Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 272

If Christianity dies, who benefits?

From time to time I suggest that this country will, sooner or later become a Muslim nation, having given up Christianity and so left a space waiting to be filled, which secularism simply cannot do.  This suggestion is generally met with incredulity at best, and derision at worst. I don’t say this is an immediate prospect, but I do think it is a long-term one.

 

Well, those who think the idea absurd might do well to study the latest analysis of the 2011 census.

 

It suggests that a minority of British people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade. (There are now just over 33 million British Christians, and only a third of these attend church apart from weddings, baptisms and funerals) ‘Describing themselves as’ is of course a good deal less significant than attending church, bringing their children up as Christians or anything of that sort.  Meanwhile the general decline in Christianity has been masked by the recent arrival  of 1.2 million Christians from Poland, Nigeria and other countries. My guess is that those who stay will be secularised by this country, rather than that they will re-Christianise it.

 

So what, then of the Muslim population?  This has risen by 75 per cent , also boosted by migrants - 600,000 in this case.  Won’t they be secularised? I’m not so sure. Muslims tend to stick to the pattern of the faith – the fasts and festivals, the traditions and dietary rules, in a way which Christians don’t. they also seem to me to have much stronger family connections. And, thanks to multiculturalism , they are often concentrated in certain areas, which tends to strengthen adhesion and loyalty. They are also a lot younger than Christians. The average age of a British Muslim is 25. A quarter of Christians are over 65. Younger people, of course, have more children than older people.

 

 

Meanwhile 32 per cent of under 25s say they have no religion at all.   

Keith Porteous Wood, the executive director of the National Secular Society,  was quoted as saying the long–term reduction of Christianity, particularly among young people, was now ‘unstoppable’.

 

‘In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers’, he said. ‘The time has now come that institutional Christianity is no longer justified.

 

‘The number has dropped below critical mass for which there is no longer any justification for the established Church, for example.’

 

I think he is right about the numbers. I really don’t understand why he should worry about the ‘established church’, an enfeebled and vestigial thing which has almost no real influence on national life and thought (and when it does, isn’t particularly Christian).

 

It has always amused me in a bitter sort of way that militant secularists seem pleased by the decline of Christianity. I doubt very much that they will like it if I turn out to be right, and the removal of Christianity as the national religion simply creates a space into which Islam can move.  Can they really be sure that this will not happen here? We are, as I often say, due for a religious revival as material growth fails and fizzles. Why shouldn’t it benefit Islam, simple, confident, youthful and unembarrassed?  

The Great Innocence Robbery: The awful abuse of girls in Oxford is just the latest consequence

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail On Sunday column

Commentators take what they want to from scandals. Already this is happening to the debate about the mass abuse of young girls in Oxford.

The Left are blaming the law for being too weak on rape. The Right are blaming political correctness. Each has a point. But it goes deeper than that and both sides should admit it.

I have lived in Oxford (with some gaps) for almost 50 years. It is, in many ways, a paradise which has escaped much of the evil and decay which beset this country.

I suspect I may, all unknowing, have gone past the scenes of some of those crimes while they were actually taking place. There’s a particular meadow with a pretty name and a shady reputation that I often ride past on my bicycle, which was the scene of some disgusting crimes.

I have probably rubbed shoulders in the streets, at the station and at the market with both culprits and victims.

It is an education in how little we actually know about what is going on around us. I am a pessimist and tend to assume the worst, but never imagined this.

Yet though it disgusts me, it does not much surprise me. Like everyone who has any kind of public position, I know that an accusation of racism – even an entirely false one – could ruin my life. I know it as I write these words.

If Thames Valley Police or Oxfordshire County Council and its social workers deny that their wretched responses to these crimes were influenced by the same fear, then I simply do not believe them. It would be good if some of the newspapers of the Left would acknowledge this.

In return, I’ll agree with them that the law is a feeble protection for young girls exploited by older men. Mind you, it is bound to be. In a free country, the law needs hard evidence to prosecute and convict, and such evidence is not always easy to get in such matters. So should we relax the rules? How many wrongful convictions and wrecked innocent lives are we prepared to permit in the battle to stop this sort of thing? Plenty, provided of course that it does not affect us personally.

Then there’s the issue that dare not speak its name. When we set the Oxford case beside other recent events in Rochdale, we find that in both crimes the men were Muslims (often mosque-going ones).

How important is it that the convicted rapists and perverts in most cases regarded their victims as barely-human degenerates, ‘kufr’, unbelievers who didn’t count? It matters. But non-Muslims should not be smug about it.

It reminds me of the assertion by Anthony Blair at the start of his Iraq War in 2003 that our Islamic enemies ‘hate our way of life’. Because, as he said it, I thought: ‘Yes, and I too hate our way of life.’ I loathe the outcome of the sexual revolution, the Great Innocence Robbery that has replaced the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

What an opportunity it has given to the evil and the selfish. You don’t have to be Muslim to take advantage of the rape of innocence, believe me.

The thing that haunts me most about the Oxford case is that one of the six victims was not ‘in care’, at least to begin with. I have come to expect that children ‘in care’ are left almost completely unprotected from our modern hell of loveless sex, binge-drinking and casual drug-taking. The very word ‘care’ sounds to me like a yellow, sarcastic sneer.

But one of these girls had a home and parents who thought they were in charge. Those parents begged the police to act. They took her befouled clothes to them and were turned away. Can you imagine their despair? The authorities, whom they had relied on, and who are supposed to stand between us and evil, were not interested.

In one form or another, this despair comes to thousands of parents in this country every year. They find out that a ‘permissive society’ means just that. Their authority over their own children was long ago abolished, and they can get into severe trouble for trying to exercise it.

The law, the schools, the town and county halls are all in on the same arrangement. ‘The kids are all right.’ We are all free now. Restraint is ‘repression’. There is no moral centre, nor any real law, and ‘equality and diversity’ stand high above morality. Sometimes a single, diligent individual fights against it and manages to secure a prosecution. Mostly, this doesn’t happen.

And so, on a filthy bed in a squalid house somewhere near you, these crimes and others like them still go on, and in most cases nothing will ever be done about it.

Moral panic? I long ago gave that up. Nobody listened. Now I just hope that these hellish things won’t come too near me, though they are already nearer than I thought they were.

At last, this rotten pair have done something useful

I don't really care what happens to Chris Huhne or Vicky Pryce, both prominent members of the rotten, arrogant elite who have helped to wreck my country.

I only mention them because – unlike most people sent to prison – their release got as much publicity as their sentencing.

And so even the BBC could not ignore the fact that their sentences – eight months, but they served only two – were actual, deliberate official lies. Almost all prison sentences are.

Nobody seems to have thought about what this means. What sort of state orders its judges to utter falsehoods as part of their conditions of employment?

And what sort of media have let this festival of lying go unchallenged for so long?

Puffed up defenders of the existing order screech at me when I point out (with perfect accuracy, and backed by research) that crime statistics are fiddled by the authorities. These are the same sorts of people who think children are growing cleverer because they get more high grades in GCSEs and A-levels.

Can they now please address their complaints  to Steve Williams, chairman of the Police Federation, who last week revealed that  pressure was being placed on frontline officers to minimise recorded crime? Mr Williams also pointed out that officers are increasingly scared of talking to the press.

Given the disgraceful imprisonment of former Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn, accused on the flimsiest grounds of corruption (no evidence was ever produced of money changing hands), but whose real offence was to telephone a newspaper to complain about anti-terror resources being diverted, I am not surprised.

We know that New Labour hoped to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’ by encouraging mass immigration, thanks to amazing revelations by former speechwriter Andrew Neather.

Now former Young Communist Baron Mandelson confirms the plan, blabbing that ‘we were not only welcoming people to come into this country to work, we were sending out search parties for people and encouraging them, in some cases, to take up work in this country’.

Does His Lordship have a coat of arms yet? How about an open door?

Mystic Hitchens is Right Again

In today’s ‘Times’ (Friday 17th May), Britain’s political reporting classes have finally caught up with me. Well Done! Under the splash headline ‘No 10 plans for coalition divorce as rifts widen’ Roland Watson and Billy Kenber told their readers that Vince Cable may take over from Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, that there could be an ‘amicable divorce’ between the Coalition parties, under which Mr Cameron leads a minority government and there is ‘campaigning distance’ between the two Coalition parties. BBC Radio 4's Today programme gave great play to this story in their review of the newspapers, a good way of running a significant story their own political staff haven't written themselves.The whole thing is behind a pay wall and so I cannot link to it.

 

But I would draw to your attention the following , written by me in years gone by:

 

On 25th September 2011:

 

‘THERE used to be a sport called 'all-in wrestling' which was funny because it was faked. Despite all the grunts, squeals and crashes, as huge bodies were slammed, gasping, on to the canvas, we all knew it wasn't serious. Of course, it must have hurt a bit. And occasionally the giant grapplers must have truly lost their tempers. But the louder it was, the phonier it was.

I do hope people realise that the same is true of the current alleged row between Nicholas Clegg's Liberal Democrats and David Cameron's Liberal Conservatives.

Mr Cameron is far closer to Mr Clegg than he is to his own voters. He loves being manacled to him, and much prefers Coalition to governing alone.

Mr Clegg helps David Cameron ensure that the Government remains pro-EU, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-tax, politically correct and pro-immigration. But he suffers from the bottomless stupidity of his Left-wing members and voters, who can never see when they're well off.

Anthony Blair had the same difficulty. The Left were too thick to see that New Labour were the most revolutionary Leftist British Government since Cromwell. They thought - and still think - that Mr Blair was a traitor. Stupidity explains a lot in modern British politics. But that's democracy for you.

So we have the ludicrous position we have now, where the real traitor, Mr Cameron, still commands the loyalty of his party.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats, who have allowed Mr Cameron to ignore his voters and run a Leftist Government, have lost most of their Leftist support.

This is the reason for the silly fake fight, in which Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron pretend to be at odds about the 50p tax rate, or Human Rights, and various senior Liberals call the Tories rude names.

The Tory conference in Manchester next week will contain quite a few matching attacks on the 'Yellow B******s', which will be just as empty.

But the biggest fake of all will be the stage-managed split between the two, which I predict will take place by the spring of 2014.

There will be some pretext or other - probably spending cuts. The idea will be to make the Liberals look like principled Leftists and the Tories look like principled conservatives. The media will, as usual, play along.

The Liberals will then noisily leave the Coalition but quietly agree to maintain a minority Tory Government on the basis of 'confidence and supply'.

Mr Cameron will then find ministerial jobs for some of his friends. Mr Clegg may possibly go off to the European Commission - a seat falls vacant in 2014.

If he does, I suspect Vince Cable will become leader, a change worth many votes to his party. The Tories will try and fail to get a few 'Right-wing' measures through Parliament.

And at the 2015 Election, voters will be asked to choose between Liberal Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Liberal Labour candidates, pretending to disagree with each other.

The Liberal Democrats will then form a coalition with whoever gets most seats. And your wishes, hopes and fears will continue to be ignored.

Unlike the wrestling, this fraud isn't funny.

It is deadly serious, and we shall all pay for it.’

 

 

On 4th March 2012, I wrote  : ‘HAVE you noticed how the Tories and the Liberal Democrats are trying to pretend they hate each other? Like almost everything in public life these days, it's a fake.

 

But both parties are worried that their collaboration has lost them voters. So watch out for a completely made-up row between them, probably over Lords reform, followed by a Lib Dem 'walkout' from the Coalition. Nick Clegg will then go off to be a Euro Commissioner, a post that falls vacant in 2014. Vince Cable will probably take over his party.

 

Thanks to the creepy Fixed Term Parliament Act, which passed almost in silence, this walkout will not and cannot trigger a General Election. The new law means that the sort of no-confidence vote that brought down Jim Callaghan in 1979 can never happen again, a grave blow to our freedom. So Mr Cameron will be able to stay at Downing Street at the head of a minority Tory Government. The two parties will pelt each other with rhetorical mud and slime, the Tories will table all kinds of Right-wing legislation they know will never get through, and David Cameron will buy off his key rebels with ministerial jobs vacated by Liberals.

 

This pantomime could easily end in another Lib-Con coalition, or even a Lib-Lab coalition that will be exactly the same, but with different teeth and hair.

 

But it will work only if you, the voters, are fooled by it.’

On 15th July last year (after another phoney Tory row over the EU), I wrote   : ‘THE only thing most MPs would fight for these days is a good table in a fashionable restaurant. These bland careerists have neither passions nor beliefs. So please do not be fooled by last week's amateur dramatics at the Palace of Westminster. The rage is faked. I have twice predicted it. Once, on September 25 last year, when I prophesied a 'stage-managed split' between the Coalition parties. Then last March, when I wrote: 'Both parties are worried that their collaboration has lost them voters. So watch out for a completely made-up row between them, probably over Lords reform, followed by a Lib Dem "walkout" from the Coalition. Nick Clegg will then go off to be a Euro Commissioner, a post that falls vacant in 2014. Vince Cable will probably take over his party.' This may now be happening a little faster than planned, mainly because the Government has no purpose except to stay in office and so has very little to do.

 

Some sort of diversion is also needed because its economic policy has collapsed into an insoluble combination of borrowing, bankruptcy and unemployment.

 

The only point of postponing the vote on Lords Reform is to avoid splitting too soon before the next Election.’

 

Well, it turns out that the split is not over Lords Reform (it came, as I later realised, too early in the Parliament). Perhaps it will have to be the EU, or welfare. But it is coming, because it has to. Oddly enough, the Tories have an interest in a Lib Dem recovery under Vince Cable. If the Lib Dem vote collapses, it will cause the loss of even more Tory seats, because it will strengthen the Labour vote in some marginal constituencies.  

Why I'm not keen on HS2 - Medium Speed is Better

I ought to be in favour of HS2, the new high-speed railway line planned to run between London and Birmingham. But I am not. This is not because I am much moved by the various protests against the line running through unspoiled’ countryside. New roads are ceaselessly driven through unspoiled countryside, doing it far more damage than a railway line could possibly do, and there are, oddly enough, hardly any protests. Where there are, they rarely if ever succeed. The Newbury bypass was driven through as planned. The M40 was allowed to gouge a great chasm out of the Chiltern escarpment. And all these roads then condemn the area for miles around to the perpetual metallic sigh of motor traffic, far more damaging than the periodic concentrated roar of a train. If I ride my bicycle through the countryside I am often aware of the presence of a Motorway or bypass many miles before I reach it, because of the incessant background noise of traffic, which blankets and damages all the proper sounds of the countryside from birdsong to wind in the trees, and which has banished silence from much of the English countryside, for ever. And that is not to mention the weary, cheerless glare of the lights which are now frequently installed along such roads, even in deep country.

 

No, my problem with HS 2 is that it is the wrong kind of train. I am told (though I need more details) that the real force behind it is a European transport directive . Is this true? What is the chapter and verse? This would not itself be an argument against it, but it is also not necessarily an argument for it. If we are at last to spend a significant sums on building railways, what we need are not 150mph corridors. Even where they exist, stupid, vain people, who still think flying is somehow advanced and glamorous,  will still insist on flying the same routes, and millions of others will drive them because fares will be so high.

 

The London-Paris/ Brussels rail route has never really been the success it ought to have been because its amazingly high fares can’t compete with highly-subsidised cheap flights and also, in my view, because of the undue, airline-style fuss needed to use it.  If one could just get on the train and go, showing one’s passport at either end or even aboard, then it would be far more attractive. As it is, it is made to seem as much like air travel as possible, with check-ins and luggage scans and lots of sitting around before being allowed to board (often to find that – though the train is half-empty, all the passengers have been crammed up together) followed by long periods of more sitting around, waiting for the train to leave. I’m sure there are perfectly good arguments for all this messing around. I just don’t think they’re good enough. A couple of plainclothes police officers quietly patrolling each train would be just as good. But I digress.

 

 

Trains in Britain, especially since the introduction of the HST back in the late 1970s, are quite fast enough for the distances they travel. They have actually got slower since that era, thanks to the ‘Passengers’ Charter’, which penalties companies for failing to keep to their timetables. The obvious unintended consequence of this is that they have padded their timetables with lots of spare minutes. Short of a breakdown, or a nuclear war, or some other major incident, the trains will always be on time. They will just be slower. This is why politicians are able to claim ( as they often do) that ‘trains have become more punctual since privatisation’.

 

Like the crime figures, this is both true and wholly misleading. But people who don’t travel regularly by train are fooled by it, and even some of those who do don’t realise how it works. On my own route to and from work, I have found that when I change trains at an intermediate station, waiting for some minutes on the platform there, my journey of about an hour can be as much as five minutes shorter than if I take a direct train and do not change. Sometimes, if I am really lucky with connections, I can save as much as ten minutes. This is obviously absurd, and is another of the many consequence sof living in a mad country with a mad government.

 

During this journey I also pass another huge piece of evidence for the ‘mad government’ theory – the tomb that was until a  few weeks ago Didcot ‘A’ Power Station. This perfectly serviceable station was shut to fulfil an EU Carbon quota, despite the fact that its closure will make it even more likely that this country will cease to be self-sufficient in electricity generation in the next ten years, and subject to power cuts like a Third World nation. Meanwhile huge subsidies are being spent to carpet the country with wind turbines and solar panels, which cannot begin to produce the power once turned out by Didcot ‘A’. Perhaps our old friend ‘Bert’ who pretentiously posts here under the name of a great historian, can come up with an alternative explanation, apart from the fact that the British government is mad. After all, he knows (though he can’t explain how, or offer an alternative explanation ) that the slow disappearance of weekly rubbish collections is not caused by the EU’s Landfill Directive, and the huge penalties imposed on landfill disposal as a result, despite the existence, indeed growing quantities,  of enormous landfill facilities in this country.   

 

No, what we need are more medium-speed (and slow) trains. We need 80 or 90-mile-an hour passenger express services between medium-sized cities, including cross country lines which avoid London, and a loop around London which allows trains to avoid the centre of the capital while continuing to use main lines.

We need full electrification of all but the most remote lines. We need the reconnection to the railway system of dozens of market towns (in my own part of the country I would name Abingdon, Thame, Witney, Wantage, Faringdon, and Cirencester and Winslow – others no doubt have their own examples) which were absurdly cut off from the rail network, the reopening of the Oxford to Cambridge line, of the old LSWR line from Exeter to Plymouth round the north of Dartmoor, of the Great Central trunk line which was built to continental loading gauge (this is not the gauge between the rails, but the width to which tunnels, bridges, signals and platforms are built, significantly wider on the Continent than here) and intended to connect with the Channel Tunnel, of the line from Didcot to Winchester which used to run parallel with the now swollen and overloaded A34 trunk road .

 

We also need a great deal more sidings and unloading points for goods trains. If there is any change left over after this, then a relief line to Birmingham and the north might be worth considering.  But only if.

 

What is much more likely is that in 40 years we shall have a skeleton of high-speed lines (running well below the intended maximum speeds because they have been neglected) and the rest of the passenger and freight network will have been neglected almost to death, apart from a decrepit network of unsafe and decrepit commuter lines around London, which will by then be a dank, grey version of Mexico City or Istanbul. Modern economic liberalism ,for some reason, hates railways.  

Still Useless After All These Years - the Tory Party

More than five years ago I summed up the case against the Tory Party as it then was. The indictment is to be found here and is still, in many ways, valid:

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2007/10/the-tories-are-.html

 

But the events of the past few weeks have not only confirmed my view, but taken us into a new stage in British politics.  So I will now re-examine the case against the Tories, and reinforce it.

Among matters I will discuss are :

The Draft Bill on a referendum , about which there is so much fuss

http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Issues/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/Draft_Referendum_Bill.ashx

 

Those who read this will see that every single contentious matter (timing, whether the result is binding, rules on broadcasting and advertising spending, and on the distribution of factional manifestoes to voters,  freedom of front benches to campaign etc etc etc) has been left to be defined at the time, bad in any case, but even worse when the time will never come. Who is fooled by this stuff?

 

A e-mail allegedly from David Cameron, sent out by Tory headquarters to journalists including me (For my own amusement I have added some emphases) :

 

‘In January, I set out our party’s position on Europe. I made clear that the EU needed fundamental, far reaching change - and that Britain would lead the way in negotiating that reform.

I also promised an In-Out referendum once those negotiations were complete, and at any event by the end of 2017. That's the right time to have a vote - it is wrong to ask people whether to stay or go before we have had a chance to put the relationship right.

But make no mistake - my commitment to a referendum is absolute. If I am Prime Minister after the next election, there will be an In-Out referendum. No ifs, no buts. And before the 2015 election, we will do everything we can to make it the law.

That’s why today the Conservative Party is publishing a draft bill that would legislate for a referendum by the end of 2017. We understand that we are in a Coalition government - but we are going to examine every opportunity to bring it before Parliament and try to get it on the statute book.

For too long the British people have had no say about their future in Europe. I am absolutely determined to put that right. Our action today is further proof we’re serious.’  

 

It does make me laugh that even as he pledges no ifs and no buts, the Prime Minister inserts the biggest if he can find in the shops,  ‘If I am Prime Minister after the next election’ . And he begins with a ‘but’ the absurd idea that a minority party can get its own Referendum Bill on to the statute book.

 

And a recent ICM poll, published by the Guardian (but, oddly enough, not picked up much by other media, which I feel it should have been, given its very striking data), showing the Tories at 28%, an extraordinarily low level of support at this stage in a parliament for a party which carries on as if it is the next government.

 

The complete chart was

 

Con 28% (-4)
Lab 34% (-4)
LD 11% (-4)
UKIP 18% (+9)
BNP 4% (+3)
SNP/PC 3% (nc)
Other 0% (-1)

 

 

This was the lowest Tory share since 2002, when Iain Duncan Smith was leader,  and also a record showing for ‘other’ parties of 27%, almost equalling the Tory total. This distressingly includes 4% from the BNP, a surge which can please no civilised person .

 

If I have read the figures..

 

http://www.icmresearch.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/05/2013_may_guardian_poll.pdf

 

..aright, the raw data are even more striking. Out of 1001 people polled, 104 said they would not vote, 222 said they didn’t know how they would vote, and 102 refused to say. Thus, 42% of those polled expressed no party preference.

 

Just 152 (15%) said they’d vote Tory, 210 (21%)  Labour and 109 (11%) UKIP. The raw BNP figure, reassuringly, was 22 people,  (2%)

 

The none-of-the-above party which before 2010 tended to be around 36%, has plainly grown quite sharply, to 42%. How long before it has the majority? . The UKIP vote seems to me to be  mainly Tory defectors and predominantly older people,   but with a significant number of Labour dissidents now joining in. I suspect Labour would do worse, but for a flow of deserters from the Liberal Democrats back into their old Labour-voting habits.

Tory support is weakest among the 18-24 age-group, at a pitiful 9%, though interestingly it is no better among the old (17%) than it is in the 35-64 age range. I had always assumed that Tory strength was concentrated in the over-70s. Maybe they have broken with the Tories in larger numbers than other age groups. UKIP is significantly stronger in the 65+ age group.

 

Now, to revisit days, weeks , months and years gone by – my article of October 2007. I said then that we had a unique opportunity to remake British politics. The chances are not quite so clear-cut now, as the Try Party cannot be despatched to its reward with a single blow, as I think could have happened had it been treated as it so richly deserves back in May 2010.

 

The principal difficulty we have now with habitual Tories is that they have fooled themselves into thinking that their party did in fact win the 2015 election, when it didn’t.

 

This explains their frequent empurpled rage when their desires are frustrated, on the grounds that the Tories are in Coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Of course, anyone who understands the Tory party knows that these desires , on the EU, on immigration, on crime and punishment and on education, etc, etc,  would be frustrated anyway. The Tory party doesn’t actually need the Liberal Democrats to help it take the wrong view on all these subjects. It takes it anyway. How could it be otherwise, when its chief brains are David Willetts,  Oliver Letwin and the Right Honourable the Lord (Michael) Heseltine, Companion of Honour?

 

So we have a double delusion here. One, that the Tories can still win an election, and have done so, when they can’t, and haven’t. Two, that the feebleness of Tory policies is attributable to the wicked Liberal Democrats, rather than to the Tory party’s own conscious and deliberate choices of policies and leaders.

 

Thus the argument can still seriously be advanced that votes for UKIP might prevent a Tory victory at the next election.  You cannot prevent something that isn’t going to happen, and can’t happen. Thus voting for UKIP will have no effect at all on the Tory prospects of forming a majority government. But millions still believe that it might, and may be restrained from taking a perfectly reasonable step, when 2015 comes, by this absurd fantasy.

 

Next, the fantasy can be maintained that, if there *were* such a Tory majority government under David Cameron, it would be significantly different from the Coalition. It wouldn’t be. It might even be worse, given the grave shortage of talent and intelligence among Tory MPs.  It just wouldn’t have so many excuses. But since it couldn’t exist, that’s of no interest.

 

Thus, the people who have it in their power to demolish the Tory Party and clear the way for real change are heavily restrained by commonly believed falsehoods, which cloud their minds and restrict their willingness to act decisively in their own interest.

 

Even so, UKIP's success has attracted success, and will attract more success before it begins to falter in the year before the general election. And, as I have mentioned before, the frenzied personal attack on Gordon Brown, which shored up the sagging Tory vote in 2010, cannot be repeated. Much of the loathing then directed at Mr Brown is beginning to turn towards Mr Cameron himself, who is increasingly seen to have portrayed himself as something he was not.  Without the Gordon Brown weapon, the Tories will struggle to keep the seats they have, especially since Labour is now aware of the damage which mass immigration has done to its cause and , while it won’t undo the damage, it is prepared to fight dirty on that topic if needs be. Gillian Duffy (referred to by Mr Brown as a ’bigoted woman’ after he met her on his campaign trail, because of her perfectly reasonable views on immigration and welfare benefits)  will be wooed, not insulted, in the next Labour campaign. They’re already working on it.

 

I would like to reproduce here what I wrote in 2007:

‘Even if the Tories could win an election (I speculate on this unlikely event at greater length because so many people now seem to believe that this is the case), what would that mean? I predict a government very similar to that of John Major, only even more torn by its unhealable division over the EU.  People forget now, but Major's government was one of political correctness, weakness on crime, failure on education, high taxes and conflict over the EU.

 

‘It is claimed that the Tories are now more anti-EU. In truth, this is not really the case. Many Tories have shifted from passive acceptance of the EU to what is called 'Euroscepticism', an unrealistic belief that, while the EU is bad for Britain, it is possible for us to negotiate ourselves a safe corner within it, which does not threaten our independence and laws, or the control of our borders. This 'in Europe but not run by Europe' view simply doesn't stand up to practical politics. The EU demands of its members a constant and accelerating surrender of national independence. If you win a small battle, you will rapidly find that the EU tries another attack from a different direction to achieve the same end. Don't like the Euro? How about a constitution? The end result, the whittling away of sovereignty, is the same. Why shouldn't it be? Ever-closer union is the EU's stated purpose.

In practice, those who are honestly in favour of EU membership and all that it entails, or honestly against it (the only two honourable positions in this debate) still cannot possibly agree - and it cannot be long, in the nature of the EU, before any government is confronted with the choice of continued reduction of national independence, or departure. There is no doubt which option Mr Cameron would choose.’

 

In what way was I wrong? Taxes are in fact rising, though it has been uncontroversial because the opposition would have raised them just as fast. It has been done largely by stealth methods the extension of the ‘higher rate’ to modest earners, the increasing load on council tax, the savings tax through ‘inflation’, which reduces the government debt while shrivelling our savings, and of course the huge green taxes, levied through household bills,  funding the mad dash for wind power.

 

I’d also like to reproduce (in full, as, though I was righter than any other prophet,  I was not perfectly right) my predictions for the last election, made two and a half years before it took place:

 

‘The result of the next election is already decided - the Left will be in office, either with a Labour majority, or a Lib-Lab pact, or a Lib-Con pact, or a Tory government in thrall to left-wing ideas. No radical change, on the areas which Tory voters care about most, will take place.

But it is far more likely that it will be either a Labour government or a Lab-Lib pact.’

 

I wish, in retrospect, that I had left out the most far-fetched of those options,  a Tory government in thrall to left-wing ideas.  It wasn’t really possible then (not that such a thing would have been desirable from any rational point of view) , and is even less possible now.  What remains wholly unthinkable is a conservative Tory government, a contradiction in terms.

 

The last line, actually, is now a better prediction for 2015. I can’t presently see much likelihood of a Labour majority, but it’s not wholly impossible, especially if the Coalition stays together and the Lib Dems are dragged beneath the waves by the suction, as the Tory Titanic gurgles and bubbles towards the ocean bed, with Dan Hannan at the prow and Ken Clarke at the stern.   

The Referendum Mirage

I sometimes wonder if political ‘experts’ in the media ever think at all about what they are saying. Why is there such a fuss about a referendum on British, sorry, I mean Ukay,  membership of the European Union? Has Parliament been abolished? Has a constitution been quietly introduced, which demands that such issues are decided by plebiscite, and makes the result of such plebiscites binding on Parliament?

 

I’ve heard no such proposal, and can’t see how it could be so, given the cowardly, ignorant or plain stupid attitudes of most MPs to this question.

 

It’s certainly understood, by constitutional lawyers, that such an obligation is important fro any serious plebiscite, and its presence or absence in any legislation will be crucial. I suspect it will be absent.

 

As it happens, we have an example. Article 1, part (iv) of the final section (on page 28) of the 1998 Belfast Agreement (the British government’s Instrument of Surrender after its humiliating defeat by the Provisional IRA and the USA) does make such an obligation binding on both the Dublin and London governments (not that this is a particularly heavy burden for Dublin to bear).

 

The nature of that vote is prescribed (on page 3) in Annex A, sections 1 and 2, as further detailed by Schedule 1, which allows the Northern Ireland Secretary to order a referendum (as it seems to me, in Northern Ireland alone, the desire of the Republic’s people for unity being repeatedly taken as given and settled in the text of the agreement)  if *at any time* it ‘seems’ to him that a majority might vote for incorporation of Northern Ireland into the Republic. He can then do it again every seven years. (NB: The Text to which I refer is the pretty propaganda version distributed in Northern Ireland during the shamelessly unfair campaign for votes in the original referendum on the Surrender Agreement itself, with the silhouette of a young family , their hair blown in the wind, as they watch the sun rise – or perhaps set – over the seashore).

 

If there is no such binding clause, the issue is what it has always been. Is a political party prepared to stand for election on a platform of withdrawal from the EU? If not, the only result of a vote to leave could well be yet another round of ‘negotiations’ and flammed-up ‘concessions’, after which our political leaders would declare that the problems were solved and we could remain within the EU.

 

In any case, hasn’t anyone noticed the following fact? No significant newspaper favours withdrawal from the EU (as was the case in 1975). The BBC is plainly opposed to withdrawal with every fibre of its being, and incapable of concealing its feelings.  Prepare yourselves for an orgy of scaremongering and needless caution. How, under those circumstances, do you imagine that you could get a vote to leave?

 

Why is so much fuss being devoted to this transparent pantomime?  The question is not whether Minister X or MP Y says he will vote to leave in a rigged referendum, which will quite possibly never happen anyway.  The question is whether a political party is prepared to go into an election pledged unequivocally to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and all that is based upon it, so showing some actual leadership on the matter, instead of hiding behind whatever crowd it can find.

 

It seems plain to me that the mirage of a referendum is being used to try to fool UKIP voters back into mainstream politics, where they can once again be safely ignored. The question is not what conditions we can get for agreeing to accept our servitude. The question is whether we should endure servitude at all.

 

 

Can Medical Science be Utterly Wrong? Yes, it can

Is it possible that we can applaud and accept medical treatments which will later turn out to have been gravely mistaken?

 

Those who doubt this should examine the case of the late Antonio Egas Moniz (1874-1955), awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949. For what was he given this tremendous honour, which to this day has not been rescinded? It was (in the words of the citation)  ‘for the discovery of the therapeutic value of the leucotomy in certain psychoses’.

 

Leucotomy? What’s that? Well, it’s what you’ve probably heard of rather more often as a ‘lobotomy’, a violent, crude assault on the brain tissues, performed with sharp steel instruments inserted into the skull,  on the basis of neurological theories of amazing crudity, and used for 20 years on thousands of people supposedly ‘diagnosed’ as being mentally ill. Maybe they were objectively mentally ill before the operation. It’s hard to say. But they were certainly mentally ill afterwards, because their brains had been irreparably mutilated. Some accounts suggest that Dr Moniz ( a former politician, amazingly) devised his technique after being shown two chimpanzees which had been rendered docile by surgical removal of the frontal lobes of their brains (lobotomy/leucotomy generally involved driving a blade or probe into the brain, sometimes using a mallet,  so effectively separating the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain, rather than actually removing it).

 

Others deny that this episode influenced him, pointing out that the general idea had been discussed by many neurologists at that time, had been the subject of several rather inconclusive experiments on human patients (one wonders how consent was obtained) , and the origins of the idea that ignorantly hacking about with brain tissue might be good for the victim went back to the late 19th century.

 

Many, many people  endured it. Many, many relatives reluctantly agreed to allow it. One of the most famous such victims was Rose Marie Kennedy, sister of JFK, lobotomised on her father’s initiative in 1941 at the age of 23 (she died in 2005 after 64 heartbreaking years of almost total detachment from human society). One of the doctors who carried out the operation described it thus : ‘We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch. The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.’

 

We must remember that the people who did this believed with total conviction that they were acting benevolently, as did the relatives who authorised it. They also believed that they were guided by medical science, though it is now perfectly clear that they had no real idea of what they were doing. How, we must ask ourselves, do we fool ourselves into doing or allowing such things? And, if we did it before, could we do it again? The answers are : easily; and yes, we can.

 

This horrible procedure continued in widespread use for many years (though it is rather humbling to note that the Soviet Union, despite being a Stalinist chamber of horrors at the time,  banned it in 1950, long before Western medicine had turned its back on it).  You might also look up ‘Insulin Shock therapy’ for another example of medical arrogance and human gullibility.

 

And I am personally highly sceptical (as are qualified doctors such as Peter Breggin) of the continuing use into our own times of Electro-shock therapy (or Electro-Convulsive Therapy, ECT), a procedure which has been described as the medical equivalent of kicking the TV set when it goes on the blink (or on the fritz, as I believe they say in the USA), which was used a few years ago on a colleague of mine, in a very fancy private hospital. I cannot say that it did him much good. All that was wrong with him was that his beloved wife had died after a long and gruesome illness, through which he had nursed her, and he was overcome with sorrow, as anyone would be.

 

I mention this gruesome episode, and the appalling popularity of lobotomy over many decades,  mainly to point out that our trust in medicine is sometimes misplaced. Of course, we need to trust doctors. When we are ill (if it is not already catastrophic) , our trust in the doctor is a vital part of our recovery . A cure can often be more than halfway complete by the time we have told the doctor what is wrong with us. By the time we have the prescription, we are already feeling better. This is because our problems have been taken seriously, and recognised as real, by a reassuring professional. When we go to the pharmacist to get the pills, our recovery is still more advanced. I believe studies have shown that many medicines start working before they are actually taken.

 

The mind is the seat of many cures. Of course, this will not work for a cancer or a grave injury (though the mind is still at work : men badly wounded in battle are often known to perform the most extraordinary feats some time after they might have been expected to be dead or unconscious, and sometimes do not feel the pain of their wounds for minutes after they are inflicted. Morale is usually vital to recovery from major surgery or injury). For some people, there is no doubt that visits to shrines and relics can have a similar curative effect.

 

Medicine would not work half as well if we did not have this trust, which is why this trust is in general a good thing, which I support and welcome.

The trouble is that such trust can be, and is, abused.

 

If a doctor tells you that he knows what is wrong with you, and that a certain pill or procedure will put it right, you will generally believe him. If that pill (for instance) has severe and unpleasant side-effects, you will endure them for the sake of the cure.

 

But what if the side-effects are the only real, that is to say objective, effects?

 

This may well be the case with ‘Antidepressants’. In The book I am here discussing (Cracked - Why Psychiatry is doing more harm than good’, Icon Books, ) the author, James Davies, says (on page 98) : ‘…we do know that anti-depressants have effects. Mostly they have placebo effects and side-effects. We also know that for many people they can have sedating or numbing effects’.

 

There are several implications of this important statement. Some of the responses to my first article on this have maintained (apparently from the point of view of patients taking these pills) that the drugs have done them good. Well, the research certainly shows that patients who take pills often feel better.

 

It’s very difficult to argue about this. Measuring subjective mood and mood changes is virtually impossible, in any way that could be called ‘proof’.

 

But it *also* shows that patients in blind trials who take dummy sugar pills get pretty much the same benefits as those who take the real thing (which, as we have already pointed out, is based on a wholly unproven theory about chemical imbalance in the brain, and has no proper scientific basis at all). This suggests that the curative effect is largely a matter of concern and trust, as described above.

 

This raises an interesting ethical puzzle. Would doctors be justified in knowingly prescribing dummy pills to such patients, if everyone in the industry would keep quiet about the truth? If the patients were cheered up by the pills, and no harm was done, then what would the objection be?

You’ll have to answer that one for yourself.

 

But outside the tests, it doesn’t arise. Because the real pills are the ones that are prescribed, and they are far from being inert. They contain potent chemicals that have known physical effects, including – in some cases -  a tendency to make the patient think seriously of taking his or her own life.

 

Mr Davies’s book does not address this side of the question, which is probably a good thing – because hardly anyone in the public, the media or politics is prepared to believe that anything so horrible could be happening, We will probably have to get a good deal further down the road of exposing the uselessness of ‘antidepressants’ before anyone will begin to consider the possibility that they may be harmful.

 

Like a number of relatives, doctors, psychiatrists, coroners and pathologists, I have looked into the worrying correlation between antidepressant use and suicide. I study inquest reports in search of it ( and found another instance this morning – usually I come across three or four a month in local and national outlets, and would no doubt see many more if I had a means of scanning every local newspaper or every inquest transcript. I often see several more in which the Coroner simply has not bothered to inquire but where the circumstances are highly suggestive).

 

I also know that the standard pro-drug riposte ‘Of course they would be suicidal. They’re depressed, for goodness’ sake!’ is invalid for several reasons,  not least the known and undisputed evidence of what is called ‘suicidal ideation’ among people who have taken some antidepressant drugs.

 

But he does say (after, rather bizarrely, claiming that caffeine alters our state of mind – where does he get his coffee?)(P.98-99) ‘These pills , in other words, don’t cure us – they simply change us. They can throw us temporarily into a foreign state of mind, into an altered version of who we are.

 

‘From this standpoint, antidepressant medications do not return us to health as medical pills aim to do- they rather manufacture a new state of mind, an often unnatural state’. These thoughts, by the way, form part of a highly disturbing discussion of the case of a bereaved man who ceases to be able to weep after taking medication.

 

Here we touch on the wider issue of the whole DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) which, as edition follows edition, has classified more and more normal human states of mind and being as ‘illnesses’, just at the time that the drug industry has begun to produce pills which claim to control or counter these complaints.

 

Thanks to my own interest in this subject, I was not shocked by Mr Davies’s revelations about how this book comes to be compiled. It is the shame of my trade of journalism that his detailed exposure of this process will come as a surprise to most readers.

 

I could easily reproduce most of the book here. But I will just mention a couple of other features which seemed to me to be especially interesting. You really, really should read it.

 

I won’t return here to the vast scandal of ‘ADHD’, a scandalous ‘diagnosis’ of a subjective complaint, followed by objective drugging,  which still, amazingly, has its defenders. But I will mention a Canadian study into that supposed 'disorder’ (p.41) which showed the following:  Instances of ‘ADHD’ among school-age children  rose,  in a steady diagonal on the graph, the younger the children were.

 

Let me put that another way: ‘the younger you are in the class, the more likely you’ll get the diagnosis’ .This truth was replicated in studies of the USA and Sweden (I know of none here). It is hard to see how, if this were a genuinely individual ‘diagnosis’ or a genuine ailment, that this could be so.  But it is.

 

As Mr Davies says ‘The relative immaturity of the younger children was. In effect, being wrongly recast as psychiatric pathology’.

 

I’ll say no more about ‘ADHD’ at this stage. I usually need to spend a week or two in the gym before taking on the ‘ADHD’ lobby, not because their case is any good,  but because there are a lot of them and it is exhausting countering the same bad argument over and over again.  Those who wish to have a go at me in defence of this appalling fantasy are directed here  http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/05/the-adhd-fantasy-posted-once-more.html . I shall be surprised if I have not anticipated any point they choose to make, and answered it fully.

 

The ‘ADHD’ problem is, however, a good example of the pact between lazy doctors, guilty people and greedy businessmen which has created the scandal of modern psychopharmacology.

 

I do not (as some claim) reject the concept of mental illness. Nor do I argue that nothing can be done about it. Nor do I dispute that in a few small areas, neurology has managed to penetrate some of the secrets of the brain. Modern brain surgery is responsible, highly-skilled and curative, and we owe a great debt to those with the skill and courage to undertake it.

 

I just think that the current dissemination of poorly-understood pills, backed by dubious research and cynical promotion, is wrong and needs to be exposed as such.

 

The difficulties of doing so are summarised above. Most people feel a natural suspicion of large companies whose gigantic profits depend on the continued sale of these pills. Many have learned to be a bit suspicious of doctors who need some way of sending unhappy patients home happier than they were when they came in, and who can receive cornucopias of goodies , free trips and the rest if they play along with those large companies.  But the greatest obstacle to a serious debate is the complicity with the doctors and the drug companies of many of the patients themselves. They have been persuaded to believe that they have been helped by medications which have certainly had an effect on them. But what is that effect?  

 

Let me here stress, once again, that patients worried about such medication should under no circumstances simply cease taking the pills they have been prescribed. Sudden withdrawal can produce severe effects. Cessation should only take place under qualified medical supervision.

 

It is virtually impossible for someone in my position to counter the claim that ‘It made me better’ or ‘You don’t understand that depression is a real illness’ or  ‘I rely on these pills for my happiness’. Statements of this kind cannot be tested, and so cannot be disputed.

 

These statements tend to be unconscious regurgitations of drug company advertisements (legal in the USA) or indirect publicity spread through compliant medics (the usual method in the United Kingdom), material, current now for many years.  I can only refer these patients to the objective information we do know - the studies done on the reported effect of these pills, on the suppression by the drug companies of research showing that they have no greater effect than sugar pills, on the significance of that suppression itself ; and on the emptiness of the endlessly repeated claim that depression’s cause is known, and that it is a ‘chemical imbalance’ in the brain.

 

And I can urge them to read this book. It is the gateway to wisdom and understanding on a major topic of our time. And, in a debate where billions of pounds are at stake,  I can readily declare that I have no interest in this subject, apart from a  desire to speak the truth.  

A Moving, Honest, Decent Book -The Ice Walk

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to meet one of the small band of Western journalists who were in Moscow when I was, an incredible 22 years ago now, just as the old Evil Empire was melting and cracking. Usually it’s as if we’d never been apart.

 

The experience of that place in those times has bound us very closely together, and given us something in common that allows us to finish each other’s thoughts, if not each other’s sentences. It doesn’t matter if we have completely different opinions and world views (as is often the case. I must be one of the few conservative-minded ex-Moscow correspondents, oddly enough. Most still treasure leftish ideals of one sort or another). We’re a band of brothers and sisters who know something most people can’t ever know,  which we can collectively remember, but which we can’t ever fully describe.

 

Some time ago I recommended here a book by Conor O’ Clery,  the Irish Times’s man in Moscow (and later in Washington , New York and Peking too) ‘Moscow, December 25 1991: The Last day of the Soviet Union’ , a beautifully-told and revelatory account of Boris Yeltsin’s elbowing aside of Mikhail Gorbachev and all that went with it.

 

Now I’d like to recommend a very different book by another survivor of those strange times. Helen Womack (who would never say this of herself) is a courageous and enterprising Yorkshirewoman who found her way to Moscow as an agency reporter in the mid-1980s, and – thanks to her open and adventurous nature – plunged far deeper into Soviet and Russian life than most of us ever did.

 

Her book ‘The Ice Walk - Surviving the Soviet Break-up and the new Russia’ (Melrose Books)  is particularly captivating because Helen, a very English person who comes from Filey, fell in love with and married a Russian, the delightful Costya Gagarin.  I got to know Costya because he is a very fine carpenter, and he put the cupboards and shelves in my second Moscow Flat , the official, less sinister one which I was allotted just before the 1991 putsch. He is living proof of the fact (much obscured by the Soviet system) that the words ‘Russian craftsmanship’ are not a contradiction in terms. After a while in Moscow you could be excused for thinking so. Almost nothing worked properly or fitted properly. All plumbing was invariably crooked. All wiring was overloaded. All pointing was squidgy and badly finished. And so on. One of the commonest ways to die was being burned to death in your flat when your Soviet-made TV exploded and set fire to the furniture.

 

But Costya’s carpentry was a joy to watch and a delight to see and use. It actually gave me hope that something would eventually arise out of all the wreckage, mess and sloth of the USSR. Helen’s story of how she met Costya (he was looking for vodka and instead found her, and her first words to him were ‘You leave me alone! I am a British correspondent!’, because she assumed she was some sort of KGB provocateur) is funny, touching and illuminating. By marrying this troublemaking, talented outsider, she found her way through a low door in the wall, deep into the real lives of actual Russians. She got to know what it was really like to live in the privacy-free communal flats that were still home to millions. She found out just how much despair and disappointment faced the nonconformist individual. She spent weekends and summer weeks in tottering country shacks surounded by cucumbers. She also saw the hard face of the KGB, a face not normally turned towards privileged foreigners. For by marrying a Russian she had put herself, if not at their mercy, within their reach. They thought they had real power over her and on one occasion they sought, very nastily to use it.

 

There’s much more in this charming, original memoir. Helen has collected a lot of her accounts of small but telling corners of Moscow life. They’re all full of a disarming honesty . I thought Helen’s Russian was pretty good, but she still had her problems, as she beautifully puts it, in 'judging the weight of words’ in that vast, expressive language.

 

Demonstrating her western car to friends in a Russian village, she offered to let an old peasant try out the joys of the heated driver’s seat. But what she actually said to him (as she realised too late) was ‘Anatoly Sergeyevich – would you like me to give you a hot a***?’ (For American readers ‘ a hot a**’ ). Of course, as was so often the case in Russia, any awkwardness was readily dissolved in laughter. I can’t say how many times that seemingly serious problems I had in that grim-seeming country were eventually ended by jokes and friendliness. The outward grimness concealed a wholly different world, but you didn’t find it unless you looked for it).

 

I could spend pages giving examples of little anecdotes which illuminate the real Russia more than a thousand political tracts (I was pleased to see that Helen’s interest in the place, like mine, had been much stimulated by Hedrick Smith’s extraordinary 1976 book ‘The Russians’ , one of the first attempts by a Western reporter to explain how real Russians actually lived, rather than waste space on tedious Kremlinology). If you’re at all interested, I do urge you to get hold of the whole thing, which I read almost continuously in two sittings, as one  would read a story. For a story is really what it is.

 

But there are also some moments of great seriousness, and I feel I ought to mention them. The first concerns her brave decision to accompany the retreating Soviet Army on its final convoy out of Afghanistan on the stage between Jalalabad and Kabul (she insisted on going, despite her own grave misgivings and the severe doubts of the officer in charge, who didn’t want women in or on his armoured cars for rather basic reasons she amusingly explains later).

 

Thanks to this, she was able to record from personal experience that the bouquets of flowers flung by Afghans at the departing Soviet soldiers were not all that they seemed. ‘Among the flowers’ she recalls ‘were other small gifts. ‘As we set off, I was hit in the mouth by a piece of dried camel dung’ . Now, that’s reporting.

 

And so is this, a sort of mirror image of the same event at the other end of the journey: ‘We journalists stood to the side and at quite a distance from the men, who were lined up with their vehicles. One young man on top of an armoured personnel carrier cheekily caught my eye and threw a bouquet of flowers in my direction. He must have been nearly the length of a cricket pitch away from me (Note for American readers : that’s 22 yards. One chain, 66 feet).

 

‘Normally I am clumsy, myopic and hopeless at sport but because of lack of sleep and the joy of still being alive, I was in such a state of flow that I stretched out my right arm and caught the bouquet in one hand, like an ace cricketer. The convoy erupted in applause. It was a moment with a poster-like quality – the returning soldier and the girl, a symbol of life and hope’.

 

Of course, it could all have been quite different. As we were all to discover in the final years of the Soviet empire, really bad things could happen in our sight, especially in those countries seeking to leave Moscow’s dominions. Helen describes being taken to see the aftermath of a massacre of Azerbaijanis by Armenians , a story that flew in the face of a lot of preconceptions most of us had about Armenians as eternal victims. It was horrible, and involved exposure to real fear, something her Azerbaijani escorts noticed and exploited ‘Are you scared? Now you know how our women feel’, one snarled at her.

 

She then writes : ‘I did my job, went home and unravelled’. I won’t quote what she says next because I feel you should be intimately involved in the book, and in her whole story,  to read such an honest account of pardonable, indeed laudable, human weakness and decency in which I learned something I had not previously known. All I’ll say is that not all journalists are war junkies. Not all can harden themselves to the bitter sights they sometimes have to see. I am very glad that this is so, or who would be left to cry when it was necessary to cry?

 

One last thing I feel I must quote, and then I must just leave it to you to find and read this engaging, modest but powerful little book.  Helen took a Russian friend, Vitaly,  abroad to Finland, his first trip outside Soviet territory. While there, he saw some of his newly rich countrymen flaunting their wealth.

 

‘They make me sick, my fellow countrymen’, hissed Vitaly.  ‘They come abroad and learn nothing. When will they understand that the difference between East and West is not about material things, but attitudes, ethics, relations between people?’.

 

When will they? When will we? Helen Womack has certainly done her best to communicate this important truth. Oh, and as for what the Ice Walk is, you’ll have to read the book. I never saw it, but I wish I had and I rather hope that one day I will, but in a Russia better and cleaner than it is now.  

Wondering how they 'ignored' a kidnapper in Ohio? Well we're ignoring something MUCH bigger

This is Peter Hitchens's column from the Mail on Sunday

How easy it is for bad things to go on under our noses. How many people in Cleveland, Ohio, must have wondered if something odd was happening in the house of Ariel Castro (pictured, right), but did nothing about it because, well, everyone else seemed to think it was OK?

And so three women were imprisoned there for ten years, a few yards from the normal world, but ignored by all who passed by.

Well, here’s a chance for you to prove that you would not have been one of the people who failed to see that anything was wrong.

For, smack in the middle of our society sits a great and dangerous scandal, which you can help to stop by protesting against it and by refusing to be taken in by it any longer.

At present you are paying for it (at least £250 million a year) out of your taxes. Somebody you know, perhaps a close neighbour or a relative, may be the victim of it.

It involves the needless drugging of hundreds of thousands of healthy people, many of them children. It also involves one of the greatest confidence tricks ever attempted, and some of the most shocking greed.

It is exposed this week in a new book that should be read by every doctor, and also by everyone in politics and the media, not to mention any concerned citizen.

The book, Cracked – Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good, by James Davies, published by Icon, is calmly and clearly written in straightforward layman’s English. The author has serious academic qualifications which entitle him to take a view on the subject.

He has spoken to a wide selection of experts.

And he shows that most of what we believe about modern mental health medicine is wrong.
I plan to put a much longer review on my blog (address at the top of this page), but in the end the book’s the thing. You will gasp with amazement at the sheer nerve of the medical profession, as you turn its pages. Here is what it shows:

There is no objective scientific diagnosis (and so no objective treatment) for almost all so-called mental illnesses.

They are defined every few years by a committee, which once described homosexuality as a sickness (and now doesn’t).

It is currently seriously considering creating an illness called ‘Complicated Grief Disorder’, for those who grieve over a bereavement for more than six months.

There is no scientific proof, repeat, none at all, repeat none whatever, for the idea (still believed by millions) that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, though this is the whole basis for most antidepressant prescriptions.

Drug companies control the research into their own products. They fail to publish results that suggest their pills don’t work. They doctor results to make their pills look better than they are.

In most cases, there is no significant difference in effect on depression between antidepressant pills and dummy sugar tablets. But the pills do have potent side effects (often these are most radical when people stop taking them, which is why they should only be given up under medical supervision).

Government regulation of this behaviour is feeble.

Many of the medical experts who recommend these pills, in the media and to other doctors, receive large fees from the drug companies, without disclosing this. Many medical journals gain substantial income from large orders for reprints, which come from the drug companies.

The profits from this industry are colossal.

Doctors who fail to toe the line lose valuable consultancy work, and in one case a leading psychiatrist had the offer of a major professorship withdrawn after he delivered a lecture criticising antidepressants.

There it is, going on near you, a grave disgrace that you can help to end. Will you? Or will you walk on by?

What a pity that Helen Mirren backed away from her original fury at a bunch of street drummers. Ms Mirren has been showing some signs of good sense lately, and it was encouraging to see a person with real influence turning with wrath against the selfish makers of noise.

It amazes me that there isn’t more violence caused by the arrogance of the noisy. If people tried to force their tastes in food and drink on us, we’d rebel. If they marched into our homes and told us what colour to paint our walls, we’d say get knotted.

But it’s perfectly all right to force your taste in music (or noise, as I call it) on people as much as a mile away, in the middle of the night. Why?

Seeing sense - far too late

Now they tell us. The procession of retired Tory panjandrums who now say we would be better off out of the European Union grows by the day. Even Margaret Thatcher has spoken from beyond the grave, thanks to her biographer Charles Moore.

Well, good. But anyone who looks into the matter with any care quickly discovers that the disadvantages of EU membership – loss of fisheries, loss of independence, incessant regulation, vast net contributions – are hard, measurable and real.

The single alleged advantage – ‘influence’ – is difficult to discover and no substitute for power over your own destiny. The alleged dangers (lost jobs, lost trade, damage to the City) are transparently silly scare stories that wouldn’t fool a four-year-old.

So why wouldn’t these magnificos speak out when it mattered? Why is it left to people like me to tell the truth and be derided for it as marginal maniacs?

In Lady Thatcher’s case it is said to be because ‘it would have allowed her opponents to drive her to the fringes of public life’. Well, so much for her fabled resolve if so. She had better be renamed the  Plasticine Lady.

If Britain was decadent before, is it now degenerate? When Kate Moss was pictured with white powder, allegedly cocaine, eight years ago, the fashion industry at least feigned shock.

But when Cara Delevingne was seen trying to hide a plastic envelope of white powder, nothing happened.

Meanwhile, on Radio 4, what are they having for breakfast? John Humphrys chortled through a Today programme ‘debate’ as two think-tank spokesmen both advocated decriminalising drugs.

I’m sure they were all quite sober. But isn’t the BBC supposed to be impartial? Aren’t lives hideously damaged by illegal drugs? Don’t many people still want them banned? Yet the giggly item gave no space to their views. Why should we pay a licence fee to be treated like this?

A frightening silence

It rather looks as if it’s the Syrian rebels, the ones Mr Slippery and William Hague want us to help, who have been using chemical weapons. The UN’s Carla del Ponte isn’t sure, but she is plainly very suspicious.

This inconvenient news, funnily enough, was buried or ignored by all the media who have been trying to get us into this war.

Wondering how they 'ignored a kidnapper in Ohio? Well we're ignoring something MUCH bigger

This is Peter Hitchens' column from the Mail on Sunday

How easy it is for bad things to go on under our noses. How many people in Cleveland, Ohio, must have wondered if something odd was happening in the house of Ariel Castro (pictured, right), but did nothing about it because, well, everyone else seemed to think it was OK?

And so three women were imprisoned there for ten years, a few yards from the normal world, but ignored by all who passed by.

Well, here’s a chance for you to prove that you would not have been one of the people who failed to see that anything was wrong.

For, smack in the middle of our society sits a great and dangerous scandal, which you can help to stop by protesting against it and by refusing to be taken in by it any longer.

At present you are paying for it (at least £250 million a year) out of your taxes. Somebody you know, perhaps a close neighbour or a relative, may be the victim of it.

It involves the needless drugging of hundreds of thousands of healthy people, many of them children. It also involves one of the greatest confidence tricks ever attempted, and some of the most shocking greed.

It is exposed this week in a new book that should be read by every doctor, and also by everyone in politics and the media, not to mention any concerned citizen.

The book, Cracked – Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good, by James Davies, published by Icon, is calmly and clearly written in straightforward layman’s English. The author has serious academic qualifications which entitle him to take a view on the subject.

He has spoken to a wide selection of experts.

And he shows that most of what we believe about modern mental health medicine is wrong.
I plan to put a much longer review on my blog (address at the top of this page), but in the end the book’s the thing. You will gasp with amazement at the sheer nerve of the medical profession, as you turn its pages. Here is what it shows:

There is no objective scientific diagnosis (and so no objective treatment) for almost all so-called mental illnesses.

They are defined every few years by a committee, which once described homosexuality as a sickness (and now doesn’t).

It is currently seriously considering creating an illness called ‘Complicated Grief Disorder’, for those who grieve over a bereavement for more than six months.

There is no scientific proof, repeat, none at all, repeat none whatever, for the idea (still believed by millions) that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, though this is the whole basis for most antidepressant prescriptions.

Drug companies control the research into their own products. They fail to publish results that suggest their pills don’t work. They doctor results to make their pills look better than they are.

In most cases, there is no significant difference in effect on depression between antidepressant pills and dummy sugar tablets. But the pills do have potent side effects (often these are most radical when people stop taking them, which is why they should only be given up under medical supervision).

Government regulation of this behaviour is feeble.

Many of the medical experts who recommend these pills, in the media and to other doctors, receive large fees from the drug companies, without disclosing this. Many medical journals gain substantial income from large orders for reprints, which come from the drug companies.

The profits from this industry are colossal.

Doctors who fail to toe the line lose valuable consultancy work, and in one case a leading psychiatrist had the offer of a major professorship withdrawn after he delivered a lecture criticising antidepressants.

There it is, going on near you, a grave disgrace that you can help to end. Will you? Or will you walk on by?

What a pity that Helen Mirren backed away from her original fury at a bunch of street drummers. Ms Mirren has been showing some signs of good sense lately, and it was encouraging to see a person with real influence turning with wrath against the selfish makers of noise.

It amazes me that there isn’t more violence caused by the arrogance of the noisy. If people tried to force their tastes in food and drink on us, we’d rebel. If they marched into our homes and told us what colour to paint our walls, we’d say get knotted.

But it’s perfectly all right to force your taste in music (or noise, as I call it) on people as much as a mile away, in the middle of the night. Why?

Seeing sense - far too late

Now they tell us. The procession of retired Tory panjandrums who now say we would be better off out of the European Union grows by the day. Even Margaret Thatcher has spoken from beyond the grave, thanks to her biographer Charles Moore.

Well, good. But anyone who looks into the matter with any care quickly discovers that the disadvantages of EU membership – loss of fisheries, loss of independence, incessant regulation, vast net contributions – are hard, measurable and real.

The single alleged advantage – ‘influence’ – is difficult to discover and no substitute for power over your own destiny. The alleged dangers (lost jobs, lost trade, damage to the City) are transparently silly scare stories that wouldn’t fool a four-year-old.

So why wouldn’t these magnificos speak out when it mattered? Why is it left to people like me to tell the truth and be derided for it as marginal maniacs?

In Lady Thatcher’s case it is said to be because ‘it would have allowed her opponents to drive her to the fringes of public life’. Well, so much for her fabled resolve if so. She had better be renamed the  Plasticine Lady.

If Britain was decadent before, is it now degenerate? When Kate Moss was pictured with white powder, allegedly cocaine, eight years ago, the fashion industry at least feigned shock.

But when Cara Delevingne was seen trying to hide a plastic envelope of white powder, nothing happened.

Meanwhile, on Radio 4, what are they having for breakfast? John Humphrys chortled through a Today programme ‘debate’ as two think-tank spokesmen both advocated decriminalising drugs.

I’m sure they were all quite sober. But isn’t the BBC supposed to be impartial? Aren’t lives hideously damaged by illegal drugs? Don’t many people still want them banned? Yet the giggly item gave no space to their views. Why should we pay a licence fee to be treated like this?

A frightening silence

It rather looks as if it’s the Syrian rebels, the ones Mr Slippery and William Hague want us to help, who have been using chemical weapons. The UN’s Carla del Ponte isn’t sure, but she is plainly very suspicious.

This inconvenient news, funnily enough, was buried or ignored by all the media who have been trying to get us into this war.