Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 303

A Line in the Sand - Western Folly in the Middle East

As we contemplate the disgraceful murder of the US Ambassador to Libya – perpetrated by the very fanatics supported by the ‘West’ only a few months ago – we should devote ourselves even more carefully to understanding what is really going on in this part of the world.

The Middle East and the North Africa is a zone in which we repeatedly intervene,  armed mainly with ignorance. The fact that we claim to be benevolent is no excuse. By failing to understand the place we seek to change, we ensure that there will be terrible unintended consequences. Is it any surprise that it has been the source of so much pain and trouble, when we take so little pain or trouble to learn about it. I do often wonder if David Cameron, Hillary Clinton or William Hague have any real knowledge of the area, or of they listen to their diplomats who do.

So, my renewed thanks go to Richard Carey, the kind reader who sent me his copy of ‘A Line in the Sand’ by James Barr, one of the most instructive books you are likely to find about the stupid mess we have made of the Middle East. I’d set it alongside Samuel Katz’s astonishingly revelatory (though very one-sided) account of the origins of the Arab-Israel dispute ‘Battleground’, as an eye-opening reintroduction to a subject we all think we know about, but don’t really.

Katz’s book, which is quite hard to get hold of in this country,  mercilessly examines, questions and mocks the slippery way in which Britain sought to oil out (in more ways than one)  of its 1917 commitment to a ‘National Home for the Jews’ . Katz is a supporter of Vladimir Jabotinsky, and an old friend of Arthur Koestler (whose novel ‘Thieves in the Night’ is strong fictional propaganda for his cause) . Jabotinsky’s ‘revisionist’ version of Zionism was far more realistic, and thus far more ruthless, than the soft-edged socialist mainstream of that movement. And it in turn gave birth to strands of thought which led to horrible acts of Zionist terrorism, notably the gruesome 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, when it was the British headquarters (91 died, 46 were injured).  It is hard to say exactly who introduced political murder or terror into this dispute (the Jerusalem and Hebron massacres of Jews in the 1920s, and the Arab revolt in the 1930s must not be forgotten). But it is certain that neither side is innocent.

But one of the many things I never knew before reading Barr’s book is just how furious was the Anglo-French rivalry in the region, so furious that Barr produces persuasive evidence that France actively backed Zionist terrorism against Britain in the late 1940s. Yes, that’s right, the country which had recently been liberated from the German yoke by British , American and Canadian Forces, the country whose resistance leader had been hosted and financed by the British government, actively helped the violent enemies of Britain in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.

The origins of this go back to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, under which Britain and France secretly parcelled out the remnants of the Ottoman Empire  (which they had yet to destroy), thus laying the foundations of a century of conflict and hatred which has yet to come to an end. They were planning to diddle each other even as they signed. At least, we were certainly planning to diddle the French.

The original sin, of course, is the West’s thirst for oil (in those days needed to fuel Britain’s global navy), oil which had recently been discovered in what is now Iraq – combined with France’s hunger for prestige, and Britain’s unending concern for the safety of the Suez canal from land or sea attack. One thing that was never involved at all was idealism or altruism, though the Balfour Declaration of a ‘national home for the Jews’ in 1917 was dressed up as such, making it awkward when later governments sought to break the promise.

There are interesting accounts of French rule of Syria which make the pious criticisms of the Assad government by France’s current leaders look a little silly. Did you ever wonder where the Assads got the idea that artillery bombardment of cities was an effective way of restoring control? Go on, guess.

But the deep suspicion between French and British empires at this stage led to many other problems (made even worse during the early years of the warm, when the French rulers of Syria remained loyal to the Vichy government of Marshal Petain. On the consequences of this for the wider Arab world,  Katz is more entertaining and cogent than Barr (Katz’s description of Britain’s deployment of the two available would-be Kings , Faisal and Abdullah, is actually bitterly funny as well as devastatingly true).

One other interesting aspect of this, apart from the forgotten British involvement in both Iran and Iraq in the early years of World War Two, is the extent to which Britain and Vichy France were actual enemies, and very bitter ones indeed, during World War Two. Ever since the Entente Cordiale, there has been a  sentimental assumption that our two countries are natural friends, and Germany our natural enemy. But ‘Line in the Sand’ makes it very clear that the enmity between Britain and France was much deeper, more profoundly felt (especially in France) and more recent than we care to admit.

Writing as a Francophile, who has loved France from the moment he first set foot in it, and admires the French greatly, this fact distresses me. As an English and British Patriot I am compelled always to view the French as rivals and potential foes.  This is why I am especially haunted by the tragedy of Mers-el-Kebir, in 1940, when the Royal Navy opened fire on the French Fleet. It was nobody’s proudest moment, and not exactly Trafalgar, or the Battle of the Nile.

 The curious relationship between us is enjoyably recorded and described in a fine book ‘That Sweet Enemy’ by Robert and Isabelle Tombs (he is English, she is French) . The title comes from Sir Philip Sidney, just to illustrate how long our relationship of mingled loathing, respect, contempt and admiration has been going on.

And another thing…

My latest podcast, this time on the making of excuses, can be found here
 

 

 

 

Blowing my Own Trumpet…

… was something I was always taught not to do, in the
pre-revolutionary era in which I grew up. I still feel bad about doing it. But
readers here often say to me that they wish they had known about various other
activities of mine. I still won’t give advance notice of broadcasts. These are
too much subject to last-minute change, and in any case I often get very short
notice of them.

But, before I resume normal
postings here later this week, just a few events and other matters that readers
might like to know about.

First, I have been making
some brief broadcasts for a site called ‘The Agitator’, short polemics on
subjects of our time.

The first two are on drugs,
here

and on equality, here

Then, as some of you will
know, I will be speaking at the Henley Literary Festival on Sunday 30th
September, about my forthcoming book on the non-existent ‘war on drugs’. This
was a late booking and tickets can still be had by going to

henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk

or calling  01189
724700.

 

I’m also planning debates
with Howard Marks (whom I’ve debated before three times)  on the subject
of drugs, at Waterstones in Oxford on the evening of Thursday 18th
October (I think it’s at 7.00 pm) , and in Bristol, at the Arnolfini Theatre,
on Monday 29th October at 6.15 pm.  This is part of the Bristol
festival of Ideas.

And I shall once again be
debating my old opponent Peter Reynolds at Exeter University (also on the
subject of drugs) on Thursday 29th November

 

Have a nice cup of tea, Mr Burglar and please don't say I hurt you

This is Peter Hitchens’ Mail on Sunday column

Get used to it. You are not safe in your own home. Just because only one judge has been silly enough to admit that he thinks burglars are brave, don’t think there aren’t hundreds more just the same.

They simply don’t have the courage to admit it. Some older judges, true, may still secretly disapprove of thieves. But they lack the principle to resign  from a job where their main task is to keep criminals out  of prison.

It’s the same with the police.  I used to jeer that if the whole lot of them were abducted by aliens, nobody would notice. They’d vanished from our ken already.

But now they are completely in the grip of Equality and Diversity. They long for the chance to arrest someone for having the wrong thoughts about sex or religion, or for  acting as if right and wrong  still existed in this country.

One well-publicised couple, Tracey and Andrew Ferrie, have been released without charge after daring to defend their home against a violent  and evil invasion.

But I beg you not to try it yourselves. Note that the Ferries spent three days in custody first, not far short of the real average prison sentence for a convicted criminal.

The police, the CPS and the courts still hate anyone who acts as if criminals are wrongdoers and as if they have an absolute right to their own property or peace.

Note that Daniel Mansell (now awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to raiding the Ferries’s isolated home) was ‘jailed’ for six years in  February 2009. If such sentences had any relation to the truth he would not be at large. But all British prison sentences are whopping lies.

And if our prisons still punished instead of being lawless, drug-infested warehouses, Mansell would long ago have been taught the hard way that crime does not pay. As it is, he has a long career behind him of thieving and witness intimidation, and I would expect there’s a long career ahead of him too. How he must laugh at us.

And why not? I too laugh at our wobbling, jellified, whimpering apology for a criminal justice system. I hope I never need it, for I know it won’t help me or do justice to those who have wronged me.

But I fear that it will one day find a way of locking me up  for expressing incorrect ideas.  Partly for that reason I wouldn’t dream of lifting a finger to resist a burglar. I’d just give him a cup of tea and ask him to sign a declaration that I hadn’t hurt him. Otherwise it would  be me in Belmarsh, and my burglar on the loose.

My favourite episode of British law and order dates from 1999 when some poor woman  in rural Somerset had her car vandalised and went to the police. They wrote to her to say that the people who had damaged her car were victims too.

The epistle explained that the culprits were probably heroin ‘addicts’ living in bad housing who had come from broken homes. It urged her to give a thought to those less fortunate than herself.

She said: ‘That’s just not what you expect from the police.’ Well, it’s what I expect from them, and so should you if you have any sense.

Sometimes I wish they would just get on and proclaim the People’s Republic of Britain, strip away the sentimental  decorations and the lingering reminders of the lost past, and do their worst.

Maybe then there would be  a revolt against the self- righteous, smug elite who have turned us into a Land Fit For Burglars.

MPs shouldn't give medals - that's why we have a Monarch

It was thoughtless and wrong  of the Paralympics organisers  to invite politicians to hand  out medals.

Half the point of having a Monarchy is that we don’t have to admire or revere Ministers or MPs, mostly jumped-up careerists and backstairs-crawlers.

I wouldn’t myself want to receive a raffle prize from a politician, let alone a well-earned award for excellence and hard work. What if the award-winner doesn’t share the politics of the Minister involved?

I’m all in favour of booing politicians. These days they don’t get heckled or booed nearly enough, which is why they get  so above themselves.

One of the greatest moments  of modern times was the Blair Creature’s rough handling by the Women’s Institute.

And I don’t see why a really distinguished and admirable person such as Ellie Simmonds, whom we can all happily cheer, should be expected to act as a human shield for any Prime Minister.

Some religions are more equal...

What Christians in Britain have to understand is that this is not a Christian country any more. It’s no good going to the Court of Human Rights.

Harriet Harman’s Equalities Act 2010 (backed, as I ceaselessly remind you, by the Useless Tories and particularly by Mrs Theresa May) made all religions equal.

That means Christianity in this country has no greater legal status than Mormonism, Buddhism, Jainism or Scientology –  and rather lower status  than Islam, because  our Government and Establishment are scared stiff of Islam.

Precisely because Christianity used to be dominant, that means that the authorities will seize every chance they can to take it down a peg or two.

This process is only just beginning. You’ll be amazed by how much more there is yet to come, in schools, laws, broadcasting, policing and – I hesitate to mention it, but it will come – the Coronation of our next Monarch.

Well, that’s the end of the great Cameroon experiment, then. The Tory Party is as deceased as it always was. By moving the coffins around in the crypt, the Prime Minister has not made his Cabinet any less dead.

They never had any purpose but getting office. Having got office, they can only snivel into their handkerchiefs when they lose it.

Meanwhile, the next – Lib-Lab – coalition is already starting to form. There’ll be more snivelling then.

Yet again newspapers refer to a lawless murder as an ‘execution’. Please stop doing this. An execution is a just punishment for a heinous crime, and if we still had them, we’d have fewer murders and less violence in general.

There's an old saying in Whitehall: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ This means that bad times are always a good excuse to do something unpopular and bad that a well-funded lobby has wanted for ages.

Hence the third runway, and the dismantling of suburban planning laws.  You can’t do anything about it, except loathe and despise those responsible. It’s all part of national decline.

Peter Hitchens will be at the Henley Literary Festival at 4.30pm on Sunday September 30 to talk about his new book, The War We Never  Fought: The British Establishment’s Surrender  To Drugs. For tickets go to henleyliterary festival.co.uk or call 01189 724700.

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We'll go down as the nation that smoked itself stupid

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Cannabis makes you stupid. I know this already, from the  feeble arguments and moronic insults that  I get from the dope lobby when I argue for harsher, more effective laws against this dangerous, unpredictable poison.

But now you and your children don’t need to take my word for it. Science has at last caught up with the blazingly obvious. Smoking cannabis in your  teens permanently reduces your IQ – official.

A highly reputable study traced a sample of more than 1,000 people from birth for 38 years. They controlled for all the other variables. Marijuana was the consistent factor in  the lives of those whose IQ shrank and stayed shrunk for ever. The more they smoked, the worse it was.

People who smoked the drug in their teens were still held back by the time they reached the age of 38. Even these  people’s friends confirmed that their memories and their attention spans had declined.

Imagine if some electronic device or prescription medicine were found to have this effect. Human habits would change  overnight. The company responsible would probably go out of business, after being forced to pay out billions in compensation.

The newspapers and the airwaves would rock and shudder with the row. ‘BAN THIS DRUG THAT WRECKS MINDS!’ they would shout, ‘BAN IT NOW!’ And Parliament would act.

But no. The story flickered briefly through the newspapers – page 7, page 4, page 2, page 12 in the shameful case of one  supposed quality daily, and page 27 in The Sun, where the news might have done most good. Only the Left-wing Guardian, to its lasting credit, put it on the front page where it belonged.

Many of those who most needed to know the risks they run will never have heard of this survey at all.

I cannot fathom this double standard. Think of our regular panics – mad cow disease, salmonella in eggs, swine flu, brain tumours from mobile phones, the wild fear of exposure to sunshine. Most of these, if not all of them, are trivial or mistaken.

But when a reputable, thorough and respected scientific survey shows a measurable danger to the brain from a drug that is widely used by the elite classes and their children, nothing happens.

Worse, our society continues to weaken the already feeble laws against it, with police officers instructed to issue meaningless ‘cannabis warnings’ to those caught with it.

The 40-year publicity campaign for dope, provided gratis by dozens of rock stars (who can flourish however stupid they are), has been so effective that 13-year-olds who smoke it do not even think it is a drug.

And untold numbers of criminal parasites make a tidy living by running chains of hydroponic cannabis farms in the attics of suburban houses. In fact, it is one of Britain’s few agricultural success stories of modern times.

When future Chinese historians ponder our national collapse, laughing softly as they do so, I think they may well note that this was the society that banned T-bone steaks while it decriminalised cannabis, and that it was the country that smoked itself stupid.

They will conclude that we deserved the irreversible national decline that followed. And they will be right.

Exterminate the 'Darlek checkouts'

I beg you to join my boycott of automated tills in supermarkets and other shops. If you don’t, human staff will vanish from these places and go into the dole queue instead.

Why should we help these big greedy businesses to make our lives more miserable, and to make more people unemployed? We were fooled by the banks in the same way, and realised too late that we would never again be able to discuss our accounts with anyone with a pulse and a brain. Surely once is enough.

And yet, day by day, I see my fellow shoppers marching to their own doom by submitting to the robot revolution.

A survey of 4,000 shoppers in The Grocer magazine claims that we actually want more of these things. Allegedly ‘the customer experience is improving’. I suspect that the truth is that the onslaught of the machines has been so rapid that few people have thought very hard about where it will lead.

Interestingly, in the USA, public resistance has been much stronger and the use of these supermarket Daleks has actually declined.

Perhaps that is because so many Americans are armed, and the supermarkets are afraid they will put a bullet through the next machine that sneers ‘unexpected item in bagging area’ as they struggle to scan their potatoes.

Another dose of costume claptrap

How does the BBC choose its classic serials? Does a committee convene and say ‘Gosh, this book will allow us to rent lots of old cars, spend a fortune on clothes and hire some ravishing young actresses with generous mouths? Oh, and we can have some smoking so everyone knows it’s in the past’?

I think so. And afterwards, some poor sap has to turn the wretched thing into a drama – as with Parade’s End.

How can the nation not laugh as Benedict Cumberbatch, in heavy-duty tweeds from head to toe, fornicates furiously with a complete stranger in a railway carriage, soon after intoning that he is a stern Tory who believes in monogamy and chastity?

     *************************************************************

Alas for poor old Sir Rhodes Boyson, a man too principled for politics, disdained and patronised by the Tory smoothies who made him an MP and a Minister, but didn’t listen to him.

Sir Rhodes, who has died at the age of 87, was a great teacher and a superb headmaster, angry and sad at the wrecking of the grammar schools because it destroyed the hopes of bright poor children (such as he had been).

It’s interesting to note that many of the things this good, generous man believed to be right and necessary are now actually illegal, including the cane and the creation of new grammar schools.

Compare and contrast with the Transport Secretary, Ms Justine Greening, who became and remained an MP largely because she stuck carefully to local issues, such as aircraft noise, which are really the job of councillors, and mentioned conservatism as little as possible.

And now that she finds herself in a government that wants to blast her London constituency with extra aircraft noise, what can she do, and what is the point of her?

     **************************************************************

If the Houses of Parliament have to close down for repairs, will we at last notice that our current rulers are pygmies, scurrying about in the ruins of a lost civilisation?

I hope so. The gorgeous grandeur of the buildings makes these dreary people look more significant.

If they had to hold their debates in an exhibition centre in Milton Keynes, we’d see them for what they really are.

     **************************************************************

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A Truly Lost World

Each time I re-read my favourite thriller The Rose of Tibet by Lionel Davidson, I am caught by a few words as the hero (if such he is) recalls ‘rapt, jammy evenings by the fire with the “Children’s Encyclopaedia”’ or something very like that.

This reminiscence is prompted by his first real experience of Tibet itself, which makes him realise coldly how far from home he is. Davidson never went there, and simply imagined it from books and maps, rather convincingly in my view. But what would I know? I haven’t managed to get to Tibet either, only to Bhutan next door.

He is no doubt recalling blurred, greenish photographs of monks and other Tibetans, large men blowing huge horns, monasteries clinging to high hillsides, and ancient, incomprehensible ceremonies under the mighty walls of Lhasa.

My view of the world was largely formed by Arthur Mee’s books, some in a holiday home we used to rent in West Wittering (later made notorious by Marianne Faithfull, but then a most respectable seaside resort), some on shelves in my grandfather’s eccentric home in Portsmouth, with its piles of defunct fretwork wireless sets, its mangle and its air-raid shelter too solid to be demolished.

Outside it is a chilly grey day in Southern England, lapped in safety. The great moat of the sea is just to the south. The soft shapes of the Downs are to the north. England is secure, prosperous, solid and unchanging. And here in these cramped pages are pictures and accounts of an exotic, impossibly distant world inhabited by, well, foreigners and strange wild beasts.

There, there is no safety, no moat against invasion and the hand of war, and there are jagged, unfriendly mountains and sucking, snake-infested swamps instead of soft sheep-cropped hills and quiet woodlands. There is adventure, uncertainty, excitement – all the things that are not to be found in the comfortable counties served by the dark green trains of the Southern Region of British Railways.

This picture of abroad, as it turned out, was truer than I knew, and I have been privileged to see for myself many of the places those ancient encyclopaedias first alerted me to. I wlll never get over my visit to Kashgar, or my first sight of the Himalayas, or of Persepolis. But alongside it ran the memory of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book ‘the Lost World’ (whose title was borrowed by Michael Crichton a few years ago, surely consciously. It must be 50 years since I read this book, and the other day I turned to it again.

I was surprised both by what I remembered and what I didn’t. Three particular moments I recalled as if I had read them yesterday. Other scenes were vaguely familiar. Others were wholly unfamiliar. I knew the names of all the major characters, especially of Professor Challenger, a character Doyle invented, I think, as part of his struggle to escape the monster of Sherlock Holmes, which he had created but could not control, and of Lord John Roxton, who I am told may have been modelled on the sad figure of Sir Roger Casement.  

I would be surprised if it is read at all any more – not because it isn’t a great story, for it is. The party set out to find a remote plateau in South America where dinosaurs and pterodactyls still dwell. You’ll have to read it to find out what happens. But it is of course dogged by the racial stereotypes of its time -1912. So it is full of expressions and sentiments which no modern teacher or librarian could permit.

It is also, like the now-dead Boy’s Own Paper and the Children’s Newspaper of my boyhood, written in a complex, literate style which Doyle assumed would be accessible and normal for boys as young as nine or ten.

Yet it has lived in my memory for half a century, and may well have helped stimulate the mind of the man who wrote Jurassic Park and so gave the modern world its own enthralling chance to imagine what would happen if modern man met living dinosaurs.

I won’t be posting here for ten days or so (apart from my Mail on Sunday columns), unless Russell Brand or some other opponent drags me from my hiding place. I’ve said what I wish to say about the drugs issue, I direct the defenders of Bahrain to the precise wording of my original post on that subject, and, to those who wonder how I do at ‘University Challenge’, the answer is ‘not as well as I used to’, because of the pesky science questions, and because the music questions are often about forms of music about which I am not in the least ashamed to be ignorant.

Of course, I did once take part in the programme, and was a member of the winning team in a contest between writers for unpopular and popular newspapers. I contributed a reasonable amount to that victory (though Tony Parsons contributed much more), but it isn’t evident as in those days teams tended to channel their answers to bonus questions through the captain rather more than they do now.

Oh, and for the ninetieth time,  my point about science questions is that they are not general knowledge science questions, of the sort an educated person might reasonably be expected to know (these might involve the history of science, the discoveries of major scientists etc). They are specific knowledge questions, which only an expert could answer. So they have no place in a general knowledge quiz. And most of them go unanswered.

Adam Smith joins the Drugs Lobby – or ‘Who should be embarrassed?’

A person grandiosely describing himself as ‘Policy Director’ at the Adam Smith Institute has placed an article on the Internet, under the imprint of that Institute, in which he denounces my new book on drugs without having read it. Indeed, he proudly announces that he has  not read it, and has no intention of doing so. Is this what ‘Policy Directors’ at the Adam Smith Institute do?  Apparently. You may read it here.

I have this picture in my mind of some teenage ideologue, barely out of university, brusquely giving orders to a roomful of cowed and shamefaced policies, which have fallen on hard times and must therefore submit to this treatment without complaint. ‘Stand there!’ He barks. ‘Underpin this!’ .  ‘You two! Yes, you, over there! You should be more consistent with each other!’  The poor policies have been enticed off the street with promises of warmth, food and wages, and now find that they must pay an awful price for this.  Inwardly, they think bitterly ‘How has it come to this? That I should be Directed about the place by a person who proudly says he hasn’t read the books he criticises? ‘ Outwardly, they smile and obey.

I rather hope that Unison, or some even more stroppy trade union, sends an organiser to sign up these poor mishandled policies, and gets them to stage a strike. My suggested slogan for their placards, as they picket the Adam Smith Institute, would be  ‘No Bloviation without Cogitation!’  and ‘Read first. Pontificate afterwards!’

I have not, it is true, paid much attention to the Adam Smith Institute for a while. Though the name suggests an august establishment, reached by climbing a flight of marble steps and passing through a pillared classical portico, into a cool and thought-inducing inner courtyard, I don’t think it quite lives up to its title. If its policies are directed by the person whose smirking portrait adorns this article, then you might be more likely to find it , surrounded by 4X4 motor cars, on some industrial estate near a Motorway interchange and service area on the M25. It has long struck me as a rather tiresome body which –like the BBC and the fashionable Left - has confused classical liberalism with conservatism. It therefore has no problem with the cultural revolution, since (unlike Adam Smith himself, who wrote, amongst other things ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’) it is uninterested in the moral conditions without which freedom rapidly becomes licence, and worse.

The author of this attack upon me also appears to be an enthusiast for Miss Ayn Rand, that anti-religious apostle of the higher selfishness. So an attack from this quarter isn’t really much different in quality and nature from the regular assaults I receive from straightforward leftist cultural revolutionaries, who openly despise conscience, morality and self-restraint. It is one of the two tragedies of modern conservatism (the first being that political Toryism is more interested in office than principle) that the think-tank world is dominated by nominal conservatives who support intervention abroad and licence at home.

Now, I would be the first to recognise that it is hard to summarise a book of around 300 pages in a single extract in a newspaper. I am untroubled by anyone who says that the extract in the Mail on Sunday did not fully address all the issues involved.  

But the author of the attack on me must surely recognise that, until he has read the book, it is unsafe to dismiss it with words such as these :

‘But his [my]argument – that cannabis is much more dangerous than is commonly believed – was staggeringly weak. His justification for this premise in full:

“The cannabis user can cause terrible distress to others. He could wreck his life and the lives of his friends and close family through irreversible mental illness. He could destroy his good prospects. Its use by teenagers is associated with under-achievement in school. Many who fail in school go on to fail in life, and so become an unquenchable grief to those who love them, and a costly burden to us all.

“Campaigners for cannabis legalisation often claim that the drug, especially in comparison with alcohol, promotes peaceful behaviour. I am unconvinced by this broad claim, partly because of the frequent newspaper accounts of violent acts by people who are known cannabis users. . . .

“There are also several cases, which I have for the most part set aside, of killings by mentally ill people who have been taking cannabis.

“It is not possible to say whether they were ill in the first place because of cannabis, or whether they were already ill for some other reason, and cannabis has made their problems worse.”

That’s it. No survey data, no medical evidence – nothing, except some specious anecdotes and flimsy correlations. Contrast this with actual, you know, medical research which says, basically, that it’s not good for you, but you could do worse. There isn’t a clear link between cannabis use and violence to others. The risks of psychosis are slim. And Peter Hitchens may be surprised to learn that there have been several cases of killings by mentally ill people who have not been taking cannabis as well.’

Can you spot the flaw? Ah, yes. It’s those two little words ‘in full’. He has not read my case *in full*.   We know he hasn’t because a) he says he hasn’t and b) he says he isn’t going to. So there! Jolly well shan’t!

So he can’t in that case state that he is aware of my case in full, or purport to rebut it here. Can he? What do they teach them in those schools?

I recognise, and in my book acknowledge and discuss the difficulties of obtaining hard, indisputable evidence on this subject. I do so partly because I listen carefully to my opponents in this debate and I am aware of how much they rely on two lines of argument – one that ‘correlation is not causation’ and the other ,  that even the use of those surveys which tend to suggest that cannabis is dangerous is usually dismissed as ‘cherry-picking’. You’ll have to read the book to see how I deal with this problem in detail, and how careful I am to make no claims beyond what the facts support.

The difficulty is that, confronted with the great cloud of ‘anecdotal’ evidence such as the fate of Henry Cockburn and many more like him, and of the mental declines (charted, since my book went to the printers, in the recent study of Persistent Cannabis Users, and so no longer ‘anecdotal’), and also faced with the extreme difficulty of measuring such concepts as ‘mental illness’ ‘psychosis’ , ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘paranoia’ , and combining that with the general lack of enthusiasm among research bodies for examining the cannabis phenomenon,  what should a responsible society do? My critic thinks we should do nothing.

The jury is out, he says. But what if the jury never comes back? What if the evidence remains forever anecdotal and dispersed, and yet in thousands of homes tragedies are unfolding, as catastrophic for those involved as a terrorist attack would be for a city, but private, unrecorded, lacking the gravity and the media force to become politically important? Must we then do nothing, and watch as Hell strides brutally into the lives of our fellow-creatures? Is no preventive action to be allowed at all? Apparently so. If it doesn’t affect our Policy Director personally, then it doesn’t count.  

He states, apparently as fact rather than as his opinion ‘As an adult, I should be able to stick whatever I damn well like into my body. Provided that I am aware of the risks, nobody is better placed to make my personal cost/benefit calculation for any given action.’

How grown-up and how awfully brave to swear a bit while making this declaration. But has it never occurred to this Policy Director that others, either his close family, or his neighbours, or his work colleagues, or the taxpayers who may later have to shoulder the potentially lifelong consequences of the immeasurable risk he takes by sticking ‘what he likes’ into his body, might have some say in what he does?

Even the most primitive instrumental moral system, quite uninterested in the abuse of divine gifts or the moral squalor of deliberate self-stupefaction, might have something to say about that. Listening to the Policy Director is like watching an infant running gleefully about on a clifftop, shrieking with innocent laughter as he plays on the lip of death.  Like so many people in our immature society,  given responsibilities and platforms far too early in life to be worthy of them, he has no idea of the dangers he runs. But we will have to clear up the broken pieces afterwards, if the dangers turn out to be greater than he thought.

I’ve dealt here at other times with (and so am not silent about, though I am very bored by) the puerile Nutt-like comparisons between drug-taking, a meritless activity innocent of skill, self-discipline, careful training, courage or other moral qualities, and such risky activities as horse-riding (though as it happens, now you ask me,  I would happily see boxing banned by law).

He then diverts into bizarre comparisons such as ‘What about sex with people in high STD risk groups? What about driving to work instead of getting the train (twelve times less lethal than driving)?' I am unable to see any particular connection between these two. The first (if, as I suspect, he means undertaken without careful precautions) would be an act of self-indulgent folly comparable to drug-taking.  The other is a choice forced on most of those who do it by the simple fact that no train is available, or they can’t (thanks to the ‘free market ’ which subsidises roads and cars far more than trains) afford train travel.

And he opines: ‘He [me] might believe that the pleasure that some people take from driving is more important than the pleasure that some people take from using cocaine.’

Might I? What is he talking about? I don’t.  On what basis can he suggest that I might? As it happens, I loathe driving and do it only when I must, though I recognise that some people enjoy it. Though very few people, I think, drive *primarily* for pleasure, not is it an activity which needs to be justified by the pleasure it gives or doesn’t give.

After misrepresenting my position on alcohol, and then claiming that I am inconsistent because his mistaken version of my position is inconsistent,  the Policy Director declares ‘ If he does, then he is simply advocating for a law based on Peter Hitchens’s own preferences, and is certainly not a serious thinker.’

I don’t much care if the Policy Director believes I am a ‘serious thinker’ or not. Accolades and criticisms of this kind are only valid when the person involved has proved that he is qualified to issue them. I see little evidence of serious thought, or even of unserious thought, in this construction. But the jibe about ‘preferences’ is surely without merit. Here am I, trying through open debate to influence a free society in a direction which I think wise. I think it wise because I think it would be beneficial to many people. I present in my book, which the Policy Director will not read,  both moral (for those who understand them) and utilitarian arguments (for those who are open to them) to explain the basis of this opinion. To that extent, and to that extent only, I am advocating (not ‘advocating for’, this is a redundancy, as this lofty critic of my writing abilities should surely know) laws based on my own preferences. But isn’t that what everyone does, who enters the debate about how we should govern ourselves?

Amusingly, the Policy Director (having criticised my writing), then pronounces (or perhaps directs)  that my writings should be ‘mocked’ and ‘ignored’. Well, as Bertie Wooster almost said of Roderick Spode when he found that Spode was simultaneously leading a fascist organisation and designing frilly ladies’ underwear , ‘One or the other, Mr Policy Director. But not both.’

There’s even this priceless barb: ‘Apparently Hitchens has admitted trying 'illegal drugs'. Why hasn't he handed himself into the authorities?’.

Well, since my (many times stated) argument relies rather heavily on the proposition that the authorities cannot be bothered to prosecute current offences of drug possession where there is clear material evidence of it , what logic or consistency would require me to, or even remotely suggest that I should, turn myself in to the police over an offence committed in (I think) 1965 for which there is no such evidence?

Talking of prosecutions, a reading of my book, when it comes out, will set him right on another point. He says : ‘Even still, it's quite an overstatement to say that there is a “de facto decriminalization” of drugs in Britain. There are over 10,000 people in jail in the UK for specific drugs offences, and many more for drugs-related offences.’

Yes, but what offences are these? And what, more importantly, are they not?  A large part of my argument is that the de facto decriminalisation of drug possession has been accompanied by a propaganda hysteria against ‘evil dealers’, and that the misrepresentation of cannabis as ‘soft’ has been necessarily accompanied by the portrayal of heroin and cocaine as bogeymen, rather than as  substances comparable to cannabis, equally dangerous in their different ways, or (in my view) in some ways less dangerous because the damage they do is not always so irreversible. Thus it is still quite possible to go to prison for selling or growing drugs which it is effectively legal to consume. I agree that this is absurd, but it is an absurdity rooted in the whole nature of covert, rather than overt, decriminalisation. My book will explain this to those who choose to read it, but not to those who do not.

I will however, provide here a sneak preview of the closing words of the preface : ‘I can only hope that this book manages to open a few generous minds to the truth, while preparing myself for the usual abuse.’

Bahrain – a Challenge Repeated

After I compared the coverage of Syria and Bahrain, I received (among others) this very clearly and competently written posting from Jessica Willard: ‘Mr. Hitchens seems to have swallowed the romantic tale of a crushed revolution that the well-funded political opposition in Bahrain want you to believe. The only problem is that while it may look accurate from afar, if you actually lived in Bahrain you would know what a fascinating tale of fantasy it really is. Doctors were not arrested for treating patients and Saudi Arabia did not invade -- or even have a role in dealing with protests. They secured strategic vital interests like those related to the oil industry. Were there some excesses in Bahrain in the spring of 2011 by the government? Indeed, and the government is the ONLY party that has stepped up to face accountability with an independent fact-finding mission. In the meantime, both the theocratically guided Wefaq and the radical violent youth known as the Feb14 Coalition have not joined any efforts for dialogue and political resolution. I have lived in Bahrain for quite some time and I feel confident they are on the right path of development and reform, when clearly Syria is not. I realize you have no love of the Arab world, Mr. Hitchens, but at least try to be accurate.’

On Monday I replied with this challenge:

‘In response to those who have contributed in support of the Bahrain government, I made no particular comment on the matter, except for the imbalance and selectivity of Western concern.  I can only go on what I’ve read. But I’d like Jessica Willard  (who says :’ Doctors were not arrested for treating patients and Saudi Arabia did not invade -- or even have a role in dealing with protests. They secured strategic vital interests like those related to the oil industry.) to comment on the following:

First ( from the Daily Telegraph, 15th June) :’ BAHRAIN faced renewed international scrutiny yesterday after its court of appeal upheld the convictions of nine Shia doctors and nurses arrested during last year's thwarted pro–democracy uprising. And the Independent of the same date (sourced to AP) :’ An appeals court has sentenced nine medical staff accused of aiding last February's anti-government uprising to jail terms, while setting free another nine. The court upheld 15-year sentences against two doctors who fled Bahrain. The other sentences ranged from five years to one month.

The verdicts come nearly eight months after the 20 defendants were jailed for between five and 15 years by a now-disbanded security tribunal, set up by the Sunni monarchy as part of crackdowns against Shia-led protests. A retrial in a civilian court was later ordered.

Many of the medics were working at the Salmaniya hospital in Manama when security forces violently suppressed the protests ‘

A judge ruled that the nine, detained in a police raid on a hospital used to treat protesters wounded by the security forces, were guilty of plotting to overthrow the kingdom's Sunni royal family. Although their sentences were reduced, and nine of their colleagues were acquitted, the decision led to outrage from international human rights groups who have always viewed the case as politically motivated.’

And from ‘The Times’ of the same date, bylined ‘Hugh Tomlinson : ‘A court in Bahrain has sentenced nine doctors to up to five years in jail for supporting anti-government protests last year (Hugh Tomlinson writes). Nine other medics, including six women, were acquitted. The doctors were arrested in March last year and accused of using blood bags to exaggerate wounds, stashing weapons in a hospital and using ambulances to run guns.’

They denied the charges and said they confessed under torture. Opposition groups claim that the doctors were persecuted for treating protesters’. She might also give us her thoughts on the Amnesty International statement dated 15th June 2011, and to be found here

I might also invite her comment on this report from ‘the Times’ of 15th March 2011: ‘Saudi Arabian troops and armoured vehicles crossed into Bahrain yesterday amid fears that the Royal Family was preparing for a final assault to crush anti-government protests that have crippled the island kingdom.
Saudi officials said 1,000 troops had crossed the causeway separating the countries on Sunday night, increasing sectarian tensions in Bahrain.

‘Witnesses on the King Fahd causeway reported that a further 200 vehicles crossed yesterday afternoon to expand the "Peninsula Shield Force" raised by the regional Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to support the Bahraini Government after a month of violent unrest. The UAE also pledged to send forces.

Opposition groups denounced the move as an act of war. In a letter to the UN Security Council and Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, the parties called for immediate intervention by the West. "We consider the arrival of any soldier or military vehicle into Bahraini territory ... an overt occupation of the Kingdom of Bahrain and a conspiracy against the unarmed people of Bahrain," the opposition statement said.

In what way am I therefore ‘inaccurate’ in referring, as I did  to ‘what looked to some people rather like an invasion by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, whose forces arrived in British-built vehicles’. Or in saying’ A  particularly unpleasant aspect of the repression has been the punishment of doctors for simply treating those wounded in street clashes.’ ? By the way, what does she mean when she says ‘I realize you have no love for the Arab world’. Does she? Do I? How does she know? ‘

I can find no trace of any response to this challenge from Ms Willard. Can I therefore assume that she concedes that her criticism of me was mistaken?

An Antidote to Anecdote – Undeniable Evidence that Cannabis is bad for you

The son of a friend of mine suffered severe, irreversible mental illness after he used cannabis in his early teens. He has since found, in conversations with friends of his own age, that this is an extraordinarily common experience.  A happy, healthy bright child smoked cannabis in his (it usually is his rather than her) early teens, and his personality altered, his hopes were dashed and he is now in many ways a burden on those who love him.

He seethes at the way in which complacent people will dismiss these accounts as ‘anecdotal’, as if that meant they didn’t mean anything, or have any wider significance. How many such anecdotes, he asks, would amount to evidence on which one might act? Part of the problem, as I discuss in my soon-to-be-published book , ‘The War we Never Fought’  is that mental illness is itself a very vague category, hard to define and hard to measure objectively. I have dealt with this in my riposte to those who have referred (and will no doubt again refer) me to the inconclusive Keele Study, which a) used a database which almost certainly excludes many cannabis users, and b) referred to ‘Schizophrenia’, a category whose borderlines shift and are disputed, and for which there is no objective measure; also it is not necessarily the only form of mental illness which might be associated with cannabis use.

In fact my old opponent Peter Reynolds, rather absurdly, crowed here in a recent posting over the fact that the extract from my book, published on this weblog and in the Mail on Sunday, was careful to make no absolute claims about the effects of cannabis on human health.  He mistakenly attributes this caution to some sort of outside intervention. Because I pay attention to my opponents in debate, I have become more cautious about such claims. That is not because I have in any way ceased to believe that cannabis is a major menace and the most dangerous drug now loose in our society. I absolutely believe that to be true, and I am sure that it will eventually become the consensus, too late for many who will suffer as a result. I just concede that this very hard to prove, though I do not think this should tie our hands, any more than they should have been tied during the long period when  the powerful ‘anecdotal’ evidence of a connection between cigarettes and lung cancer was not conclusively established as a link.

Many ordinary people simply don’t understand, for instance, that research into scientific questions is not some idealistic kingdom of the mind in which equal resources are constantly devoted to the study of all open questions. What gets researched, and what does not, and how, and for what purpose,  is decided by commercial interest,  by fashion and by personal preference.

‘Peer-review’ believed by some to be an absolute  guarantee of propriety (and conversely the same people believe that its absence means the research is automatically disreputable), is often nothing of the kind and I am told that some scientists are persuaded (who knows how?) by big pharmaceutical companies, to put their names on research they have had nothing to do with . And in a society where drug-taking is socially acceptable in a huge layer of influential people, where is the money, or the impulse,  to come from for a thorough examination of the cannabis problem? In whose interest would it be, apart from parents striving to save their children from ruining their lives, in a demoralised world where nobody cares about that?

Now, like a good deed in a naughty world, comes the following report, which was carried in a rather subdued manner in Tuesday’s newspapers. Most of the reports  were on left-hand pages, well known in the trade to attract less attention than right-hand pages, ,and reserved for ‘important but not exciting’ developments which the papers feel a duty to carry, but don’t want to emphasise. (‘The Guardian’  was a shining exception to this, putting it on the front page, as was the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, which treated the subject seriously if nervously)

Here is the summary:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/22/1206820109

On your behalf I’ve bought the full report, so I may be able to answer questions that readers may have, that are not covered in the summary. Given the ‘I’ve smoked cannabis for years and it never did me any harm’ argument, advanced by so many users of this drug, I was interested to see that study members nominated people who ‘knew them well’ to comment on them. As the report puts it :  ‘Informants reported observing significantly more attention and memory problems among those with more persistent cannabis dependence’. A pity they didn’t ask the subjects of these inquiries whether they thought they’d suffered any such decline.

Personally, I’m quite unsurprised by this report, as I ‘m sure many contributors here will be, especially those who have graphically recounted the effects of cannabis use on friends, acquaintances, flatmates and relatives. I’m unconvinced by its belief that the risks stop in adult life, and struck by the weirdly ‘balanced’ statement at the beginning that ‘cannabis, the most widely used illicit drug in the world, is increasingly being recognised for both its toxic and its therapeutic properties’.

Is this in fact a scientific statement? What is it doing at the very start of such a study?  Are the ‘therapeutic’ properties of cannabis seriously established by any reliable objective experimentation? Can they ever be, given the extreme difficulty of using a placebo in experiments involving this drug? How can anyone be unaware that they have been given a placebo, when they fail to feel the well-known intoxicant effects of THC? And how can they distinguish those effects from genuine relief from the diseases supposedly being treated?

But there. I also thought that one of the researchers,  interviewed on the BBC on Tuesday about it, seemed anxious to stress that the dangers were limited to adolescents. Are they? Or is it rather that IQ provides an objectively measurable scale by which someone’s powers of cognition and memory can be shown to have declined over a period, whereas no such undisputed scale exists for the other symptoms of long-term cannabis use, and that the Dunedin study, from which these facts were quarried, offers no information about the damage to intellect, enterprise, independence of mind, or ability to reason, which seem to me to be common signs of cannabis use among adults. As for mental illness, what is it? How much of it escapes official notice? How much of it can be classified statistically, or will be detected by the authorities? And how will you find the answers to questions which few researchers even bother to ask? It is the same with ‘antidepressants’. Until it is in someone’s commercial or political interest interest to inquire, we are in a twilight of ignorance, with nothing but ‘anecdote’ after ‘anecdote’ after ‘anecdote’, which may mean everything or nothing, but about which we are incurious.

The caution of my language reflects my respect for the scientific method. It conceals my continuing fury at the complacency of those who could give us the knowledge we need, but won’t; those who irresponsibly belittle the problem; and above all against those  who arrogantly say (or sneakily imply)  that the ruin of a certain number of other people’s lives  is a price worth paying for their unrestricted pleasure

The Viewer gets a Wannoping, too much science on University Challenge - and other Topics

I’ll get round to the hilariously bad new BBC Classic Serial in a bit. But first the other topics. There’s a contributor here called ‘R’, who comes and goes, exuding smugness as he makes what he imagines to be devastating comments. He’s fond of repeating something I have written and then saying ‘Oh dear’, as if it’s perfectly obvious that I’ve said something silly.

Take his latest : "How can anyone be unaware that they have been given a placebo, when they fail to feel the well-known intoxicant effects of THC?" Oh dear.

Well, who said : ‘One of the obvious complications in the medical use of cannabis is that the window between its therapeutic effects and the cannabis-induced high is often narrow’? Which I should say was more or less my point? Why, none other than Professor Leslie Iversen in ‘The Science of Marijuana’, published by OUP in 2000.

What Mr ‘R’ then says appears to me to be gibberish: ‘The whole idea of a placebo is that it has no effect on the body (or at least, the area in which the drug under testing is acting). The only effects from placebos are those produced by the body. Given the effects of THC (i.e. it doesn't make your toes fall off for example) it is highly likely that the body *can* reproduce the effects.’

Eh? THC does intoxicate. If the placebo doesn’t intoxicate, then any fool will know he’s been given the sugar pill. If it does, then the intoxication might provide the illusion of relief, when in fact it was just intoxication.

Mr ‘R’ continues :’I seriously think that your arguments would be better founded if you took time to read about scientific research and methodology, and use scientific papers to back up your points. Perhaps a basic understanding of science would also be useful.’

I seriously think Mr ‘R’ is not as clever as he thinks he is.

For there is also this, which he for some reason seems to regard as a giant intellectual triumph, in some way undermining my whole argument: Once again, he quotes me  ‘The drugs named in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 are illegal for a simple reason. The State still accepts that, even in their pure form, there is no safe dose.’ . And once again he stands back, with a smirk playing about his lips, and declares, as if it is self-evident ‘ ‘And, once again, you show your astounding lack of scientific knowledge.’

Really? How? What is the ‘safe dose’ of Heroin, Cocaine or Cannabis? Let alone of LSD or MDMA or Ketamine?  Isn’t the fact that such drugs, even in medicalised forms where applicable,  can only be obtained through prescription, and therefore under medical supervision, a straightforward affirmation of the fact that they are not safe in unqualified hands? Is ‘R’ aware of the fuss that hospitals make about giving morphine even to the obviously dying?   I’ve seen talk of Codeine. Well, even when this is sold in tiny doses by chemists, usually in combination with paracetamol,  it cannot be bought directly without counter-staff interrogating the purchaser and in many cases warning him of a supposed danger of ‘addiction’ What lack of scientific knowledge do I show? What superior knowledge does this anonymous person ( who I recently caught out in a childishly simple logical fallacy, over my complaint to the BBC)  possess? Oh, of course. He disagrees with me, so he must be clever.

I confess to not having read the works of Ford Madox Ford. The people who have pressed them on me have not, in general, been the sort of people whose advice I’d take on anything else. A flip through ‘Parade’s End’, now in one volume, reveals a great deal of dots…like this … and some…tortured… sentences which betray Mr Ford’s German… origins in their backwards-rolling splendour.

My Daily Mail colleague Simon Heffer has rightly pointed out some blazing faults with Tom Stoppard’s dramatisation  - the suffragette Valentine Wannop ( what a lovely name, though) sporting a hairstyle that would have had her driven from any Vicarage with howls of execration before 1914, and indeed probably before about 1928, and even then …  and characters referring to a parson as ‘Reverend Jones’ (I forget the actual name), an Americanism that Ford may possibly have fallen victim to, but is just wrong.  It’s ‘The Reverend David Jones’ the first time, and ‘Mr Jones’ thereafter, in case you’re wondering .

But my favourite is the way in which the chief character, played of course by the BBC’s new actor-in-chief Benedict Cumberbatch, declares that he stands for monogamy and chastity. In which case, why is he trapped in a shotgun marriage, after possibly ( and more possibly not ) impregnating a woman with whom he is shown enthusiastically fornicating in a railway carriage, having just met her? Chastity?....Chastity? Eh.

Why is this stuff made? Why has so much money been spent on it? For instance, couldn’t the BBC have had just as much fun filming Alan Judd’s clever little novel ‘the Kaiser’s last kiss’, irritatingly  hard-to-find( I had to obtain it in a large-print edition from my public library, the only one they had).

This neat little novel-cum-thriller, set in the Dutch home of the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm as the German army invades Holland in 1940, has sex, spying costumes, flashbacks and of course Nazis, coming out of its ears. It contains few dots, moves rapidly, and explores some very interesting ideas in an entertaining and sometimes rather moving way.  There’s a great female part in it .

Another good dramatization would be the same author’s ‘The Devil’s own Work’, a neat combination of the Faust legend and J.Meade Falkner’s ‘The Lost Stradivarius’, as well as a biting commentary on the reputations of modern novelists . or there’s Kingsley Amis’s short story ‘Dear Illusion’, about a poet at the end of his powers, who is – even so – given a major award for a worthless book of verse and brilliantly subverts the award ceremony. Tom Stoppard, many of whose plays I saw when they were new and young, could make a wonderful job of any of these and, while Mr Cumberbatch might not be ideal for any of the parts, there are still other actors around, and available.

Finally, to University Challenge, the subject of a laudatory BBC radio 4 programme last Saturday. It’s not a question of ‘is it as good as it was?’ It’s a question of ‘ is it as good as it ought to be?’ .

I was mildly irritated by the edition broadcast on TV last Monday , and so I set out to analyse it. First, it is amazing how much time they use up  on introductions, chit-chat about the history of the colleges involved. Do we need to know where they all come from?

Close contests are so often cut off just when things are warming up that I was struck to see that the actual quiz didn’t get going till more than three minutes into the programme ( which itself lasts less than half an hour).

Is ‘Fluvial Geography’ general knowledge? I don’t think so. Nor did any of the contestants. They scored nought out of three on the subject (in which the obligatory weekly reference to kilometres, or some other foreign measurement,  was made), and it took them ages to do so.

A chemistry starter question stumped both teams. A bizarre music section on people singing duets with Tony Bennett used up ages, for one right answer. Three bonus questions on the geology of igneous rocks produced guesses and embarrassing silences. A starter question on cubes  failed to elicit a right answer from either side. A medical question bombed. Two out of three questions on alloys (also not general knowledge) were, amazingly,  answered. But a chemistry question fell flat and a series of questions on dressmaking terms, which might have been reasonable in the 1950s but which might as well have been in one of the Finno-Ugric tongues in this age, produced wild guesses.

There was a tiny bit of history, about how various English monarchs had been related to each other, and Thomas Cromwell. There was more literature (flower references in Shakespeare, plus a bit of Samuel Beckett and Shelley).  We discovered, as I think I knew, that most people under 30 have never read ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and so haven’t seen John Tenniel’s wonderful, haunting illustrations of that marvellous book. But scientific subjects, maths and other Non-general Knowledge (Fluvial Geography??? Dressmaking terms???) seem to me to have had a far greater share than was justified. As for music, isn’t Tony Bennett about as far away either from contemporary (which the contestants might reasonably have been expected to know) or classical (which they really ought to know) as you could possibly get?  And does Jeremy Paxman really know the answers, as you might think from his tone of voice when he corrects some of the mistakes?

Grade Inflation, Massacres and Paper Rounds

Here’s a thought about all the teachers and others whimpering about the brutal slash-and-burn of their pupils’ hopes, by that wicked Mr Gove.

 

What if it turns out that University admissions tutors, and the people who decide whether to declare a school is failing *actually read the newspapers, watch the TV and listen to the radio*? I know this is unlikely, but if they do, then they will know that GCSE and A-level grades awarded from the summer of 2012 are more valuable than those awarded before that date.  And they will act accordingly.

 

Astonishing as it may be in Britain, the adjustments of the past few months have shown that exam grades can go down as well as up, and intelligent people can work out from this that the old grade boundaries cannot be applied.

 

This may mean that admissions tutors and education bureaucrats may have to work a bit harder, and use their judgement more carefully. But what’s wrong with that?

 

I say this because if I had anything to do with this, it would have required a much bigger adjustment (but all the people involved would also have need to read the newspapers etc)  the GCSE itself would not be tweaked, but abolished, along with the comprehensive school system it was designed to serve. That would mean the revival both of O levels  (a move now ruled out by Mr Gove) and of something like the CSE, plus a new range of serious vocational qualifications in the new technical schools which would emerge from the dissolution of the failed comprehensives. By the way, there’d also be a lower school leaving age, which would send the youth unemployment figures haywire to begin with, though its long-term effects would be beneficial.

 

And if these things were done, the people now raging about a mild dose of grade deflation would be exploding with a fury that would make the current row sound like a playground squabble.

 

I am under no illusions about this. This screeching and yelling is supposed to frighten any future reformers. A serious reordering of British schools would be fiercely resisted by an educational establishment that has long had a stake in the current anti-authority, egalitarian mess. Its leaders would have much to fear from true reform. Any serious teacher, truly committed to passing on the knowledge and wisdom of the ages to her or his charges, would on the other hand be pleased.

 

Oh, and note that there’s at least one instance of the old ‘How dare you say we didn’t work hard for our exams?’ standard-issue dud arguments among the comments. Nobody said that the GCSE pupils (or ‘students’ as we must now call them) didn’t work hard. See if you can find any instance of me saying so.  The drilling and repetitive grind of these exams is appalling, and I feel sorry for those who have to go through it.  It makes it even worse that, at the end of it all, they know so little. That is why I mentioned the Engineering Council and Durham University, both of whom, for years, provided objective measures of the true standards of these exams. And during all that time, the answer we got back was ‘How dare you criticise these hard working young people?’

 

This was a propaganda lie, into which the children themselves were cruelly recruited by their teachers, whose cause it really was (too many of them are political egalitarians who favour the weak, authority-free sort of non-education we now provide, and who know they must fight the exposure of the tragic results of their opinions).

 

It is much like the standard propaganda response to any attempt to point out that there is no objective evidence for the existence of ‘Dyslexia’, or ‘Dylsexia’ as I sometimes prefer to spell it.  And the real reason for it is the widespread adoption of useless teaching methods. ‘How dare you call us thick?’ the children who have been ‘diagnosed’ with ‘Dyslexia’ then angrily ask, blaming the person who is telling the truth rather than the person who has failed to teach them to read.  To which the reply is, ‘I never called you thick. There is no connection between an ability to read and intelligence. If the teaching has been bad, you won’t learn to read, however bright you are’.  I said you were badly taught’.

 

Yet whatever and whenever I write about this subject the ‘You’re calling us thick’ non-argument will invariably appear, just as the ‘We worked incredibly hard and you are disheartening us’ argument appears in this debate. Who tells them to answer in this way? Why, those in whose interests it is that this piffle is never questioned, and who know most people will be frightened off by these slanders. It is a bit like someone going to the same dentist all his life, and then being told by that same dentist that all his teeth will have to come out because they are rotten and his gums are diseased. And someone saying  ‘Perhaps you should have gone to another dentist’. And the toothless patient turning on this critic for being so cruel, and the useless dentist saying to his betrayed and toothless patient ‘Quite. What a cruel man, to say that after all that pain and discomfort you’ve had to go through’.

 

**************

What a surprise to see the Syrian ‘Activists’ alleging yet another massacre this morning. Such a massacre is alleged whenever the cause of the ‘activists’ (ie that of Saudi Arabia) is flagging. Maybe there has been a massacre. I don’t know. Maybe a lot of people have been killed because our nice friends, the ‘activists’, have set up a base in the middle of a crowded residential area and the Syrian authorities have attacked it.

 

But what is guaranteed is that the BBC and the British Foreign office will unquestioningly parrot  and retail these claims, while treating as contemptible propaganda any counter-statements by the Syrian government. I don’t mind the scepticism about the Assad government. It’s perfectly proper. But one of the chief ways of exercising bias is to be selectively doubtful and selectively critical.

Establishing the truth about these claims is very difficult in a war zone. I have also been deeply suspicious of the use of massacres and mass graves by news organisations since my first visit to Iraq , soon after the Us-British invasion. I heard, on my shortwave radio, that a new mass grave had been uncovered near Hilla. The BBC reporter, already there, said the air was full of a terrible stench.

 

I felt I had better go and have a look (Anthony Blair at the time was saying that nobody who saw such mass graves could fail to support his invasion).

 

So, with my two colleagues ( an Iraqi Christian who was my interpreter, and the superb photographer Michael Thomas) ,  I hurried down to Hilla.  After much hunting, we found the site. It was indeed terrible. Relatives of the dead, mainly black-clad, veiled women,  were searching for confirmation of the horrible truth they already knew,  among the newly opened graves, finding old identity documents or copies of the Koran among bones, scraps of cloth and skulls.  Two things struck me. There was no stench, as these bodies had been in the ground for many years (they were victims of Saddam’s massacres after the West encouraged Iraqis to rise against him at the end of the First Gulf War in 1991) and in the fierce Iraqi sun they had long ago decomposed. Next, the sight, though moving and sobering, as death always is,  did not in any way destroy my reasoning process. I still did not support the invasion. I still don’t.

 

In response to those who have contributed in support of the Bahrain government, I made no particular comment on the matter, except for the imbalance and selectivity of Western concern.  I can only go on what I’ve read. But I’d like Jessica Willard  (who says :’ Doctors were not arrested for treating patients and Saudi Arabia did not invade -- or even have a role in dealing with protests. They secured strategic vital interests like those related to the oil industry.) to comment on the following:

First ( from the Daily Telegraph, 15th June) :’ BAHRAIN faced renewed international scrutiny yesterday after its court of appeal upheld the convictions of nine Shia doctors and nurses arrested during last year's thwarted pro–democracy uprising. And the Independent of the same date (sourced to AP) :’ An appeals court has sentenced nine medical staff accused of aiding last February's anti-government uprising to jail terms, while setting free another nine. The court upheld 15-year sentences against two doctors who fled Bahrain. The other sentences ranged from five years to one month.

 

The verdicts come nearly eight months after the 20 defendants were jailed for between five and 15 years by a now-disbanded security tribunal, set up by the Sunni monarchy as part of crackdowns against Shia-led protests. A retrial in a civilian court was later ordered.

 

Many of the medics were working at the Salmaniya hospital in Manama when security forces violently suppressed the protests ‘

 

A judge ruled that the nine, detained in a police raid on a hospital used to treat protesters wounded by the security forces, were guilty of plotting to overthrow the kingdom's Sunni royal family. Although their sentences were reduced, and nine of their colleagues were acquitted, the decision led to outrage from international human rights groups who have always viewed the case as politically motivated.’

 

And from ‘The Times’ of the same date, bylined ‘Hugh Tomlinson : ‘A court in Bahrain has sentenced nine doctors to up to five years in jail for supporting anti-government protests last year (Hugh Tomlinson writes). Nine other medics, including six women, were acquitted. The doctors were arrested in March last year and accused of using blood bags to exaggerate wounds, stashing weapons in a hospital and using ambulances to run guns.’

 

They denied the charges and said they confessed under torture. Opposition groups claim that the doctors were persecuted for treating protesters’. She might also give us her thoughts on the Amnesty International statement dated 15th June 2011, and to be found here

 

I might also invite her comment on this report from ‘the Times’ of 15th March 2011: ‘Saudi Arabian troops and armoured vehicles crossed into Bahrain yesterday amid fears that the Royal Family was preparing for a final assault to crush anti-government protests that have crippled the island kingdom.
Saudi officials said 1,000 troops had crossed the causeway separating the countries on Sunday night, increasing sectarian tensions in Bahrain.

‘Witnesses on the King Fahd causeway reported that a further 200 vehicles crossed yesterday afternoon to expand the "Peninsula Shield Force" raised by the regional Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to support the Bahraini Government after a month of violent unrest. The UAE also pledged to send forces.

Opposition groups denounced the move as an act of war. In a letter to the UN Security Council and Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, the parties called for immediate intervention by the West. "We consider the arrival of any soldier or military vehicle into Bahraini territory ... an overt occupation of the Kingdom of Bahrain and a conspiracy against the unarmed people of Bahrain," the opposition statement said.

 

In what way am I therefore ‘inaccurate in referring, as I did  to ‘what looked to some people rather like an invasion by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, whose forces arrived in British-built vehicles’. Or in saying’ A  particularly unpleasant aspect of the repression has been the punishment of doctors for simply treating those wounded in street clashes.’ ? By the way, what does she mean when she says ‘I realize you have no love for the Arab world’ . Does she? Do I? How does she know?

 

Mr Aspinall makes a puzzling intervention. Kim Philby, he says, wasn’t a traitor because he always supported the Soviets. I’m by no means sure that this is true anyway, and Yuri Modin, an NKVD veteran, says he was specifically recruited by Litzi Friedmann in pre-Hiter Vienna.

 

But even if it is, unless Philby declared his loyalty to the USSR when seeking employment with SIS ( and as I understand it he began his SIS involvement by writing pro-Franco reports for ‘The Times’ from Spain, which was hardly in tune with his world-reformer convictions) then he is still a traitor, isn’t he?  And what about those he effectively murdered by sending tem into Armenia, Georgia and Albania, and then betraying? Not to mention the Volkov incident in Turkey, the factual basis for the Hong Kong attempted defection in John le Carre’s ‘Tinker Tailor’? A man died horribly, and this country’s interests suffered, thanks to Philby’s treachery . Mr Aspinall may not be bothered by all this, but the Soviets drew their own conclusions. When he eventually arrived in Moscow, Philby was shocked to find that the KGB didn’t trust him and had no serious work for him. The Soviets, unlike Mr Aspinall, had decided that the charming ‘Kim’ was a four-letter man who had been useful to them when he was working for us – but for that reason was now no use to them any more, and worse than no use. Ha ha.  And so he drank himself to death