Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 274

Peter Hitchens interviewed on Cannabis Legalisation

I think this is probably the last of the interviews I gave to Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho, during my February visit there. Here we discuss the implications and moral difficulties of cannabis (marijuana) legalisation.

http://www.canonwired.com/featured/le...

 

Once again, sorry about the appalling cold and the croaky voice.

 

 

May Day Reflections on Moscow, Useless Tories and UKIP

This being May Day, my thoughts turn to the curious celebration that I witnessed there in Moscow’s Red Square in 1991, as a privileged Western reporter with a ticket for the enclosure just next to Lenin’s tomb (I still have that ticket, along with the matching pass that got me into the previous November’s Revolution Day parade, which turned out to be the last ever celebration of Lenin and Trotsky's 1917 putsch).  Unlike the November event - a stern, menacing, militaristic display - May Day was an occasion of enforced jollity, compulsory balloons, collectivist simpering and general drivel. It was what I had in mind when I compared it to the Olympic opening ceremony in a column last year.  

 

As keen readers will know, it was that comparison that embroiled me in a long struggle with the BBC, now finished though not really concluded. My contention, that the BBC has an institutional bias against people of my opinions, still seems to me to be under examination. I’ll let you know.

 

But there’s an underlying point here, too. What I wrote meant more to me than it meant to most readers, because of my direct and privileged experience. In this case, that experience was one of the most powerful things that ever happened to me (the others are more personal and private, and I won’t discuss them here, with the exception of a bad road accident I had through my own fault in 1969, which introduced me simultaneously to actual physical terror for my own life, and to blazing  intense pain just short of blackout), my appointment and accreditation as Moscow Correspondent of a national newspaper.

 

I sometimes wonder if I should try harder to convey what a transforming thing this was. With a few months’ notice, I undertook an intense course in the Russian language which, thanks to a superb teacher, left me able to bluster in that difficult tongue to this day, but not to understand most of what Russians said to me, nor to be able to read the language in books or newspapers.

 

Next, I had to find, in that vast and clangourous city, an office and a place to live for my family, who were to join me as soon as possible. Thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ the place was full of foreign journalists seeking the same thing, Official accommodation had long ago been allocated.  I arrived by train on a lovely June day at the White Russia railway station, to be met by a group of Russian friends and acquaintances who did what they could ( and it was a lot) to help, but (after I had spent enough time in a costly hotel and then exhausted the hospitality of one other British journalist (bless her) who lent me her flat while she was on holiday)  I spent my first few weeks moving from one temporary letting or lodging to another, including one particularly squalid one in a rough eastern district of Moscow.

 

Each time I moved, I had to shift my single large suitcase, my fax machine, my do-it-yourself telephone engineer’s kit and, after the first week, my gigantic Cyrillic typewriter , essential for official letters. This was done by flagging down a passing car and offering the driver quantities of western cigarettes,  before setting off to the next place. My one advantage was that I had a copy of the CIA map of Moscow, the only accurate one in existence as it had been compiled form satellite pictures and was designed for easy use by spies (Cinemas were very well-marked, presumably because, being dark and possessing many entrances, they were ideal spots for shadowy rendezvous)… Don’t ask me how I got it.

 

But I have no doubt that my possession of this encouraged the KGB to believe that I was a spy myself. Certainly, they had planted an attractive English-speaking woman on the train I took from Ostend to Moscow (I had to notify my exact travel plans to the Soviet Foreign Ministry before setting out), who talked me out of a fix I was in Soviet customs at Brest-Litovsk, and soon afterwards offered to be my fixer and translator at an amazingly modest fee. I had no illusions about what was going on, but, as I wasn’t a spy, I was happy to accept the help for as long as it lasted.  She was very efficient, but handicapped by the fact that she was a true believer in the Soviet system and so wouldn’t bribe anyone, or help me do so, which meant that about 80% of the things I wanted to do weren’t possible. As it happened, it ended abruptly a few months later, presumably at the point they decided finally that I was as hopeless as I appeared to be, and not just putting it on.

 

In the midst of all this I had to work, delivering news stories pretty much daily, and a weekly column on the details of Soviet life. It was one of the most intense periods of learning since I first went to boarding school(and I have always said that, had I not been at boarding school, I could never have coped with the homesickness, the repeated minor blows and setbacks, the solitude and the insecurity).

 

I have never forgotten a brief visit to my Oxford home, half-way through this process, and being asked for directions by an American tourist . As usual in Oxford, my directions were pretty good, based as they are on decades of intimate knowledge, and the tourist asked me ‘Do you live here, then?’. I had to swallow hard and say ‘No, I live in Moscow, as it happens’. And – this may give some indication of the intensity of being an expatriate – I felt like a traitor as I said it.  Years later, when I finally returned home after two stints abroad, and had great difficulty in returning to normal life from the weightless, detached existence of the expatriate I remembered this moment very clearly. There is a kind of violence and loss in expatriating, from which you never completely recover.

 

I was already becoming a different person, a transient ghost in my own home town (where my house would shortly be rented to strangers and so closed to me, another strange experience) . By my own choice ( and I did not yet know if it was a crazy choice, as the whole mission might yet be an utter failure) I was living a  weightless existence as an interloper in someone else’s country, and so turning into an outsider in my own. I cannot tell you how quickly you lose touch with the familiar when you are living abroad - especially when you have decided – as I did – to do it properly, and to come back only seldom, when absolutely necessary.

 

Moscow was now my home. By a tremendous stroke of good fortune I had by then found a place to live which I still regard as miraculous – a lovely apartment built in the Stalin era for a privileged member of the Communist elite. Here I was truly inside the Belly of the Beast. To live there was an education in itself. I had twelve-foot ceilings, oak parquet floors, chandeliers, tall windows looking out across a delicious curve in the Moscow river on one side, a serene and tranquil study with a view of the whole lovely city – from the University’s Stalin-gothic pinnacles on the Sparrow Hills , down to the golden dome of Ivan the Great’s Bell Tower in the Kremlin - on the other. On the far side of the clean, well-kept courtyard lived the heirs of Leonid Brezhnev, rumoured to occupy a whole floor. Near them, Yuri Andropov (his tenancy commemorated by a plaque near the entrance)  had maintained a Moscow apartment for the days he had no time to get to his country house out in the woods where the elite had their true homes.

 

So, in a few short months I had learned a new language, been knowingly suborned by a spy, experienced the underside of one of the world’s greatest cities, until recently largely closed to foreigners, learned how to bribe officials, uprooted myself from the land of my upbringing and education (though not, oddly enough, of my birth) and discovered the absolute falsehood of the USSR’s claims to be an equal society, by being lapped in greater and more exclusive privilege than I have ever known, before or since.  

 

This sort of thing has many effects (there’s much more I could tell, but no time to tell it) but one of the main ones is that it sets your mind free to think for itself in a way that 50 years of living in the same place will not usually do.

 

But how do I communicate this intensified and enhanced understanding to others, who have not been so blessed? Last night I was in York , haranguing a mainly student audience on the need to destroy the Conservative Party (the York student Tories, to their credit,  kindly organised this event, and were extremely hospitable to me).

 

One of the things I need to explain is that socialists and communists have not stopped thinking. They have not ignored the failures of the 1917 revolution, nor the dead end of Attlee’s nationalisation programme. They have regrouped, re-examined the battlefield, turned to other things. The fact that your opponent is no longer trying to nationalise industry, and the fact that the  old Bolshevik-influenced Communist Parties are one with Nineveh and Tyre, does not mean that the revolutionaries have gone away.

 

It just means that, following Antonio Gramsci or Herbert Marcuse ( or Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland) they have learned new ways to the old goal of the utopian society. The union barons are a spent force, a stage army of more use to Tory propagandists than to their own side. The battle has shifted into sex, marriage, morality, comedy, drugs, rock and roll, the abolition of personal responsibility, the spread of egalitarian and diversity dogma in schools, the civil service, the law, universities, publishing,  broadcasting and the NHS,  the anti-Christian frenzy, and the attack on national sovereignty.

 

The ‘Internationale’, old anthem of Communism, is now just a sentimental recognition of a revolutionary youth. The real anthem of the new revolution is John Lennon’s ghastly ‘Imagine’ , a version of which I heard this morning leaking out of the loudspeakers in my York hotel, part of the background noise of our age, sneaking into our minds as an ear-worm.

 

And because the Tories barely understood Bolshevism or Fabianism, and have never even begun to grasp the meaning of Gramsci,. Marcuse, Lennon or Jenkins, they are not fit for the fight, and – in some ways worst of all – have mistaken Margaret Thatcher’s Hayekian liberalism for a revival of their beaten cause.

 

In fact, it was another grave defeat for conservatism – which is actually a happy and free people’s reasonable defence of those things which make them happy – continuity, inheritance,  modest but secure private property, limited government, national independence , a life ordered by conscience rather than a police force, and come to that beauty of landscape and architecture. That is why unhappy countries tend not to have much in the way of political conservatism.

 

My Tory opponent at the York meeting could do little more than regurgitate Central office handouts about deficit reduction (pah!) , mingled with embarrassing and historically inaccurate Thatcherolatry  . What was interesting and amusing was that the more competent defence of the Tories was made by a spokesman for the York Labour Party, who repeatedly made it plain that he hoped they would survive, as they were a ‘party with which he could do business’. Well, exactly.  Readers of ‘The Cameron Delusion’ will have noticed a similar view expressed by the left-wing pollster Peter Kellner, which I quote there.

 

 Oh, and if any of you really care what I think about Thursday’s election, I urge you above all not to vote Conservative and, if you must vote at all (and why should you? You don’t buy goods you don’t want. Why vote for parties you don’t like and who don’t like you?) , to vote for UKIP, which is a useful weapon against the Tories – even if it has feet of clay and has no long-term future.

 

 

 

Hang it! Here we go again

One or two quick responses. I’m sorry to say that (of all the many things that I have discussed this weekend - terror, Islam,  Ireland, Syria, the BBC, crime and the fiddling of official statistics) the death penalty has come up again as a major concern, and my attempts to refer readers to the index haven’t worked because (as it seems to me) they won’t do their homework. Look under 'Capital Punishment' and 'Death Penalty', and you will find that all this has been gone over many times before.

 

Oh well, if I must : I favour hanging because of its extreme swiftness when efficiently carried out, combined with its huge moral force.  There are many arguments for the death penalty beginning with the placing a special value on human life, moving on to deterrence.  Beneath all those arguments lies a religious question (this is the case with most major issues of our time) . If man has an immortal soul,  the death penalty, by giving him the chance of real repentance before death, is far preferable to years rotting in a cell, during which ( as Myra Hindley plainly did) he forgets what it was that he did, and starts campaigning for his release.   

 

If man has no soul, and this is the only life we have, and there is no eternity nor any divine justice, then the only arguments for the death penalty are utilitarian ones. In an age of unbelief, I tend to concentrate on the utilitarian ones. But even those lead me to the view that the act of execution, while not being actively cruel or involving mental or physical torture, should be frightening and violent, rather than pseudo-medical.  I would be cowardly if I did not say this. I do not enjoy saying it, or thinking it. But those who wish to have anything to do with standing between the populace and evil must sometimes face directly the unpleasant duties that may fall on them. The main reason for the abolition of the death penalty is the squeamishness of politicians, who enjoy office but do not like all the duties which power loads on to their (often rather narrow) shoulders. Far easier to them to leave the matter to some trembling constable with a gun in a dark street, who can be disavowed if it all goes wrong later.

 

The use of medical-seeming methods also tends to support the idea that crime is a disease rather than a wilful act of conscious evil.  I formed this view when I witnessed an execution by lethal injection.

 

It is my belief that the career of Albert Pierrepoint (and yes, yes, I know of his late change of mind on the validity of capital punishment, and don’t think it has any weight in the general matter. Who would not sicken after so much horror?) shows that hanging, competently done, is both swift and morally powerful, even when done behind high walls. Having witnessed the main alternative, electrocution, I am haunted by the fact that we do not really know what the condemned man suffers. He is gagged and masked at the moment of death, and electricity (as various people who have had major shocks or been struck by lightning can attest) is an unpredictable force. The swift breaking of the neck and spinal cord is, I think, demonstrably more humane.  Sorry, but you asked.

 

One correspondent, so confident in his rightness that he reveals himself to be called ‘Baz’, combines two subjects in a comment on my long article about the strange disappearance of the single Measles jab. I have complained that none of the pro-state, pro-authority contributors here have actually dealt with this article, and he is no exception.

 

He says :

 (my answers are interleaved with his comment marked **)

’The single measles vaccine was a niche product; your quotes from the manufacturer support this. It was used in cases where the patient could not be given MMR- an allergy to one of the other components for instance.’

 

**That may well be so, though I didn’t know that you could tell in advance that someone had an allergy to the Mumps vaccine or the Rubella vaccine. How and when is this tested for? Does he have references which support this explanation? Anyway, if it is so, wouldn’t it have made sense to continue to make it available, as it was available for the first ten years of the MMR’s availability?

He continues :’There wasn't a huge supply in the UK’,

 

**No, but the company continued to supply it in continental countries, and supplies can be increased if needed. Andrew Wakefield, as the article points out, warned the authorities well in advance that publication of his article might increase demand for the single jab.

 

He continues ‘…so when Wakefield's fraudulent research…’ 

 

**I really do wish this sort of language could be kept out of this. can Mr ‘Baz’ prove that Andrew Wakefield set out to practise a deliberate fraud? If not, use of such terms is quite illegitimate. Can't we just accept that those involved made a well-intentioned mistake, rather than subjecting them to a sort of show-trial for sabotage and wrecking railroads?

 

Mr ‘Baz’  resumes  ‘… prompted the MMR panic, it is unsurprising that stock ran low rather quickly.’

 

*** See above. They were warned. Did he read the article properly?

‘Baz’ again: ‘As for why the company chose to stop supplying the single vaccine- individual vaccines are less effective; the patient is unprotected for longer. It would be unethical to offer substandard care.’

 

**Here he just regurgitates government propaganda. This does not deal with the point that thousands of parents *did* refuse to allow their children to be given the MMR. And they *would* have given their children the single jab, had it been available. Mr ‘Baz’, like the rest of his hindsight-inflated, triumphalist bunch of government patsies, will not answer the question *‘ But surely a single vaccine, all its disadvantages accepted, would have been better than no vaccine?’*  They never answer it because they have no answer to it. But this does not cause them to think. They know they are right. So it causes them to close their minds to the question instead.

 

Mr ‘Baz’ again: ‘The company possibly also thought that providing single vaccines would encourage the panic and suggest that MMR was unsafe.’

 

**Once again, this suggests that he has not read the article properly. *The single vaccine was already available*. No decision needed to be taken to continue making it available, merely a quiet and unannounced decision to step up supplies of it to GPs to meet demand. Instead, though nobody would admit to having taken such a decision, the vaccine was withdrawn *precisely at the moment when demand for it was greatest*.

 

Mr ‘Baz’ writes : ‘ A company will always sacrifice a niche product to protect a bigger one.’

 

**Well, in that case, why did it wait ten years to do so, and do so just at the time when demand for this niche product was at its highest? If Mr ‘Baz’ wishes to lecture us on business principles, perhaps he can explain which business principle drives a company to stop making and selling a product exactly when demand for it is rising.

 

Finally, there’s this little jibe, once again, not as clever as he thinks it is :First quoting me “I note that not one, not one, not one of the pro-state contributors and government propaganda regurgitators here has yet addressed the substantive point of the 4,400 words above.", he says ‘ It's always entertaining to be patronised on the evils of trusting government by a man who supports the death penalty.’

 

As he well knows, or would if he read what I write with any care, I support the death penalty only where strong independent juries exist, together with the presumption of innocence,  and only where there are open courts and  is a free press. This is precisely because I do *not* trust the government with such matters.

 

Read before you write, Mr ‘Baz’.

 

      

'Here Dead we lie' - the First World War revisited

I have spent much of the past few weeks living half in the present day and half in the terrible four years from 1914 to 1918. I spent many evenings watching (in most cases for the first time) the BBC’s majestic 1964 series ‘The Great War’, all 26 episodes of it.  I missed it when it was first shown, though even then, aged 12, I had begun to grasp that 1914 was the most significant moment of modern history . As one reviewer of the series said at the time it was ’the most important historical event since the fall of the Roman Empire’.  

 

In one way, you might say that it fulfilled all the worst aims of the French revolution (the triumph of the general will, the destruction of monarchy and aristocratic government, the binding of patriotism to political nationalism, the primacy of state over family and of egalitarianism over religion; the destruction of the Church and of Christian belief) ; It made the Russian revolution possible, elevated Hitler from insignificance to great power,  and handed global dominance to the USA for 100 years.  It also more or less created the disastrous idea of national self-determination for all peoples which – because it is practically impossible – became the pretext for all sorts of horrors far worse than the benevolent imperialism it so often replaced.

 

We did not have BBC2 at home (it wasn’t transmitted in much of the country outside London, and even where it was, sets capable of receiving 625-line transmissions were rare and costly) , and I was not allowed to watch TV at boarding school, so –even when it was eventually repeated on fuzzy old 405-line BBC1 I can’t have seen more than a dozen episodes. It always rankled with me that I missed it at the time. But to watch it as if it were new was a very odd experience . This was made more intense by my decision finally to re-read Robert Grave’s ‘Goodbye to All That’, which I hadn’t opened since about 1967, but which has burned large parts of itself permanently on my memory. I was amazed by how much I accurately remembered. (The series, by the way, is available as a boxed set, - got mine second hand - and some of you may have collected the individual DVDs when the Daily Mail was giving them away a few years ago).

 

It was disturbing because it was simultaneously very modern and very old. Its style and editing were very advanced for the time, and have to some extent been copied by every documentary historical TV series made ever since.

 

But it is also intimately connected with that is now the unattainable past. All of the interviewees, at the time in their early seventies, still spry and alert, are no longer with us. But then they were still in their full vigour. I was brushing past such people in buses and markets, mostly without realising how interesting they were, though I will say for myself that as a child I was given to questioning old people about the past, when I could.  Some of them taught me in school. They had actually been on the great retreat on the Marne in 1914, or at the Somme. They had been among those crowds described by Philip Larkin in ‘MCMIV’. It’s a sobering measure of how old I am that 50 years have passed since these forceful, articulate ghosts (astonishingly unidentified in almost all cases) gave their accounts. And when they were recorded, the events of which they spoke were 50 years in the past – almost exactly as far from me as the Great Train Robbery and the October 1964 general election – both of which I remember very clearly, are from me.  

 

The programmes are very British in a way now impossible. Measures are in yards and miles ( except where it is necessary to refer to foreign kilometres, as in the kilometre posts on the road to Paris, showing how far the Anglo-French armies had retreated). The narration, by Sir Michael Redgrave, and written by  distinguished historians, uses an educated and literate English of the sort that would now get you into trouble in a lot of places.

 

As so often with documentary film if you watch it all at once, episode after episode, you spot quite a lot of nifty repetition, and there’s far too much artillery, though you can see why. But there’s another thing – the faces. Of course, the mild, contented faces of the British young men , the New Army marching, singing to their deaths in 1916, are intolerably moving. The British people would never look, or feel or behave like this again.  I am sure that we are less free because the best men went to their deaths and left no sons behind of the same quality. Those who would have stood up against the great siege of petty bullying that has enveloped us since 1914 are all dead and left no heirs.

 

But this is nothing compared to the film of the Imperial Russian army marching to war ( and to its grave) , so many magnificent, upright, healthy countrymen, totally unlike the stunted, downtrodden Soviet Man which was what was left after world war,  civil war, famine, purge and second world war.   To a greater or lesser extent this was true of all the main belligerents apart from the USA. But Russia’s woe was undoubtedly by far the worst, and I think this film, without even meaning to, shows it.

 

It is , I am glad to say, full of references to the Eastern Front so often forgotten in our discussions of this terrible event, though it is unforgiveably sketchy about the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, that neglected cataclysm which still shapes Europe’s destiny today.   It describes the Dardanelles disaster, and the horrors of the Mesopotamia campaign, which I mentioned here the other day. The archive film even if sometimes repeated, is astonishing in its range and originality. There is no doubt,  from this account,  that a huge amount of the suffering and death really were the result of incompetence and folly.

 

I won’t enter here into controversies about its treatment of  the war. My view remains that Germany deliberately started it, that Britain had no business entering it, that it is this – its pointlessness and worse than pointlessness from our point of view – that makes the dreadful sacrifice of so many young men so unforgiveable. After all, our great and costly efforts did not prevent German domination of Europe, which we now have anyway, on far, far worse terms than we could have had the same thing if France had been beaten in a swift war in 1914. I am not sure what France has gained, either,  from pretending that it was militarily matched with Germany after 1870, when it wasn’t. Nor can I see what Belgium gained form  holding up the German armies at liege for those crucial days at the start of the war (which was much more of a war of motion, at the beginning, than I had really understood).

 

As for the blockade of Germany, I quail at the thought of what we did. And as for inviting the USA into our quarrel, and imagining that she would not exact a stern price for her help, what were we thinking of? Lord Lansdowne, who increasingly seems to me to have been the most intelligent statesman of the age, gets a decent amount of prominence for his (entirely justified) doubts, though his great ignored letter urging a compromise peace before it was too late is not mentioned.

 

There is astonishing film of naval warfare including the German dreadnought Goeben, given to the Turks by the Kaiser (its German commander was given flag rank in the Turkish navy) and sent to bombard lovely Sevastopol , one of my favourite cities (this ship survived into the 1960s, and was nearly preserved, the last of the Dreadnoughts); the battle of Jutland, portrayed here as a more or less complete defeat of the Royal Navy by the Germans, in military terms; was it?  Perhaps it was, though it was not enough to give the German Navy the freedom of the seas. There’s amazing film of a huge German submarine built to carry cargo through the blockade; and of the sinking of the Austro-Hungarian battleship ‘Szent Istvan’ (it means ‘Saint Stephen’) , the great and powerful monster, holed by an Italian torpedo, sinking at first slowly and then with a terrible, violent speed as its ship’s company try to save themselves. Happily, many did, But as always not all. To watch it now, when all involved are long dead, is nearly as distressing as it would have been at the time. It is never pleasant to watch the death of any ship, even an enemy. Defeat for this navy was total . Losing the war meant losing its coastline, and utterly ceasing to exist (though the Hungarian Admiral Horthy found other things to do).

 

And then there is the end, with Germany losing all, as must happen in the wars of democracy – and we know how that story finished.  The final episode quotes an A.E.Housman verse which is so severe that it is not often mentioned. It comes after Charles de Gaulle is quoted as saying that France above all had lost all her young men, men she could ill afford to lose.

 

Housman wrote : ‘Here dead we lie because we did not choose to shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose. But young men think it is, and we were young’.

 

I have never,  since I first heard these lines, been able to remain composed after reading them, even silently in my head.

 

I’ll end here, and return in a later posting to Robert Graves’s book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Measles Jab Mystery - a Historical Note

This is a footnote to the MMR controversy, but in my view an important one. Readers will know that I think the current outbreak of measles would be much smaller (and might even have been avoided) had the NHS continued to provide single measles injections after 1998.

 

This is a simple matter of human nature. Whatever anyone thinks about Andrew Wakefield’s paper suggesting a link between the MMR and autism, now discredited (and I think nothing will be gained by going over that again here), there was widespread concern among parents about the MMR.  High-minded persons may think those parents were foolish. They may still be angry at the Wakefield press conference, and angry at journalists for covering it. I have responded to those opinions as best I can, and feel I have said all I reasonably could. The articles are indexed under ‘MMR Vaccine’.

 

But I still think that a government which served the people would have recognised that parental concern for a child is one of the strongest emotions there is, and would have been sympathetic to it, rather than trying to bully and shout those parents into doing what they were told. In fact the most basic knowledge of human nature seems to me  to suggest that bullying and shouting were likely to make parents *less* willing to let their children have the triple vaccine.

 

Yes, there are costs and technical issues. The effective Jerryl Lyn mumps vaccine, for instance, has never been offered on its own in this country ( a critic of mine who has suggested that I in some way believed that this was so is referred to my posting here, http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/04/some-reflections-on-measles-and-the-mmr-.html

in which I quote my 2001 article, which itself quotes Dr Jayne Donegan as follows : “And she asks: 'Why is it safer to give them together?' It is true, she says, that the old Berna-Rubini single mumps vaccine had a poor record. But there is no reason why the new and effective Jerryl Lyn mumps immunisation could not be given on its own. However, you cannot readily get it here except as part of the MMR.”

 

I didn’t mention the issue of a single Rubella vaccine. I see no technical barrier to the issue of such a vaccine, and since the greatest possible coverage is the best way of preventing Rubella, and the very severe effects it can have on unborn babies if their mothers contract it, there is – once again – a strong argument for providing it to concerned parents rather than giving them the choice of ‘MMR or nothing’ which in many cases did lead to them choosing ‘nothing’.

 

My experience of talking to such worried parents at the time, and many did contact me, was that they were very far from being ignorant, feckless or irresponsible.  My own personal direct experience is that parents of small children are extremely diligent and conscientious about medical appointments (and there are many), immunisations and the rest of the almost incessant duties which fall upon them at this stage in their lives. I am greatly irritated by the assumption that such parents are somehow too stupid and disorganised to manage three vaccinations rather than one, or six rather than two (the second MMR, by the way, is not as is commonly believed,  a ‘booster’, but an insurance shot, in case the first one hasn’t worked).  I do wonder whether this complaint doesn’t have more to do with the convenience of doctors and the pharmaceutical companies than with the supposed incompetence and unreliability of parents. Asked to choose between a young mother and the NHS in the matter of efficiency, reliability and diligence, I  know which I’d pick.

 

That dealt with, I get to the point here. This the mystery of what happened to the single measles vaccination (first introduced in 1968) , which –at the time of the Wakefield controversy – had continued to exist alongside the MMR (first introduced in 1988) for ten years. It was still being manufactured by Pasteur Merieux, who also supplied it to other European countries. Wakefield himself said at the time ( see below)  that he had warned the authorities, before publishing his ‘Lancet’ paper, that demand for the single vaccine might increase.

 

By the way, The Daily Telegraph of 27th February 1998, very soon after Dr Wakefield’s famous press conference, reported : ‘Pasteur Merieux MSD, which supplies vaccine to the Department of Health, said: "It would be unfortunate if the results of controversial studies such as these resulted in a drop in public confidence in the vaccine, which the vast majority of the informed medical profession supports totally." ‘

 

A few weeks later, on 4th March, the London Evening Standard reported a ‘severe shortage;’ of children’s vaccines, adding : ‘A new study has linked the MMR injection to autism and bowel disease in children - and some doctors are advising parents who are worried about the side-effects to get individual jabs for each illness.

 

Hundreds of anxious parents have called hospitals seeking doses of the single-disease vaccines, only to be told there will be none available until at least June.

 

And while some doctors continued today to tell parents to get single disease jabs, the Department of Health confirmed that it has no intention of making single doses available, whatever the wishes of parents.’

 

The account continued: ‘Doctors and support groups were inundated with calls after scientists last week described what they believe is a new syndrome, linking the MMR jab with the onset of autism and a form of inflammatory bowel disorder.

 

Dr Andrew Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital said that they had not proved that MMR caused the condition, but advised parents that if they were worried, they should ask for single doses of the vaccine. However, vaccine manufacturers Pasteur Merieux have revealed that they have no single doses of the measles vaccine in stock, and that the earliest any would be available is June.

 

Even then, the great majority of their vaccine will be put into the MMR jab, and they will not create extra single doses unless the Department of Health specifically orders it.

 

The Department of Health confirmed today that it has no intention [of] making any single doses of vaccine available.

 

A spokeswoman said: "All the evidence points to the MMR vaccine being safe as any vaccine can be. We have no evidence that giving the jabs separately is any safer than this and we would strongly recommend parents to go ahead with the immunisation." ‘

 

I have emphasised the words below, as I think them quite interesting:

 

*The Department of Health was told by Dr Wakefield and colleagues several months ago that the scientists intended to advise parents to have single doses, but no efforts have been made to ensure supplies.

 

Dr Wakefield said: "As a parent and as a doctor, I am concerned about this situation. We cannot demand that the single doses are made available, but we did give the officials ample warning about our findings, and what we were going to say."*

 

On the 5th March , The Independent reported : ‘PARENTS demanding single vaccines for their children because of fears about the safety of the combined MMR jab against measles mumps and rubella are being told that stocks are exhausted and there are no plans to provide more.

 

A study last week which suggested a possible link between MMR vaccination and bowel disease and autism has triggered hundreds of calls to vaccine- damage support groups. Dr Andrew Wakefield, the chief author of the study, published in the Lancet last week, advised parents to administer the three vaccines one at a time - with at least a year's gap between each - to reduce the impact on the immune system, although other members of the research team said use of the combined vaccine should continue.

 

Yesterday, Pasteur Merieux, makers of MMR, said most of their measles vaccine was used to make the combined MMR to satisfy the worldwide demand and they only kept "a few hundred doses" of the single vaccine. It was currently out of stock and new supplies would not be available until June.

 

A spokesman said over 250 million doses of MMR had been given worldwide over 26 years. "If there was a problem with MMR I think we would be aware of it by now."’

 

On the 9th March, the Daily Telegraph reported : ‘SINGLE doses of the three vaccines combined in the mumps, measles and rubella vaccination have run out, through parents asking for their children to be given the three separately.

 

Pasteur Merieux, the pharmaceutical firm which supplies the NHS with one million doses of the triple vaccine a year, said it could no longer meet doctors' requests for separate doses.

 

Doctors have faced widespread requests from parents for their children to be vaccinated with three separate doses after a report two weeks ago linking the triple vaccine with the development of autism and bowel diseases in children.

 

Dr Andrew Wakefield, of the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, the author of the report, said his research had not proved that the triple vaccine caused the conditions but there was sufficient concern in his mind for a case to be made for the vaccines to be given singly at not less than one-year intervals.

 

Although his recommendation was not agreed unanimously by other researchers on the project, thousands of parents have responded to it.’

 

On 10th March, as part of an article on ‘Just what is the truth about MMR vaccines?’, the Daily Mail wrote as follows, in answer to the question  ‘What should I do if I want my child to have separate vaccinations?

 

‘BECAUSE GPs have never been allowed to order the vaccines in bulk, it used to be the case that you had to call the surgery, make a request for the three shots and then the doctor would ask the NHS for them specifically.

 

‘Now the pharmaceutical firm Pasteur Merieux, which makes the MMR vaccine for the Department of Health, has run out of single dose vaccines - and it won't make any more because the DoH says there is no scientific reason to vaccinate separately.

 

‘So although it is your right to request single doses, in practice you cannot any more. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's MMR or nothing.’

 

 

On 3rd April 1998, the Times reported , under the headline ‘Triple vaccine is rejected by one in four families’

 

that

 

 

‘UP TO a quarter of parents in some areas are now refusing to let their children have the triple vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella, according to reports from GPs. The refusals follow publication six weeks ago of research suggesting that there may be a link between the injection and bowel disease and autism.

 

Although the researchers, from the Royal Free Medical School, North London, said that they had found no scientific evidence of any link, the story has frightened many parents whose year-old children are due to have the jab. Doctors fear that a large number of refusals could mean a real risk of epidemics.

 

John Chisholm, chairman of the British Medical Association's general medical services committee, said: "GPs are having to deal with parents who are either refusing, or who want to have the three injections separately a year apart. The anecdotal evidence is that large numbers of understandably concerned parents are refusing. If this is confirmed, it will hit immunisation targets very hard."

 

Accurate figures of the number of injections since publication of the report would not normally be available until the end of June. Dr Chisholm is pressing the Department of Health to collect them more quickly, to reveal the scale of the problem and work out ways of dealing with it. He said: "The best scientific advice is that there is no causal link between MMR and autism or bowel disease, but people are understandably suspicious in the wake of the BSE/CJD scare and we are potentially facing the worst setback in immunisation coverage since the whooping cough scare 15 years ago."

 

He said that doctors were opposed to giving children the vaccines separately because it put children at risk for longer periods and meant that some would probably default on at least one of the injections. Single vaccines are not currently available on the NHS, which buys only ready mixed MMR from the American manufacturers, Pasteur Merieux. "I do not like the idea of making single vaccine available because I don't want the health service spending money on the worst treatment.

 

"Having said that if, after the fullest counselling, some parents insist on having it separately and the alternative is that they will not have their child immunised, it may be that we will have to consider it."

 

Dr Chisholm said that GPs were also concerned that the fall-off would mean a loss of income. They are paid a Pounds 2,400 annual bonus if immunisation rates in their practice exceed 90 per cent; this falls to Pounds 800 if the rate is between 70 and 90 per cent. Below that, they get nothing.

 

Llewellyn Smith, the Labour MP for Blaenau, who has been campaigning on MMR safety, is writing to Tessa Jowell, the Public Health Minister, asking for a public forum to examine all the evidence. "She told me she was worried because the numbers being vaccinated were dropping off significantly," he said."I have heard that only 75 per cent are taking them up and I think we have a right to see all the evidence."

 

Jackie Fletcher, founder of JABS, a support group for parents, said that her organisation has been receiving about 100 calls a day since the report was published: "We are not against immunisation and want children to be vaccinated, but we don't believe it is right they should have all three infections at once."’

 

Then, on the 31st August, the Daily Mail recounted : ‘THE controversy over the triple vaccine for children took a new turn last night as a drugs company withdrew the single measles jab.

 

From this week, parents anxious about possible side-effects of the combined measles, mumps and rubella jab will be forced to go abroad to get a single measles inoculation.

 

Critics accused the manufacturer Pasteur Merieux MSD of bowing to pressure from health officials keen to see every child given the triple jab.

 

Yesterday the company insisted that uncontrollable demand and not Government pressure was behind its decision. But it admitted that it would still be supplying the single measles jab to the rest of Europe.

 

In February, researchers warned that the triple MMR jab could be linked to autism and bowel disease.

 

They suggested that it would be safer to have the vaccines singly at one-year intervals. After the report was published, demand for the single vaccine rose dramatically.

 

Government medical advisers insist that the MMR vaccination, which is given to 1.2 million children every year, is safe. ‘

 

The report also noted : ‘Pasteur Merieux MSD, which also produces MMR, said it was now impossible to meet the demand.

 

Dr Michael Watson, the company's medical director, said: “We have to decide whether we're going to supply everybody or nobody, so the decision has been taken to supply nobody.' The company believes that a series of single jabs leaves children at risk between injections and that MMR is far safer.

 

“There is no reason to have single vaccines apart from personal choice and the trouble is, with that personal choice comes risk for other children,” Dr Watson added.

 

The report also mentioned two other elements which I have not yet been able to cross-reference elsewhere and would be glad of any details from knowledgeable readers . It said : ‘The single mumps vaccine was withdrawn at the end of last year [1997, PH]. Only the single rubella vaccine is now available in Britain, he said [presumably this is attributed to Dr Watson, though it is unclear from the text,PH].

 

The Department of Health said the decision to withdraw the single measles vaccine had been made by the company. ‘

 

The following day, 1st September 1998, The Independent carried a report and a leading article (editorial).

 

The report said : ‘PARENTS CONCERNED about inoculating their children with the controversial triple vaccine MMR will be forced to travel to Europe if they want a single measles vaccination, it was revealed yesterday.

 

The company that makes the single measles vaccine said it was withdrawing it from sale in Britain because it could not meet demand.

 

From now on parents will have only the option of using MMR, which has been linked by one study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, to autism and bowel disease.

 

Last night Pasteur Merieux MSD, the Paris-based company that makes both the triple and single vaccines, said the single vaccine had been available in Britain on a named-patient basis only.

 

"That meant it was only available to a very small number of people," said Dr Veronique Maguin, the company's marketing director.

 

"As demand grew we had to make an ethical decision about who the drug should be available to. It was a problem for the company because we could not satisfy everybody. Our main concern is one of public health and we felt we could not satisfy everybody."

 

There has been a huge increase in demand for the single measles injection since the report last February in The Lancet on MMR, which also inoculates against mumps and rubella.

 

While a subsequent report published by the Medical Research Council found no evidence of the link, many parents remain suspicious of the triple vaccine and want to see more research carried out into its possible side- effects.

 

Some believe that receiving all three vaccines at once has a negative effect on the immune system.

 

Ann Coote, a founder member of the pressure group Jabs - Justice, Awareness, and Basic Support - said she was astounded the company was withdrawing the single vaccine.

 

"It does seem very strange. Most manufacturers faced with a demand for something would be rubbing their hands together," she said.

 

"We get a lot of calls from parents who have lost faith in MMR and would prefer to have the option of a single vaccine. We would like to see MMR suspended and more research done.

 

"In the meantime single vaccines should be available. We are not against vaccines, we are against damage. Parents have a right to make a choice."

 

Mrs Coote said many parents were considering travelling to Europe to purchase single jabs.

 

She said that her own daughter, Rachal, stopped breathing after being injected with the triple vaccine at the age of 18 months.

 

Now aged 11, Rachal still suffers from epileptic fits and has the mental age of a six-year-old.

 

Her daughter's experience led Mrs Coote to set up Jabs, which has 1,700 members.

 

The Department of Health accepts the vaccine is not risk-free. "All drugs have side-effects," said a spokeswoman. "We believe that there is more risk from not having the vaccination."

 

She said the Government recommended having all three vaccinations at once, though she denied there had been any pressure placed on Pasteur Merieux MSD to withdraw the single vaccine.

 

"There is a risk to other children if a child is waiting to go back to the doctor for another vaccination. It is also more painful for the child," she said.

 

"But the decision to withdraw the single vaccine is the company's alone."’

 

Beneath the headline ‘Give parents the choice on MMR’, the leading article said (and remember that the Independent is not by any means a newspaper of the right, nor is it normally cited by those who like to blame the press for the public doubts about the MMR).

 

‘WHOEVER HEARD of a drugs company refusing to meet a rush for a profitable drug? That is exactly what Pasteur Merieux MSD has done in discontinuing the supply of its measles vaccine. Ostensibly, the decision was made because the demand for the drug was too great' to say the least, this does not sound credible.

 

Despite denials from all concerned, it seems much more plausible that the company has been forced by pressure from the Department of Health to end the supply of the drug. The alternative would have been to continue watching parents stampede away from the combined version of the treatment (MMR), which combines a measles vaccine with those for mumps and rubella. The single vaccines, given over three years, are more expensive overall to the NHS; concerns of cost must have entered into the equation.

 

The medical establishment has argued that the original research, on which parents' fears are based, was alarmist. The Medical Research Council claims that the apparent correlation between MMR inoculation and the diseases to which it has been linked is a coincidence. Autism does appear at about the same age as the vaccinations are given, but the evidence is that this was always the case. No one should panic, especially as the result of frightening parents might be increasing deaths from measles, mumps and rubella.

 

But parents are worried, and doctors have been wrong before. Whatever the Medical Council says, it is their concerns that matter; they have a right to decide which treatments their children receive. It would cost very little for the NHS to give parents the choices they want. Certainly, the money spent on MMR would be nothing compared to what the Government is spending in its attack on waiting-lists. And for the NHS to be humanised, by responding to the wishes of patients, would do it much more good than all the waiting-list targets in the world. ‘

 

Interestingly, the same newspaper repeated this call on 12th June 2002, saying :’ACCORDING TO new research in the scientific journal Clinical Evidence, there is no evidence that MMR is linked with autism. It is an important finding, drawing on the wealth of published studies on the issue. But no matter how impeccable this work may be, it will fail to make much difference to the thousands of parents who have to make a momentous choice on behalf of their child.

 

Rightly or wrongly, too many people feel that the MMR jab is a risk that they cannot take for their children. The Government has consistently failed to deal with this lack of confidence, which is now a fact of political life and has led to a critically low take up of the MMR jab. The best solution would be for the Government to give parents the option of taking the measles, mumps and rubella jabs separately. That pragmatic approach is the

best way to avoid the epidemic that all of us fear.’

 

Last week I tried to get from the Department of Health some explanation of the strange disappearance of the single measles jab in the late summer of 1998. I rather shared the views of the leader writer of  ‘The Independent’  on the credibility of the explanation given at the time.  Some of my questions will still have to wind their way through the Freedom of Information process.  But the questions I asked , and the answers I did receive were as follows:

 

My questions:

 

What communications about the single measles vaccine did the Health Department have with Pasteur Merieux, manufacturers of that vaccine, during the year 1998?

 

Were GPs still able to give single measles vaccines on the NHS after the introduction of the MMR in 1998?

What was the procedure under which they could do so?

 

How many doses of the single measles vaccine were provided by NHS doctors between March and August 1998?

 

 

A Department of Health spokesperson said:

 

"There was never any instruction from either DH ministers or officials to any manufacturer, including Pasteur Merieux, telling them to stop providing the single measles vaccine.

 

"In 1988/89 the measles vaccine was bought at local level and not by DH central contract. After DH recommended they use MMR, in part to provide a mumps vaccine for the first time, there was no longer any demand at local level. As a result, the NHS supplier, Evans Medical, at the time wrote to say it would no longer be supplying the UK market. After this, no other manufacturers, including Pasteur Merieux, had any central contract to supply single measles vaccine the NHS."

 

Answers to your other questions -

 

What communications about the single measles vaccine did the Health Department have with Pasteur Merieux, manufacturers of that vaccine, during the year 1998?

 

Ask under FOI. It will require detailed searching of historical material.

 

Were GPs still able to give single measles vaccines on the NHS after the introduction of the MMR in 1998?

 

Yes

 

What was the procedure under which they could do so?

From local supplies - as long as they existed.

 

How many doses of the single measles vaccine were provided by NHS doctors between March and August 1998?

 

Since it was not procured centrally, we do not hold that information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

l

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debates without votes are like Tennis without a net

Here's another part of my recorded conversation with Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho. Here we discuss the rules (and benefits) of public debates.

 

http://www.canonwired.com/featured/pre-post-debate-survey/

In Praise of 'The Guardian'

A word of praise here for ‘The Guardian’ which has once again shown the value of a diverse and adversarial press. Earlier this week ‘The Times’ carried reports which suggested that there was now credible evidence that the Syrian government is using chemical weapons against the Syrian rebels. This view is pretty much shared by the BBC (which has in my view been running a disgraceful and unbalanced campaign for intervention in Syria for many months, way beyond the remit of its Charter obligations) and by many newspapers and politicians. Regular readers here will know that it’s not shared by me, but forget that for a moment and examine the matter for yourselves.

 

This is important because if such an action could be proven, the USA, Britain and France could get round the difficulty that the UN Security Council will not currently permit intervention in Syria, thanks to the vetoes of Russia and  China. Moscow and Peking both feel their goodwill was abused in Libya, where an operation said to be aimed at protecting civilians ended in the overthrow of the Gadaffi state (and its replacement,  as it happens, with a lawless chaos, which nobody mentions).

 

Also, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as I have pointed out before, has a shrewd feeling that the trend towards over-riding national sovereignty could one day soon be used to overthrow him and his government. Russia is unique in the modern world in not being a global superpower, but in having enough military, economic and diplomatic power to continue to behave as a sovereign nation.  This was Britain’s position till the unhinged Suez episode of 1956. After that, we became a sycophantic client of the USA, which showed its gratitude for our loyalty by ushering us brusquely into EU servitude, and backing Irish nationalist revolts against our internal national authority. What a terrible tangle this gets us into, especially when EU and US interests don’t coincide.

 

I don’t know if Mr Putin cares about what would probably happen to Syria if the rebels won, though if he doesn’t, he should. I fear for the Christian and Alawi minorities if Sunni Muslim radicals, backed by Sunni Saudi Arabia and Sunni Turkey, take over. And who knows what would then happen in precarious Lebanon, where the Shia Muslim Hizbollah would then be in a very sensitive position, deprived of a major ally, presumably next on the Saudi target list,  yet still powerfully armed and well-trained?

 

And then there is Shia Iran - Syria’s principal ally and Saudi Arabia’s principal hate-object ( and probably the real target of all this fuss) . Much could follow from an Assad defeat, and much of it could involve violence and danger. It is time people realised that the Sunni-Shia split, in which Syria is embroiled whether she likes it or not,  is now a more dangerous fault-line in the Middle East than the stalemated Arab-Israeli conflict.

 

Anyway, Friday’s edition of 'The Times' carried a frightening and distressing despatch from Antony Loyd in Aleppo, which began ‘The chemical attack that killed Yasser Yunis's family was a small, almost private affair. Had the 27-year-old car mechanic not managed to struggle out of the doorway of his home in Aleppo on to the street in the darkness of night, clutching his infant son to his chest, no one might have ever known what wiped out the family.

 

‘They died twitching, hallucinating and choking on white froth that poured from their noses and mouths. Their doctors believe that they were killed by nerve gas.’

 

Mr Loyd, like other ‘Times’ writers who send despatches from that country, is a fine and brave reporter. And I’ve no doubt that the Syrian civil war has caused a great deal of pain, grief and loss. This is why I hate war. I’ve seen the fringes of this sort of thing and it is intensely dispiriting and gloomy, as one has no comfort to offer, and often yearns for ‘something to be done’ in an irrational way.

 

After seeing Soviet special forces go mad in Vilnius, Lithuania, in January 1991, and observing a few of their victims with various bits of their heads and bodies absent, and then having attended a grotesquely dishonest press conference at which these actions were justified by uniformed officers,  I was for weeks afterwards in a  state of dark, angry despair and rage.  From having been sympathetic towards my Russian neighbours, colleagues and acquaintances, I grew testy with them. The tone of my writing and my conversation changed. I lost objectivity and detachment, and took many months to regain them. Another odd effect was that for about ten years afterwards I could not bear firework displays, as the noise is so similar to that of real guns being fired, and it would instantly remind me of dark, dangerous nights in Vilnius.

 

My point is that anyone reporting on such things is entitled to his feelings. More, we should be glad that he is engaged, and ready to risk himself in the general cause of revealing the true face of the world.

 

But his editors at home need to be cooler and more dispassionate, especially when so much is at stake.

 

This is where ‘The Guardian’ comes in. In Saturday’s edition, Julian Borger (the paper’s Diplomatic Editor) wrote a crisp question-and-answer summary of the position, which makes it clear that things are not as clear-cut as you might have thought, if you depended on (say) the BBC for your view.  

 

‘The letter issued by the White House to two senators on Thursday [on Syrian use of chemical weapons] makes it clear the evidence is far from conclusive. There are questions over the "chain of custody" of the physical evidence - ie the US analysts cannot guarantee the provenance of the samples they have been given because they were collected and handed over by someone else, either another government or an opposition faction.

 

According to a report by the McClatchy news agency in the US, the soil sample examined by American experts is minuscule and contains a byproduct of sarin that could also be from fertiliser production.

 

Some of the videos in circulation online show alleged victims foaming at the mouth, but that is not listed as a sarin symptom on the website of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

Richard Guthrie, a British chemical weapons expert and former head of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said: "That [foaming at the mouth] would not be indicative of use of nerve agents but is more likely to be a sign of a choking agent such as phosgene being used, if anything."

 

Jean-Pascal Zanders, an expert at the EU Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "It's not possible that what is being shown to the public is a chemical weapons attack. The video from Aleppo showing foaming at the mouth does not look like a nerve agent. I'm wholly unconvinced."’

 

I can link to Mr Borger’s article here

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/26/syria-chemical-weapons-q-and-a

 

but alas I cannot link to Mr Loyd’s report in ‘the Times’, as it is behind a pay-wall.

Personally, it strikes me that President Assad would need to be exceptionally stupid to use chemical weapons. They are tricky things to use anyway, unstable, hard to transport, apt to decay in storage, unsafe for their users as well as for their victims.  That, rather than international convention, is the reason why they have been used so rarely since they were introduced in the 1914-18 war. Mainly designed to be used on battlefields (where by forcing the use of cumbersome and hot protective clothing they can gravely hold up an advancing army) they would provide him with little advantage in the sort of urban war he is fighting. He knows perfectly well that their use would be the pretext for a Western intervention.

 

On the other hand, the rebels, many of whom aren’t much nicer than Mr Assad, would see many advantages in suggesting to outside observers that such weapons had been used.

 

I have no idea of the truth, but I would examine the evidence on that basis, and informed by the knowledge we all gained during the Iraq war run-up, that governments don’t always tell the truth. Shocking, I know, like the fact that statistics aren’t always wholly right, and may be influenced by those who compile them.  But you need to know.  

Fanatical fools trying to blow us all up? They're the least of our problems...

This is Peter Hitchen's Mail on Sunday column

Long ago
I annoyed a prominent Irish republican. When we were mistakenly left alone
together in the same hospitality room in a TV studio, he raged at me, white
with fury, accusing me of being paid to persecute him.

It
crossed my mind that I might be a terrorist target as a result. I pondered for
a while, and concluded there wasn't much I could do about it.

Too bad.
My father had spent long months on the Russian convoys in the Second World War,
harried by appalling weather, U-boats, German surface raiders and the
Luftwaffe, with half an inch of steel between him and a sea so cold that it
would kill you in seconds.

Compared
to that, my danger was tiny and barely worth worrying about. My only sorrow was
that my minor risk was all in vain. Not long afterwards, the British State
cravenly surrendered to the Provisional IRA, and called it 'peace'.

This has
made me more scornful, ever after, of the ludicrous spasms we go into when
criminal bombers strike at us. In the end these people are just immoral zealots
who have turned to crime because they have an exaggerated idea of their own
goodness.

In many
cases they save us the trouble of killing them by doing it themselves. But if
they survive, they deserve a fair trial and then a swift vertical journey
through a trap door with a rope round their necks.

 Yet instead, we do exactly what
they hope we will do. We act as if they are important. We turn our countries
upside down to take useless precautions against them. We give the police
special powers. We make travel into a silly palaver of searches and checks of
obviously harmless people. We destroy half our ancient liberties as we tramp
and stamp about. Then, later on, we give in to the terrorists anyway.

None of
these precautions works. They are as futile as the toy golf-ball detector which
a cunning fraud successfully sold as an explosives scanner, and they work on
the same principle. The client is so scared that he has stopped thinking, and
will gullibly accept almost anything he is told.

If some
fanatical cretin wants to bomb a marathon, how on earth can you stop him? We
know that the American authorities had been warned about this particular
cretin, but, short of locking him up without charge, what could they
realistically have done?

Just
before the July 7 outrages in London in 2005, our vaunted, boastful security
organs were completely unaware that anything was going to happen (and, worse,
our emergency services were sadly unprepared).

They have
been trying to justify their enormous budgets ever since by rounding up groups
of bearded, incompetent but talkative fantasists, and slinging them into prison
for very long periods. They also periodically let it be known that they have
saved us from lots of other nameless perils that they can't speak about. Well,
perhaps.

Meanwhile
we continue the hilarious pursuit of some furry-faced Muslim cleric, who seems
to have been invented to demonstrate that we no longer control our own borders.
The Government's legal bill must be enormous. What we won't even consider doing
is leaving the EU and the Human Rights convention, the two actions that would
free us to act as we wish.

Meanwhile,
the real Islamic problem grows unnoticed – the quiet spread of Sharia law,
female subjugation and polygamy in our country, mainly the result of the
uncontrolled mass immigration that would have been a good deal easier to tackle
than 'terrorism' ever was.

In the
end, who knows where this may lead? Our culture is already noticeably scared of
Islam and gives it a great deal of leeway. My own view is that this will end in
the slow Islamisation of this country.

If you
don't think we will wear this, look at the fascinating picture of Katherine Russell,
widow of the unlamented Boston murderer Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an all-American
girl, brought up in freedom, yet now shrouded in the submissive garb of the
Muslim wife. I shouldn't think she thought that would happen to her, either.
She is a metaphor for all of us.

1997: A vintage year for shifty crooks

I have
lived in the same place, off and on, for nearly 50 years. In that time I have
seen the police vanish from its streets. I have seen the local courts issue
feebler and feebler sentences. I have seen the appearance of open drug-taking,
severe drunkenness, epidemic shoplifting, menacing begging, random late-night
violence, unchecked graffiti and vandalism.

I read or
hear horrible stories of knifings and beatings that would have been national
scandals in 1963 (and would also have led to the deaths of their victims, these
days often saved by brilliant surgeons and paramedics). Nowadays they pass in a
few seconds on the local news.

Everything
has been in one direction. Nothing at all has happened to suggest that this
long-term trend has stopped, let alone reversed.

So how do
we explain the extraordinary figures published last week in something called
the UK Peace Index, much trumpeted by the BBC and its scrupulously neutral Home
Editor, whose name I forget (but he won't mind because he's so modest)? It
suggests that we are becoming a more peaceful country.

On page
19 of this wondrous document is a series of graphs. Each shows more or less the
same thing: burglary, fraud and forgery, violent crime, robbery and sex
offences were all shooting upwards nearly vertically. Then, in about 1997, they
all dropped almost as steeply as they had been rising.

Now, I
know all kinds of grand people who scold me for saying this, but can any
intelligent, grown-up take these figures seriously?

Here's
one alternative explanation. The great drop in all these crimes took place very
close to 1997, the year in which the most dishonest and unscrupulous government
in modern history took office. Weapons of Mass Subtraction, anybody?

I never
thought of myself this way before, but I am now officially ‘frivolous’. That
mighty quango Ofcom has used this word to dismiss my complaint against the BBC.

I
objected to the fact that, in referring to one of my columns here, a Radio 4
programme edited out some words to change the meaning.

They then
criticised me for saying what I hadn’t in fact said. Well, if it’s frivolous to
complain about that, or think it unfair, I’m proud to be so.

I often warn
here of how a demoralised and gutless establishment have given up trying to
control the spread of dangerous illegal drugs.

Now the
Prison Governors Association has joined the liberalisation campaign. How
shameful. These people are paid and trusted to enforce the law of the land.

If they
don't believe in the law, they should find other jobs. And if they carry on in
this vein, some of us might wonder if there is any connection between their
craven opinions and the fact that our jails are full of drugs.

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

Ofcom to Hitchens: 'Get Lost'

Not to my great surprise, Ofcom has declined to consider my complaint against the BBC over ‘What the Papers Say’, taking a more or less identical position to that of the BBC's own Editorial Complaints Unit and the BBC Trust. It is apparently 'frivolous' on my part to see any unfairness, or evidence of institutional bias against people holding views such as mine,  in having my words altered to change their meaning in a current affairs programme aired by an officially impartial national broadcaster.

 

Of course, no objective measure exists to establish the degree of hostility or accuracy in the caricature of a voice. But there is, in this case, something remarkably close to such a measure, which none of those investigating my complaint has ever taken into account despite my repeatedly mentioning it. As I have said a dozen times, and nobody has ever challenged me, the BBC would never have caricatured my brother's voice (very similar to mine) as it caricatured mine.

 

Here is their response in full (by ‘entertainment’, they mean what most people would mean by ‘consideration’). Much like the BBC, they make a great deal of the largely irrelevant issue of the (undoubted) difference between May Day and the Olympic ceremony, and very little of the interesting fact that the presenter took me to task for saying something I hadn't - and that the reason he was able to do this was that my words had been altered. They also ignored my point that I could find no parallel instance of any such alteration of the meaning of a quotation in the history of this programme, and the BBC had produced no such example.

 

I suppose I shall now have to take up the offer made to me by the programme's editor (before I lodged my complaint), to become a presenter of it. Let us see what happens about that.

 

Here is the Ofcom letter:

Entertainment Decision

Complaint by Mr Peter Hitchens

What the Papers Say, BBC Radio 4, 29 July 2012

Case No. 1-230571601

Summary

Ofcom has not entertained Mr Hitchens complaint as set out in “The Complaint” section below. This is because Ofcom considers (under section 114(2)(c) of the Broadcasting Act 1996 (as amended)) that Mr Hitchens has not set out a sustainable case of unjust or unfair treatment in the programme as broadcast for the broadcaster to answer. Ofcom will therefore not proceed to consider the complaint further. Ofcom’s decision and the reasons for it are set out below.

The Entertainment Decision

In reaching its decision not to entertain Mr Hitchens’ complaint, Ofcom considered the statutory criteria that must be satisfied before a complaint can be entertained. These are set out below. Ofcom also considered the following material in making its decision:

 complaint form dated 12 March 2013 and supporting material;

 a recording of the programme; and

 images of the Moscow Olympic opening ceremony and May Day parades (1980,1974,1966).

The Programme and relevant background

On 29 July 2012, BBC Radio 4 broadcast its weekly fifteen minute radio programme What the Papers Say. This edition of the programme was presented by political journalist Mr Mehdi Hasan, who analysed and commented on how various publications had covered the week’s news stories. Quotations from a variety of newspaper journalists, tweets from politicians and headlines from a number of publications were read by male and female actors. The first issue discussed in this edition of the programme was the 2012 London Olympic Games, which had begun a few days before. Mr Hasan explained that:

“The London Olympics kicked off in all its pomp and glory”.

Extracts from a number of newspaper articles commenting on the Olympic Games opening ceremony, and the tweet of a politician, were then read out by actors and Mr Hasan commented on their views.

The column of Mr Peter Hitchens, a journalist from the Mail on Sunday, was one of those quoted in this section of the programme. It was presented as follows:

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Presenter: “It was left to the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens to rival...for party pooper-in-chief.

Actor: Enthusiasm is compulsory only in totalitarian dictatorships. Anywhere else, we are free to be keen if we want to and bored if we want to.

Presenter: I am guessing Peter, you’re bored.

Actor: Count me out of the compulsory joy, reminds me all too much of [pause] Soviet Moscow.

Presenter: Really Peter? Really? London 2012 is the Soviet Union 1980. I think not”.

Following the broadcast of the programme, Mr Hitchens complained to Ofcom that he was treated unjustly or unfairly in the programme as broadcast.

The Complaint

Mr Hitchens completed a Fairness and Privacy Complaint Form on 12 March 2013 which was received by Ofcom on 14 March 2013.

Unjust or unfair treatment

Mr Hitchens complained to Ofcom that he was treated unjustly or unfairly in the programme as broadcast in that material facts were misrepresented, disregarded or omitted in a way that was unfair to him. Mr Hitchens said his written published work in a newspaper column was edited and then quoted in such a way that its meaning was altered. In particular, Mr Hitchens complained that:

i) He was quoted in the programme as broadcast as saying “Count me out of the compulsory joy, reminds me all too much of [pause] Soviet Moscow”, when his column had originally stated (with the words omitted in the BBC broadcast marked in bold by Ofcom): “Count me out of the compulsory joy. It reminds me all too much of May Day in Soviet Moscow”. Mr Hitchens said that he was then reproved by the programme’s presenter for the altered sentiment.

By way of background, Mr Hitchens stated in an email to the BBC that he had witnessed May Day in Soviet Moscow so was making a specific comparison based on his own experience, not a general remark and that the presenter’s criticism of his comment would not have been possible if the correct wording had been used.

ii) His views were not reflected in a fair manner, in that the quotation of his newspaper column was read by an actor in an absurdly exaggerated and hostile caricature of his voice.

By way of background, Mr Hitchens added that no other person on the programme (or in previous editions of the programme) has been treated in this way.

Please refer to the complaint form and any accompanying material for full details.

Relevant legislation

Under section 110(1) of the Broadcasting Act 1996 (as amended) (“the Act”), and subject to the remaining provisions of Part V of the Act, Ofcom has a duty to consider and adjudicate on complaints which relate:

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(a) to unjust or unfair treatment in programmes,1

Or

(b) to unwarranted infringement of privacy in, or in connection with the obtaining of material included in, such programmes.

These complaints are collectively referred to as “fairness complaints” by virtue of section 110(4) of the Act.

Part V of the Act (and in particular sections 111 and 114) sets out a number of statutory criteria which must be satisfied before a fairness complaint can be entertained by Ofcom.

“The Person Affected”

Section 111(1) of the Act provides that a “fairness complaint may be made by an individual or by a body of persons, whether incorporated or not, but...shall not be entertained by Ofcom unless made by “the person affected” or by a person authorised by him to make the complaint for him”.

“the person affected” is defined by section 130 of the Act as follows:

(a) In relation to any unjust or unfair treatment in programmes, it means a participant in the programme in question who was the subject of that treatment or a person who, whether such a participant or not, had a direct interest in the subject-matter of that treatment. (“Participant” is further defined by section 130 as meaning a “person who appeared, or whose voice was heard, in the programme”).

And,

(b) In relation to any unwarranted infringement of privacy, it means a person whose privacy was infringed.

Under section 111(7)(a) of the Act, Ofcom may refuse to entertain a complaint of unjust or unfair treatment “if the person named as the person affected was not himself the subject of the treatment complained of and it appears to Ofcom that he did not have a sufficiently direct interest in the subject-matter of that treatment to justify the making of a complaint with him as the person affected”.

In relation to Mr Hitchens’ complaint that he was treated unfairly in the programme as broadcast (as set out in “The Complaint” above”), Ofcom is satisfied that Mr Hitchens meets the applicable requirements of “the person affected” as defined by section 130(a) of the Act.

Ofcom notes that Mr Hitchens was not a participant in the programme as he did not appear in the programme and his voice was not heard. However, Ofcom is satisfied that Mr Hitchens has a “direct interest” in the subject matter of the programme in that his newspaper column was read by an actor, he was referred to by name and his views were directly referred to by the programme’s presenter.

1 Section 130 of the Act defines “unjust or unfair treatment” as including “treatment which is unjust or unfair because of the way in which material included in a programme has been selected or arranged.”

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“Reasonable time”

Section 111(5) of the Act provides that “Ofcom may refuse to entertain a fairness complaint if it appears to Ofcom not to have been made within a reasonable time after the last occasion on which the relevant programme was broadcast or, as the case may be, included in a licensed service.”

In this respect, Paragraph 1.10 of Ofcom’s “Procedures for the consideration and adjudication of Fairness and Privacy complaints” (“Ofcom’s Fairness and Privacy Procedures”) (dated 1 June 2011) provides that complainants should submit their complaint to Ofcom within 20 working days after broadcast of the relevant programme, and that, ordinarily, Ofcom will not accept a complaint which is submitted after this deadline. Where a complaint is submitted later than 20 working days after broadcast, complainants should explain why the complaint was not submitted earlier. Ofcom will then weigh up all relevant factors (including the complainant’s explanation for the delay in submitting the complaint) and decide whether or not it is appropriate for it to consider the complaint despite the delay in its submission.

Ofcom received Mr Hitchens’ complaint form on 14 March 2013. Following the broadcast of the programme on 29 July 2012, Mr Hitchens complained to the Editorial Complaints Unit of the BBC about the programme. He subsequently appealed its decision (not to uphold his complaint as regards an alleged lack of accuracy and of due impartiality in the programme) to the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust. The BBC Trust published its decision in relation to Mr Hitchens complaint on 12 March 20132. The decision was not to uphold Mr Hitchens’ appeal.

Having regard to the date of publication of the BBC Trust’s decision (i.e.12 March 2013) and the date Ofcom received Mr Hitchens’ complaint (i.e. 14 March 2013), Ofcom considers that the complaint to Ofcom was made within a reasonable time (i.e. two working days after the final decision by the BBC on Mr Hitchens’ complaint) after the BBC completed its consideration of Mr Hitchens’ complaint.

“Legal proceedings”

Sections 114(2) of the Act provides that Ofcom shall not entertain, or proceed with the consideration of, a fairness complaint if it appears to Ofcom:

(a) that the matter complained of is the subject of proceedings in a court of law in the United Kingdom, or

(b) that the matter complained of is a matter in respect of which the complainant or the person affected has a remedy by way of proceedings in a court of law in the United Kingdom, and that in the particular circumstances it is not appropriate for Ofcom to consider a complaint about it.

As to section 114(2)(a) above, Mr Hitchens has confirmed to Ofcom that the matters complained of are not the subject of proceedings in a court of law in the United Kingdom.

As to section 114(2)(b) above, Ofcom considers that, on the information available to it, the matter complained of does not appear to be a matter in respect of which Mr Hitchens (as “the person affected”) has a remedy by way of proceedings in a court of law in the United

2 See: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/a... at page 20.

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Kingdom, and it is satisfied that it would not be inappropriate in the circumstances to proceed to consider the complaint under this provision.

“Frivolous”

Section 114(2)(c) of the Act provides that “Ofcom shall not entertain, or proceed with the consideration of, a fairness complaint if it appears to Ofcom that the complaint is frivolous.”

Ofcom will normally consider a complaint to be “frivolous” if in its opinion the complaint is unsustainable. Normally this is because the complainant has not provided reasonable grounds on which to base a complaint of unjust or unfair treatment or unwarranted infringement of privacy, and therefore there is not a case for the relevant broadcaster to answer.

In considering whether or not a complaint is sustainable, Ofcom takes into account a number of relevant factors including: a preliminary examination of the programme (including its nature, aim and content); the seriousness of the complaint; and, any exceptional circumstances that may be relevant.

Ofcom first considered Mr Hitchens’ complaint that the omission of the words “May Day in” changed the sense of his comparative statement and the reproof he received would not have been possible if the words had not been omitted. In earlier correspondence with the BBC, Mr Hitchens stated that he was making a specific comparison based on personal experience, not a general remark.

Ofcom took the view that in his column, Mr Hitchens drew a comparison between the London Olympic Games opening ceremony and the predominantly military parades associated with Soviet Russia, specifically the May Day parade. The effect of the removal of the words “May Day in”, in Ofcom’s opinion, was that listeners may instead have understood Mr Hitchens to be making a comparison between the London Olympic Games opening ceremony, and either specifically the Moscow Olympic Games opening ceremony in 1980 or more generally a military or public parade held in the Soviet Union at that time. This was reinforced by the presenter’s comments:

“Really Peter? Really? London 2012 is the Soviet Union 1980. I think not”.

Ofcom considered images of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games opening ceremony and compared them with historic archive images of May Day parades in Soviet Russia. Ofcom noted that typically May Day parades in Soviet Russia contained elements of communist and military imagery and involved large numbers of individuals marching, or standing, in ordered formations. Ofcom also noted from the images of the Moscow Olympic Games opening ceremony, that these too included communist imagery and involved parades of people in ordered formations. Although there were clearly differences in the nature of these events, Ofcom considered that, in general terms, listeners would not have made a sufficient distinction between these events for this to have been at all likely to have resulted in any unfairness to Mr Hitchens by any mistaken comparison between them.

Ofcom did not consider that the inclusion of the three words “May Day in” would have indicated to listeners that Mr Hitchens was making a comment based on his personal experiences. Ofcom noted that in the full Mail on Sunday column (as published on the Mail Online website3) Mr Hitchens did not indicate his comment was based on his personal experiences. In any case, Ofcom’s view was that the omission in the programme of the fact

3 http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.u...

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or implication that Mr Hitchens was making a specific, rather than a general, statement would not, in itself, have been likely to have altered listeners’ perceptions of him in a material and adverse way that was unfair.

Ofcom also considered the comment by the presenter, as set out above, in which he questioned the appropriateness of comparing the London Olympic Games opening ceremony to the Moscow Olympic Games opening ceremony or similar event. Ofcom considered that the following comment by the presenter: “Really Peter? Really?... I think not” simply expressed the fact that the presenter’s view differed from that of Mr Hitchens and would not have been likely to have altered listeners’ perceptions of Mr Hitchens in a way that was unfair to him. Ofcom recognised that journalists commonly disagree about the nature and interpretation of events. This was such a case and listeners would have understood it in this context.

Ofcom took account of that fact that Mr Hitchens did not, in his complaint form or the supporting material he provided, set out any clear reasons why listeners’ perception of him would have been materially and adversely affected as a result of the inaccurate comparison so as to result in unfairness to him. Given this, and the other factors set about above in relation to head i) of the complaint, Ofcom did not consider that in response to Mr Hitchens’ complaint there was a sustainable case for the broadcaster to answer.

In relation to head ii) of Mr Hitchens’ complaint (that the quotation of his newspaper column was read by an actor in an absurdly exaggerated and hostile caricature of his voice), Ofcom listened carefully to the programme as broadcast. It noted that a number of different actors were used to read the various columns, headlines and tweets featured throughout the programme. Ofcom considered that the representation by the actor of Mr Hitchens’ voice demonstrated some exaggeration, but that this was not excessive, and within the normal parameters for actors’ readings within this light-hearted and topical programme, and so was unlikely materially and adversely to influence listeners’ perceptions of him in a way that could reasonably amount to unfair treatment in the programme.

In reaching this conclusion Ofcom assessed the voices of other politicians and journalists who were featured in the programme. We noted that a tweet from Conservative MP Aidan Burley was read by an actor and that the version of Mr Burley’s voice spoken by the actor was an exaggeration of his voice. Ofcom also noted that the actor who depicted the voice of London Mayor (and journalist) Boris Johnson later in the programme used a similar tone and accent to that used by the actor who depicted Mr Hitchens’ voice.

In Ofcom’s view the programme “What the Papers Say” is an irreverent take on recent events, which features a degree of satire and critical comment, specifically from the viewpoint of the presenter that week, about the views of those in the public eye, generally journalists and politicians. Ofcom recognised that Mr Hitchens considered the way in which his voice was exaggerated to be “hostile”. However, in accordance with the right to freedom of expression, the programme may satirise or even be caustic about the views it critiques, provided it does so in a way that people are not unfairly or unjustly treated. This is an element of the programme that is both well-established and within the boundaries that listeners would expect. In the context of a programme of this nature, Ofcom was not satisfied that Mr Hitchens had put forward a reasonable argument that he had been singled out for unfair treatment.

Given the factors set out above, and in the particular circumstances of this case, Ofcom did not consider that Mr Hitchens has, on the face of it, set out a sustainable case for the broadcaster to answer.

Inappropriate for “any other reason”

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Section 114(2)(d) of the Act provides that “Ofcom shall not entertain, or proceed with the consideration of, a fairness complaint if it appears to Ofcom that for any other reason it is inappropriate for Ofcom to entertain, or proceed with the consideration of, the complaint.”

Ofcom considers that there does not appear to be “any other reason” why it would be inappropriate for Ofcom to entertain, or proceed with the consideration of, Mr Hitchens’ complaint in the circumstances of this case.

Decision

Ofcom has not entertained Mr Hitchens’ fairness complaint as set out in heads i) and ii) under section 114(2)(c) of the Act. This is because it appears to Ofcom that the complaint is frivolous in that Mr Hitchens has not set out a sustainable case either that the way in which his newspaper column was reflected, and in particular the omission of the words “May Day in” from the reference to Soviet Moscow, or the way his voice was portrayed in the programme, resulted in unfairness to him.

26 April 2013

Same Sex Marriage - an article from the American Spectator

Some of you may be interested in this article I wrote recently for the American Spectator, about same-sex marriage.

 

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/04/24/im-not-getting-married-in-the