that old class warrior, Dennis Skinner MP, speaks for Britain.

But his brief outburst was the most telling thing anybody in Parliament has said about  this. He asked William Hague, Secretary of State for Foreign Meddling: ‘Have I got it right, or not, that a Tory Foreign Secretary has come to the House to take money out of the pockets of people in Britain – flood-ravaged and austerity-riddled Britain – to hand it over to the EU fanatics in Ukraine?’ Yes, he has got it right.

More from Mike Barton, Chief Constable of Durham and advocate of free heroin for abusers. I suggested his job was to enforce the law. He retorted: ‘When you say that my job is to enforce the law, between 18 and 22 per cent of my work is law enforcement and crime-fighting. Fifty per cent of my work is concern for safety. That’s what I’m in, so when you accuse me of being a social worker, I’m proud to be a social worker as well as a tough law enforcer.’

What odd figures, and what a strange sort of pride. And I think the people of Durham should be the judges of whether he is a ‘tough law enforcer’.

If you wish to comment, please scroll down

 

Angela Merkel and the Eurosceptic Delusion

One of the saddest things about modern British political life is that so few major figures know or care about history, or about the real nature of power. We flounder around in our ‘War Picture Library’ world, in which mighty Britain won the war single-handed for the cause of justice with a loyal and generous Uncle Sam at our side.  

 

We delude ourselves that our survival (largely through the politeness of others) on such bodies as the UN Security Council and the various G-thises and G-thats on which we sit,  actually means that we are still rich and important, as our spavined, eviscerated economy hurtles downhill, powered only by gravity, towards a terrible and unavoidable smash.

 

We maintain a ludicrous and vastly costly nuclear weapon, unusable under any circumstances and far bigger than any conceivable enemy we may face. The only nations against which it might be used are simply not interested in us. It is a form of vanity to imagine that they are.

 

But out of our old and polished box of antique Edwardian playthings, we can still fetch the beautiful toy soldiers and play-room castles, bequeathed to us by our ancestors, to impress foreign visitors – or, in the case of Mrs Angela Merkel, to make us think we are impressing them.

 

Does anyone really think that Frau Merkel cares much for these things? She is not a tourist. Modern Berlin is quite an impressive city, especially since it was a flattened ruin 70 years ago but what is far more impressive is the extraordinary level of wealth, the high standards of public service, education and competence, the wisely managed economy (with some notable exceptions) which stretch across the Federal Republic of Germany.  True, the Germans cannot quite manage our levels of ceremony and architecture, and no longer possess a monarchy, but they have other things we lack, which make up for this in their own minds. And in any case they recognise that their country’s specially terrible recent history requires, for the foreseeable future, a low-key and restrained approach to power and pomp.

 

The ridiculous expectations of Mrs Merkel’s visit, drummed up by the Tories, do make me laugh. Do they really still not understand that the EU never gives back the powers it has gathered in, because that is the whole point of it? Do they really still not grasp that Germany has abandoned national glory and imperial power in exchange for a different dream, of a Europe in which Germany dominates everything but never raises her voice or actually asserts her power in public?

 

If Britain wants to be part of that, Germany will be polite to us, even flatter us, and allow us various trinkets and tokens to soothe those who still like to think we were the victors of 1945. But the great sausage machine of ever-closer-union will continue to mince up the gristly and bony remains of national sovereignty, and turn them into the smooth, bland, pink paste of ‘Unity in Diversity’, with which the Euro-Sausage is so tightly packed.  If Britain seeks to be a serious obstacle to the sausage-machine, then she will be crushed, overborne in the Commission, slapped down in the Luxembourg Court, regulated to death and eventually compelled to accept total submission by joining the Euro and abolishing what remains of her national borders, and signing the Schengen agreement with trembling fingers as her new masters look on, smiling benevolently.

 

The German government was apparently so alarmed by the ridiculous suggestions in the British  media (that Mrs Merkel would somehow be David Cameron’s ally in a great return of lost powers to the individual nations) that ti was thought necessary to slap this down hard and fast today.

 

So, in the part of  Mrs Merkel’s speech delivered in English, these words could not have been clearer:

‘Some expect my speech to pave the way for a fundamental reform of the European architecture which will satisfy all kinds of alleged or actual British wishes. I am afraid they are in for a disappointment.’

 

The qualification which followed was, by comparison, tricky and ambiguous: ‘Others are expecting the exact opposite and they are hoping that I will deliver the clear and simple message here in London that the rest of Europe is not prepared to pay almost any price to keep Britain in the European Union. I am afraid these hopes will be dashed.’

 

You need to read it several times. Boiled down, it might be though to mean ‘the rest of Europe *is* prepared to pay almost any price to keep Britain in the European Union’.

 

At least, that is what I think it is sort of saying. But in fact she said that she would disappoint those who thought she would say ‘the rest of Europe is *not* prepared to pay almost any price to keep Britain in the European Union.’

 

Which is not quite the same. Of course Germany wants to keep Britain in the European Union. The departure of any major member, even a broke and uncooperative member in the process of physical disintegration, would be a blow to the organisation as a whole. The EU would lose our huge net contribution (a major factor in our economic decline). It would be compelled to give us good terms, in case by erecting tariff barriers it lost our valuable market for its goods. By giving  a non-member such terms it would make membership less attractive to others. Long-term plans for a unified European foreign and defence policy would be seriously set back. The EU’s pet ‘Anglo-Saxon’ nation, Ireland (that’s the EU view, not my own description), would be placed in an awkward position. So would an ‘independent’ Scotland.  Then there would be the loss of valuable fishing grounds, and many other little details.

 

But the German Embassy in London, and the London correspondents of the German media, must be doing a very bad job if anyone in Berlin seriously thinks that Britain is about to leave. No important political party favours it. No significant newspaper favours it. The fabled referendum (which I suspect would not be binding on Parliament anyway) has in any case been pledged by a party which cannot hope to win a UK general election.

 

No, we are going through a repeat of the Dance of Death which Harold Wilson conducted round the capitals of the  then EEC in 1974 and 1975,  ‘renegotiating’ the terms on which we had joined. Of course, he did no such thing. All the really bad things, from the Common Agricultural Policy to the Fisheries robbery to the steady, relentless theft of sovereignty which has been going on ever since, were unchanged. Just as they will be if Mr Cameron ever attempts to repeat it.

 

There are only two genuine, honest positions any politician can take on the EU. You can either be in, or you can be out. If you are in, the full package will always apply. If you are not, you can make your own terms. ‘Euroscepticism’ is a delusion. No such political position actually exists. It is made entirely out of wind, and written on water.

 

I won’t here go into the subject in much more depth. ‘That fine book ‘The Great Deception’,  by Christopher Booker and Richard North (Continuum) , is the essential reading for any who are seriously interested in the matter.  Anyone who hasn’t read it simply isn’t qualified to discuss the matter, and it is amazing how many MPs and journalists still have not read it, and do not know the simple basics of the controversy.

 

But I would just like to comment on Mrs Merkel’s statement that it was inconceivable that any EU member could go to war with another. This is another version of the repeated claim that the EU has somehow prevented war by existing. What it really means is that the EU has reversed Carl von Clausewitz’s old dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means ( how many people know that the great strategist features as a minor character in one of C.S.Forester’s ‘Hornblower’ books – ‘The Commodore’, I think ?).

 

The EU is the continuation of war by other means. Germany has quite rightly learned that its  Mitteleuropa ambitions to dominate central and eastern Europe,  as set out in 1915 by Friedrich Naumann ( not a drum-beating militarist but a liberal, ancestor of today’s FDP), could not and should nto be achieved by conquest, as Ludendorff and Hitker had sought to do.

 

Yet Germany’s power must find a way to express itself. This it has done by ruthlessly repressing its nationalistic, militarist past and – to its enormous credit - becoming a state of laws and of reason.  But at the same time it has dominated the European Union, neutralised France by flattering and subsidising her, allowed the Low Countries and Scandinavia plenty of nominal independence in return for sacrificing the real foundations of sovereignty. Some of its leaders , notably the clumsy Helmut Kohl,  have come close to hinting that anyone who gets in the way of this process risks war. This is not a threat, but, as far as such people are concerned, a statement of fact.

 

Germany must expand and dominate, as a tree must grow.  If we do not do this the easy way, then it is reasonable to suppose we must do it the hard way, and who would want to face that for a third time? Coudkl Europe survive it?  And of course many countries have willingly taken the EU yoke,  scared and battered by the risky, rackety ‘self-determination’ of the 1918-1939 period. They and their peoples often welcome it. Who can blame them. Sovereign borders,  the responsibilities of self-defence and alliances, the awkward problems of living, powerless, between the titans of Moscow and Berlin, has persuaded many that they are better off as caressed vassals under Germany’s gentle but insistent domination.

 

I don’t myself think Britain was in that position. I think our differences with the rest of Europe are so great (especially in law and liberty) that we could never have fitted in this post-modern ironic empire, without losing oyur national soul. What a pity we now lack the strength, wealth or will to get out of it, and so must rot away and disintegrate until we are forgotten.

 

But I can see why the others are happy to stay. Why should EU countries go to war with each other? They have already willingly accepted defeat in a war without guns and bombs.

 

But this is not quite so sweet and easy when it moves into such areas as the former Yugoslavia, or Ukraine. Here, we move into places where the Mitteleuropa experiment was never so successful, and where Russian resistance, which defeated it twice in bitter war,  remains strong.  The abiding memory of Stalingrad (now revived in a new film) , far more than Dunkirk or D-Day, makes Russia determined to maintain her independent position. History, which Russian politicians tend to know, makes them sensitive about German/EU influence in Belgrade or Kiev. I am puzzled that Berlin, so sensible and so civilised in its behaviour towards the rest of Europe, has such a tin ear when it reaches east of the Rivers Bug and Dniester.

 

 Footnote: I cannot resist these two quotations from a column by Al Johnson, Mayor of London, in the ‘Daily Telegraph and referring to Mrs Merkel:

 

In the first, printed in the newspaper on Monday, he said ‘…she is proof that centre–Right parties can win absolute majorities’ .

 

In the current website version he says :‘..she is proof that centre-Right parties can win elections’  .

 

Mrs Merkel, famously I thought, has never won an election outright, and currently governs in a coalition with the Social Democrats, Germany’s union-dominated Labour Party. It is in fact very rare for any German party to win an outright majority. I am interested as to how such a mistake came to be a) made and b) published. We all make mistakes. I certainly do. But this is an especially interesting one. Did someone want to believe something? It's the source of most mistakes.