Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 313

Quiz Show: ‘We thought we were going to get TV … but TV has got us instead’.

I have at last managed to see for the second time the astonishingly good film ‘Quiz Show’, made in 1994 about the true-life scandals affecting American TV quiz shows in the 1950s. I first watched it on a long-ago weekend in Philadelphia, during a brief break in my then pursuit of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader who had been given a visa by Bill Clinton, to visit, propagandise and fund-raise in the USA. Somehow it fell to me, as Washington correspondent of another newspaper, to follow him around asking him unwelcome questions.

Mr Adams and I got on so well together that he once suggested in a Washington DC press conference that it was time I was  ‘decommissioned’. I felt a glow of pride, and something else as well, not quite so pleasant, whatever was it…?

But I digress. As I watched ‘Quiz Show’, I thought it must surely become a much-talked about classic.

It is a rather beautiful film, including a bold attempt to recreate the optimistic America of the 1950s (so very different from the grey, scraped, tired Britain of the same era), when TV was still a novelty. People who go on (in my view rather inexplicably) about the dull, dull, dull TV series ‘Mad Men’, standby of every magazine and fashion page for months past, might take a look at ‘Quiz Show’ to see a rather more lively and realistic recreation of the fashions, attitudes and manners of that time.

There are several wonderful moments in which the corruption of the soul is shown in exactly the form it takes in real life – that is, blithely smiling, very hard to resist, and clothed in acceptable excuses. There is also, in the character of Charles van Doren, an illustration of the old truth that the corruption of the best is the worst of all.

The heart of the plot is a Congressional investigation into the rigging of big-prize TV quiz shows. The director, Robert Redford, concentrates on Van Doren because he is a genuinely knowledgeable, well-read, thoughtful man, the youngest in a family of revered intellects and writers. At one stage he is shown at a family gathering, crammed with great literary names. His father refers to James Thurber casually as a friend, as he was. The men trade Shakespeare quotations and historical references. They don’t own TVs or watch TV and they aren’t frightened by the rapid takeover of culture by television, despite T.S. Eliot’s warning some years before, in a famous letter to the London ‘Times’.

In one scene freighted with foreboding, the young Van Doren gives his father Mark (played by the wonderful Paul Scofield) a TV set for his birthday. You know that this means the old, intellectual life at his handsome Connecticut farm will come to an end, just as it will end throughout the modern world as the great conformist box steals the minds of millions, and atrophies their imaginations.

I won’t give too much away in case any of you decide to watch the film, which was as good as I remembered it being, if not better with the passage of 18 years (the even older film ‘Witness’, another film that ought to be a classic but somehow isn’t, likewise stands up to the years very well). But there are two prophetic scenes: one in which a cynical character says there is no real point in having difficult quiz shows which need clever people to appear on them – easy ones with simple answers will do just as well (as it has proved) - and another in which the Congressional investigator sighs, ‘We thought we were going to get TV … but TV has got us instead’.

'Cushty, easily done!' A criminal's mocking words that sum up our injustice system

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

The pro-crime lobby who run our injustice system have two fixed beliefs.

One is that criminals are victims.

Their misdeeds are not their fault but the inevitable result of non-existent poverty.

They have no personal ability to overcome their backgrounds, and so it would be cruel to punish them.

The other is that prisons are a waste of money, an ‘expensive way of making bad people worse’ as the supposedly Right-wing Tory Home Secretary David Waddington said in 1990.

They would rather not have any prisons at all.

They keep the jails we have only because of tiresome public opinion, and because of newspapers like this one that hold fast to traditional ideas of right and wrong, justice and punishment.

That is why they deliberately run those prisons very badly – they are pointless, apologetic warehouses, largely under the control of the inmates and full of illegal drugs. 

Almost nobody is sent to these places until he or she is already a habitual, confirmed criminal.

They are then almost always swiftly released, after learning for certain what they have long suspected, that they have nothing to fear from the police or the courts.

Then the pro-crime liberals write reports pointing out how awful the prisons are (while ignoring the fact that their own ideas have caused this) and urging that even fewer people are sent to them.

As a result, crime increases so much that – despite ultra-liberal guidelines on sentencing – the prisons still fill and overflow.

Last summer’s mass disorders (wrongly called riots) were a direct result of this moronic policy.

Last week we saw two court cases which showed exactly what is going on.

Both are dismal and dispiriting.

Our existing political class, their heads crammed with the mental cotton wool of Sixties Leftism, will learn nothing from them.

But will you learn the crucial lesson, that the Tory Party is just as soppy, just as liberal and just as much your enemy as Labour?

Case One concerns Caroline Pattinson (pictured above), an abuser of heroin, which is supposed to be illegal but isn’t in practice.

Pattinson, 34, has committed 207 crimes in 20 years.

These include 108 convictions for theft, many for cruel frauds on pensioners. But until last Tuesday she had never been sent to prison, except on remand.

Now that she has, she’s not worried. Why should she be?

On being sentenced to 30 months (of which she will serve at most 15 months), she mockingly called out: ‘Cushty! Easily done!’

Case Two concerns Gordon Thompson, also 34, another child of post-Sixties Britain.

Thompson collected an 11½-year sentence for burning down a large shop in Croydon during the mass disorder.

This sounds tough, but once again I doubt if Thompson has much to fear from a modern British prison. The nastier you are, the easier it is to do time in these places.

In any case, I’ll be amazed if he serves more than six years, if that, before they find an excuse to tag him and send him home.

The sentences passed on those involved in the summer outbreak of mass greed and destructiveness have been heavier than usual, but purely for public relations reasons.

Normal lawbreakers continue to get the standard soft treatment.

Thompson already had 20 convictions (fare-dodging, beating up his wife, cocaine possession, carrying knives), and had been so exceptionally callous to his neighbours that the courts did occasionally manage to imprison him, though, as usual, too late and too feebly to do any good.

No, prison doesn’t work – unless it’s an austere place of punishment. But it is absurd to claim that it makes criminals out of harmless innocents.

It is the Permissive Society and our lavish Welfare State which are an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Gove’s schools fail the crucial test

Every Easter sees the same sterile battle between the teachers’ unions, whose conferences give platforms to unrepresentative, strike-happy loudmouths, and the Education Secretary, currently Michael Gove.

Mr Gove (like his many forerunners) knows that being attacked by such people is good for his image.

But it is not good for the country.

The real issue is what it has been since 1965.

Are schools places for pupils to learn, under authority, the things they need to know to be good and useful men and women?

Or are they to be laboratories of social engineering, designed to force equality and Left-wing ideas on all those who can’t afford private fees?

Mr Gove, who is no fool and so has no excuses, knows this perfectly well.

But he will not take the one step that would put it right – the return of academic selection.

Instead, he is trying to nationalise all the State schools in England (this is what the academy programme actually means), a bureaucratic non-solution that will give terrifying centralised power to a future Labour Education Secretary.

How is this conservative?

You can’t fool me with that spoonful of sugar

I shall keep on saying this till everyone notices.

The ‘health-and-safety’ frenzy that has reduced us all to quivering cowards in the face of the slightest risk is nothing to do with human rights or even political correctness. 

 

It is the direct fault of Margaret Thatcher’s and John Major’s Tory Governments, which introduced ambulance-chasing, no-win, no-fee lawyers into this country.

They did so with Section 58 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, and the Conditional Fee Agreements Regulations, passed as a Statutory Instrument in 1995. Repeal them.

Tory laws made us all cowards

I shall keep on saying this till everyone notices.

The ‘health-and-safety’ frenzy that has reduced us all to quivering cowards in the face of the slightest risk is nothing to do with human rights or even political correctness. 

It is the direct fault of Margaret Thatcher’s and John Major’s Tory Governments, which introduced ambulance-chasing, no-win, no-fee lawyers into this country.

They did so with Section 58 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, and the Conditional Fee Agreements Regulations, passed as a Statutory Instrument in 1995. Repeal them.

 

The one thing I learned when I visited North Korea is that it is not a serious threat, except to itself. It is a pathetic remnant of the Cold War, frantically hoping that the rich West will save it from Chinese domination.

Drunkenness (on cheap rice wine) is rife, there’s almost no electricity or petrol, the underfed soldiers’ weapons are obsolete and decayed. No wonder the much-trumpeted rocket fell into the sea.

Pity for the North Korean people, not fear of their ridiculous leader, should be our main response.

What do we know about Right and Wrong (and other subjects)? And some more lessons in how to argue

Once again we discover that what we are talking about is a profound moral division, rather than rival sets of research. That’s not to say that facts and research are unimportant, but one has to remember for what purpose it has been done, and by whom it has been commissioned, and if it gives a whole or partial version of the truth. I’ll come back to that, but may I first of all plead, yet again, with contributors here to reply to what has been said, rather than to a caricature of what has been said, or to things which have simply not been said at all.

I take as my example the words of Mr ‘Steve B’, who wrote:

‘As a child of the "Permissive Society and our lavish Welfare State" I can't quite reconcile this view of me with my father, a child of the halcyon 30s and 40s, who hit another teenager over the head with a hammer once he realised the foot stuck in a rabbit hole wasn't going to get free anytime soon. I'm a peace-loving guy, Peter, but my dad was a thug.’

This passage raises a number of questions about hammers, their availability, and about whose foot was stuck in a rabbit hole and why, and how Mr ‘B’ knows anything about this incident, and what happened afterwards. But that’s not my point.

Mr ‘B’ is asked to produce any quotation which justifies his use of the phrase ‘the halcyon 30s and 40s’. Where have I said this? Where have I ever suggested that the past was ‘halcyon’? Where have I ever said that the 1950s, or any other period, were a ‘golden age’? Never. Yet it is almost guaranteed that anyone who doesn’t like my views will, within seconds of addressing my arguments, claim that I have.

Why is this? Where do they get it from? What makes them think it will in any way advance their arguments, to invent for me a belief and an opinion which I do not share? Are instruction manuals on how to counter my arguments handed out by Liberal Central? Given the wearisome, yawn-inducing sameness of so much of this stuff, I do sometimes wonder. I have put in FoI requests to the British Boring Board of Control, and to Liberal Central.

Once again, I do not believe there was ever a golden age, or a halcyon period. I am not a Utopian. I don’t believe in earthly paradises, in the past or the future. No human era is perfect, or remotely resembles perfection. The past is irrecoverable even it was in some respects better. I am concerned with the present, and with our determination repeatedly to choose the wrong future. I freely acknowledge that our current age is materially more comfortable than any in history (though I don’t think this is necessarily an unmixed blessing).

Mr ‘B’ then continues: ‘I'm also having trouble with the idea that a man who lives in America can believe their harsh attitudes to prison and the ultimate penalty are actually having a limiting effect on their excessive murder rates. Over 10,000 killed every year by handguns in the US. That's more than three 9/11s every year, yet no War on Handguns as there is on terror. Perhaps if they'd taken all those people and shot them live on breakfast TV in downtown New York...perhaps not. Being soft on prisoners may not work but the opposite would appear to be equally obvious right on Mr. Hitchens' doorstep.’

Who is this ‘man who lives in America’?  Not me, anyway. As it happens, I did live in the USA some years ago (and in the USSR and the Russian Republic before that) but for most of my life I have lived in Britain, and do so now. But wherever I am I pay attention to the facts. I am not particularly keen on American penal policy. I have many times pointed out that the two countries are utterly different and can learn little from each other. But the idea that the USA is tremendously tough on crime is not supported by facts. Its ludicrous acceptance of the red herring ‘medical marijuana’ in many states is a case in point. About a quarter of convicted criminals in the USA are in prison. The rest are on parole or probation.

On the matter of guns, I must tediously point out that to say someone was ‘killed by a handgun’ is almost entirely useless in judging the nature of the death. Who used the gun? For what purpose? Under what circumstances? Guns (not always handguns, hence the difference in figures) are used annually in about 20,000 suicides in the USA, whose explanation must be complex, and in about 18,000 homicides. This latter figure is no great surprise in a historically violent country with no effective death penalty (yes, you read that right, very few murderers in the USA are ever executed, and then only after waiting so long that they have forgotten what they did. Most states which ‘have’ the death penalty rarely if ever impose it, those that do impose it usually take around 15 years to do in a minority of murders) and which leaves many violent convicted criminals at large. Many more criminals are killed by armed policemen (usually at least 300 a year) than are executed. But Amnesty International is not very interested in that. Climate appears to be more influential over crime and homicide than gun ownership (with gun homicide rates similar in most of the northern states of the USA to those in neighbouring Canadian provinces, despite sharp differences in gun laws). By the way, more than 40,000 die each year in car accidents in the USA, so perhaps a ‘war on cars’ would be more urgent.

On the question of prison privatisation, I am against it. The punishment of wrongdoing is a moral matter, which should be reserved to the state, which exists for moral purposes, not a commercial contract. In any case, I am a conservative, not a liberal. I am not an enthusiast for privatisation, and in many cases actively oppose it. It has badly damaged Britain’s railways, and has devastated our capacity to generate electricity. It has also damaged our water industry. I suspect that a non-privatised water industry would long ago have developed a national water grid which would now be able to overcome the current drought in the South of England.

On the issue of free will, I suppose we now have in progress the biggest experiment on that subject ever embarked upon in human history. This country’s criminal and penal policies were, until perhaps 50 years ago, based on the idea that wrongdoing should be punished. I explore in my book ‘A Brief History of Crime’ (a modified version is available in paperback as ‘The Abolition of Liberty’) the long and gradual process by which this was abandoned.  

But roughly from the end of the Victorian age until the Second World War, we based our policing and justice and prisons on the belief that people should be and were free in almost all aspects of life, but if they broke known laws they would be treated with some harshness, and deliberately punished, through loss of liberty and honour, compulsory hard work, separation from the world outside, deprivation of pleasures, austere living conditions etc.

During that period, crime and disorder were very much less common, by any conceivable measure, than they are now. I put this mildly. I draw the attention of readers to the quotation from the Oxford historian Jose Harris (‘Private Lives, Public Spirit, Britain 1870-1914) which I reproduce in the book  ‘… a very high proportion of Edwardian convicts were in prison for offences that would have been much more lightly treated or wholly disregarded by law enforcers in the late twentieth century. In 1912-13, for example, one quarter of males aged 16 to 21 who were imprisoned in the metropolitan area of London were serving seven-day sentences for offences which included drunkenness, 'playing games in the street; riding a bicycle without lights, gaming, obscene language, and sleeping rough. If late twentieth century standards of policing and sentencing had been applied in Edwardian Britain, then prisons would have been virtually empty; conversely, if Edwardian standards were applied in the 1990s then most of the youth of Britain would be in gaol.’

This is explored in some detail in my book, and those who are genuinely interested are urged to read it. But I personally find it very hard to believe that the two facts are unconnected. Even I might suggest, wicked people who might otherwise have thought it justifiable to hit someone else with a hammer might have been restrained by the fear of punishment.

Such a society did not seek to interfere in the minds of men and women, to tell them what they could or could not believe or say. It was almost completely uninterested in such things. It was interested in actions. It is my belief that such a society is much better and much more free than one that tries to make windows into men’s souls, through social background reports and largely empty talk of ‘rehabilitation’, whatever that is.

In fact, the more free we have been to act badly, the less free we have been to think and speak freely. I think the two are connected. A society which does not believe in free will does not believe in a free mind, either. I would be interested to explore this connection.

Of course, no true free will is possible unless we live in an ordered universe with discoverable laws and rules, both physical and moral. If the universe is a random, accidental chaos, how and why should there be rules, how can we assume that they exist, and how can we measure the validity and effects of our actions? In which case, how can our actions be free, if we do not know what their effect is? In which case, how can our will be free?

Oh, and before anyone writes in about grammar schools to go on about the stigma of failure etc, will they please read the index, the index, the index, the index?  Try the entry on  ‘grammar schools’ which (I know this is confusing and obtuse) refers you to lots of postings and debates here in the past about … grammar schools). They may find that what they wrongly regard as a fresh argument has been dealt with, shredded into rags and patches, and chucked into the dustbin of history some time ago.

Those who are genuinely interested, rather than willing victims of propaganda who come here to regurgitate standard anti-grammar arguments they have got from Liberal Central are urged to read the relevant chapter in my book ‘The Cameron Delusion’. All my books can be obtained through public libraries, for no more than a modest reservation fee. I do not recommend them to make money, but to spread my ideas.

Reflections on how to punish mass murderers

The Breivik case, and some comments here, caused me to search out this report I wrote for the Mail on Sunday of 22nd April 2001. It concerns the execution of Timothy McVeigh, the mass murderer of Oklahoma City. I realised that it had not been posted on the Internet at the time and, though it is quite old, it addresses some of the subjects under discussion, such as the moral effects of different methods of execution. It is also relevant because McVeigh, like Breivik, was inaccurately connected with political conservatism by liberal left propagandists. In fact, both men’s homicidal fanaticism is utterly unconservative by definition. Mass murder as a political act is the tool of utopian radicals, for reasons often discussed here. I wonder now if McVeigh might not, like Breivik, have been taking powerful drugs with the capacity to twist the mind.

Here is what I wrote, from Terre Haute, Indiana:

‘How refreshing to be in a country where they put terrorists to death, rather than negotiate with them. The execution of the mass murderer, child-killer and bomber Timothy McVeigh will take place soon after dawn on Wednesday, May 16, here in the middle of America's rich green heartland, almost within sight of the world he has lost: the world of open highways, shopping malls, all you can eat and boundless liberty. But he will die in a stark brick blockhouse behind the razor wire and watchtowers of one of the USA's bleakest penitentiaries.

Watching outside on the bare sweep of government-owned grass which lies between Indiana State Highway 63, Justice Road and the prison itself, will be two groups of demonstrators, one applauding McVeigh's end, the other protesting that he should be left alive.

The rival gatherings will be kept apart and searched before being allowed on to the site.

The authorities do not want a repeat of the scenes outside the 1989 execution of the serial killer Ted Bundy, when tasteless folk waved miniature electric chairs and frying pans in the air, while vindictively chanting: 'Fry, Bundy, fry.' So no cooking utensils are permitted.

Officials have even made a list of exactly what will be allowed in the roped-off area outside the prison: a candle screened against the wind, a phone, a Bible and - every hypochondriac American's right -  a few bottles of pills. Next to the demonstrators will be a giant encampment of satellite dishes, spreading into the front gardens of several local people who have rather sensibly rented the space out to the mighty networks.

The event will overwhelm the small city. It has never exactly been a big tourist destination and many of the regiments of reporters and TV staff will have to stay in college halls of residence because there are not enough hotel rooms. Prison staff are worried that traffic congestion before the event will hinder or prevent their daily deliveries of pizza. A more serious fear - that another unhinged crazy man may try to avenge McVeigh by bombing the town -  has persuaded the authorities to close vulnerable buildings, especially courts and schools, for the day.

The name of this place - Terre Haute - means 'High Ground'. The joke goes that, since the surroundings are entirely flat, it must be the moral high ground. And why not?

Is there anyone who really, passionately, deeply thinks that it will be wrong to let 33-year-old McVeigh ride the fatal needle of lethal injection, take his dose of deadly chemicals and leave the world several decades ahead of schedule? It is as if Thomas Hamilton, the Dunblane child killer, had not done away with himself and Britain had still had the death penalty at the time. The liberals would have been pretty quiet, as they are here.

For this week was the sixth anniversary of the day McVeigh set off the Oklahoma City bomb, six years in which he has not once expressed remorse, in which he has referred to the dead children among his 168 victims as 'collateral damage', and in which he has yet to understand, even slightly, what it is that he has done. Perhaps, in the final hours when they take away his 24-hour cable TV and cut off his daily phone calls, when they offer him his last meal - anything he likes provided it costs less than $20, contains no alcohol and can be obtained locally - he may begin to get the point. Though perhaps not. During his trial, as the lists of the dead were read out and the awful injuries he caused detailed, he often ended the day by sending out to a restaurant for a 'Cowboy Steak' done medium rare, or a double bacon cheeseburger.

Maybe even then it won't sink in. He may still have the nerve to recite his planned last words, verses by the English poet W. E. Henley, about how he is the 'captain of his soul' and 'the master of his fate'. But when the moment comes for the walk to the death house, when they find a place to insert the needle and hook him up to the tubes through which extinction will come, quietly but certainly, perhaps then he will wish he hadn't said: 'Death and loss are an integral part of life everywhere. We have to accept it and move on. To these people in Oklahoma who lost a loved one, I'm sorry, but it happens every day. You're not the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world.' Thanks a lot for that, McVeigh. But what if you made it happen? The thoughts of Sonja Lane, whose husband Donald was murdered by McVeigh, are worth recording here, for those inclined to forget what death actually means. Asked about the effect of her violent loss, she said simply: 'There is nothing in my life that is the same.' These matters are worth mentioning since so many people these days look at executions from the point of view of the murderer. They say how hard a life he had, how he never had a chance, how we are just doing to him what he did to others. Or they say that we may have executed the wrong man. They say that even when - as in the case of James Hanratty -  we have obviously executed the right one.

When, some six years ago, I witnessed the execution of the British-born killer Nicholas Lee Ingram in the state of Georgia, there was also little doubt that they had the right man, though fashionable opinion in Britain thought he should be spared.

I didn't think so. Just before I was escorted into the prison at Jackson, and by pure chance, I was shown photographs of his victim, J. C. Sawyer, after Ingram had finished with him. They were nothing spectacular, just a middle-aged guy with a bloody hole in his head, but they brought Ingram's revolting crime to life. Ingram had stormed into these harmless people's remote house, crazed with booze and drugs, marched Mr Sawyer and his wife Mary deep into the woods at gunpoint, lashed them to a tree and then tortured and taunted them before shooting Mr Sawyer in the head. He meant to kill Mrs Sawyer too but bungled it, leaving behind the witness who would eventually put him on Death Row.

I am very glad I saw those pictures.

I found it easier to bear what followed, a process which was and is meant to be horrible, and which left me feeling several years older, though it lasted only a few minutes.

Georgia still uses the electric chair, because its people and government believe that executions should have dramatic moral force. The witness room next to the Jackson death chamber, with its hard wooden seats like church pews, is clearly designed to underline this point. To enter it, you must pass the big green diesel generator which supplies the voltage for the fatal charge - so absolving the local power company of any part in the process.

Through a window which stretches the width of the room - about 18ft - you first see the chair itself, a crude mockery of a throne in heavy, thick, polished wood, hung with straps for arms, wrists, waist, chest, thighs and ankles, and a headrest which has nothing to do with comfort.

Once the prison warden had intoned the words: 'We will proceed with the court-ordered execution', a ghastly melodrama unfolded. Ingram, his scalp shaved white but his moustache still intact, was brought in by six large guards but climbed unaided and unresisting into the chair. The warders bent over him and with practised, fussy movements bound him tightly to it.

Asked if he had anything to say, Ingram - unrepentant and bitter - simply spat a great ball of saliva at the warden. He was too furious to be frightened. If he had been afraid, his mouth would have been utterly dry, as any coward can tell you.

Now the real deathwatch began. The guards produced one more strap, a chinpiece which clamped Ingram's jaws shut. He could not have spoken or spat if he had wanted to. Trussed and muzzled, immobile and silenced, he looked, for the first time, pitiful and helpless rather than cocky and angry.

Then he was prepared for the current.

They put a headpiece on him, a little like an old-fashioned rugby scrumcap, containing a soaking sponge to aid the flow of power. Water dribbled down his face and they wiped it off with a towel. They brought up a cable from behind and attached it to the cap, carefully tightening the wing nuts.

Another cable was clipped to his leg.

Then they fitted a brown leather cowl to the cap, covering his face so we could no longer see his angry, bitter scowl. His knuckles were white with tension.

Everyone left the room. On the other side of the partition, Ingram was alone in the electric chair.

Suddenly, as 2,000 volts went through him, Ingram slammed back into the chair so hard that the tremendous thwack of the impact went through the room like a shock-wave. His knuckles were almost blue. It was very violent, but also very controlled. He did not catch fire. He did not writhe. There was no smoke nor any sizzling sound.

After a while, the officials returned, a doctor listened to his silent heart through a stethoscope, the warden pronounced that all had been done in accordance with law, and the curtains were drawn. As we left, we saw a hearse arriving to collect the remains, a hearse presumably ordered while Ingram was still alive.

If anyone ever manages to get permission to show such an event on TV, I would advise you strongly not to watch it. I have done it for you. I think its moral effect in general is good, but I think it may harm those who see it at first hand. Soon after my own experience, a friend told me that her father had once witnessed a hanging in some official capacity, and that the memory had returned repeatedly to haunt him in the last weeks before his own death. I am not at all surprised.

Nor, if some fool manages to broadcast it on the Internet, should you watch the execution of McVeigh by lethal injection. This is not just because McVeigh himself would like you to, though the fact that he would dearly love to star in the drama of his own execution is a very good reason not to let this happen. It will also be bad for you. Like the Oklahoma victims' relatives, who will watch it on a special TV link on May 16, you will feel stained and disgusted by the experience, but also baffled that an event of such great moment should be so uninteresting. I have seen this too, in Huntsville, Texas. A man called Larry Anderson was dying for the abduction and stabbing of Zelda Curtis, whom he dumped in a ditch after he had finished with her.

All that happened was that he lay on a thing that looked like a hospital trolley, with a tube in his arm that looked like a drip. He stared menacingly through the glass at the witnesses, refused to make any final statement and then more or less fell asleep. From my notes at the time (I cannot remember it as clearly as the Ingram affair) I see that he gave three snorting, puffing breaths, like a drunken man snoring. I thought he looked greyer and shrunken but it may have been my imagination. No shadow of death passed across his face. By comparison with Zelda Curtis, he had a very easy time indeed.

I still think Anderson was better dead, and there is now some evidence that Texas's hard policy has begun to slow the rise in the murder rate in the Houston area, where most killings in the state take place. Violent, immoral criminals have begun to make the rational calculation that it may not be worthwhile to kill potential witnesses, which until recently has been a pretty safe oneway bet. But I thought at the time, and I think now, that lethal injection looks far too much like a medical procedure, the putting down of an inconvenient citizen, and far too little like the punishment it is meant to be.

McVeigh describes it as 'state-assisted suicide' and he has a point.

But this is where our own squeamishness has got us. McVeigh's execution is the first by the federal US government, as opposed to individual states, since 1963. Then, a kidnapper and murderer called Victor Feguer was hanged at Fort Madison, Iowa.

His last words were: 'I sure hope I'm the last one to go.' And at the time, many people in America and Britain probably shared his hope. The world seemed to be becoming a more peaceful place.

Murder rates in the US dropped steadily from 1935 to 1960, while in Britain they were tiny and static, as were crimes of violence or armed crime. In both countries, execution was abolished in the mid-Sixties.

Was it a coincidence that it was exactly then that the American murder and violent crime rates began their ballistic upward climb? Was it a coincidence that British murder rates began to rise then too, as did armed crime? Murders in England and Wales stood at 55 in 1964. Nowadays it is often four times as great or more, and this only tells half the story. The Home Office pathologist Professor Bernard Knight said recently that the British homicide rate was artificially low. Advances in medical treatment, he explained, now save hundreds of people who would have died from their wounds 40 years ago. The actual amount of lethal violence has risen to heights our fathers would have thought impossible.

America, being a proper democracy, responded to this explosion of arrogant, selfish brutality by building more prisons and by allowing any state which wanted to bring back the death penalty to do so. The federal government eventually restored it too, which is why the builders have been busy here in Terre Haute constructing the brand-new federal death row. But the liberal reformers - who helped boost the crime wave with their false optimism back in the Sixties - have not given up.

It is because of them that the death penalty in most American states is rare, and subject to long delay, and that the semi-medical lethal injection procedure is the one used in almost all of them. It is because of them that a return of the death penalty in Britain is still unthinkable, not only for people like Thomas Hamilton and the IRA, but for anyone who chooses to kill. The price of a life in Britain has not been so low for centuries.

And yet many in Europe like to look down on America for keeping capital punishment on its books.

European Union officials have recently taken to lecturing the Americans on this as if they were somehow more civilised, though continental Europe's 20th Century record for state-sponsored murder and violence, with its victims numbered in millions, makes the United States look like Toytown.

As the execution of Timothy McVeigh draws nearer, some in Britain will seek to mock or to undermine its purpose, to suggest that it is excessive, barbaric, brutal and needless. They will sneer at the circus which surrounds it and suggest that we handle these things better on our side of the Atlantic.

Before you accept this, it is worth wondering which is actually more barbaric - the lawful execution of a proven murderer after a fair trial before an independent jury, observed by a free Press, or the feeble surrender of authority in the face of violence and dishonesty. I think I know where the moral high ground is to be found.'

Bundling bearded windbags on to jets won't solve anything

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Theresa May, one of nature’s soppy liberals, is struggling to seem decisive over the deportation of the Bethlehem-born windbag Abu Qatada. The trouble is, Mrs May isn’t  even any good at pretending to be tough.

Labour and Tory politicians love this sort of charade. It makes them look as if they are guarding the nation against the Islamist threat. Like so much of what they do, it is a noisy, empty fraud on the public.

They exaggerate hugely. Like several other furry-faced old blowhards, Qatada is said to have been Osama Bin Laden’s closest henchman. Perhaps  he was. Perhaps he wasn’t. He isn’t now.

He cannot really be much use as a Terrorist Godfather now that he has been on TV, and MI5 and the police watch his every movement. Well, can he? Think about it.

It has all gone wrong for Mrs May because she and her department are not very good at what they do. But really the British people ought to have seen through this fake controversy by now.

The real Islamist threat to Britain and the rest of Europe comes from uncontrolled mass migration from Muslim countries. Combined with our national refusal to defend our British, Christian culture, this is rapidly creating a powerful and influential Muslim vote which will increasingly change our country.

Given a few more decades, it will have profoundly altered this country. I have long suspected that this island will be more or less Muslim within a century, and it will be the fault of this generation. It would be perfectly legitimate for a respectable, law-abiding and civilised political party to act now to prevent this.

But instead they leave the subject to steroid-swallowing nutcases like Anders Breivik, or creepy opportunists like  the BNP.

Millions reasonably worry about this. But they are dismissed as extremists by a liberal establishment which views robust defence of Britain’s culture as bigotry.

In Labour’s case this comes from a genuine loathing of Britain as it was. For the Tories, as in so many other matters, it is cowardice, combined with total lack of principle.

They recoil like salted snails from the simple idea that immigrants should be expected to accept the customs, morals, language and traditions of their host country. They cannot explain why this idea is wrong, because it is not wrong.
The migrants have come here voluntarily. While they are welcome to follow their faith and maintain their culture, by seeking and continuing to live here, they and their descendants have accepted that our culture should remain dominant, our religion remain established and our language and laws remain supreme.

It is the opposite of ‘intolerant’ for any British person to say that he does not want to see Sharia law or polygamy in operation here. Nor should we be embarrassed to condemn forced marriages or the horribly misnamed murders known as ‘honour killings’.

As for ‘racism’, the statements of some Muslim leaders about Jews are among the nastiest examples of prejudice in the modern world. It is interesting, in a bitter way, to see how reluctant the politically correct Left are to attack this, or even admit the problem exists.

As a Christian who is grieved by many features of modern Britain I often find myself allied with British Muslims. I have yet to meet a Muslim I don’t like.

But that doesn’t stop me saying that I do not want this to be a Muslim society, which is the likely long-term result of the liberal elite’s twin policies – of open borders and multiculturalism.

Bundling bearded mullahs on to aeroplanes doesn’t actually make any difference to this. It is a crude attempt to seem tough while actually being weak.

Anyway, Mrs May cannot even bundle mullahs efficiently – because she and her Government insist on revering and obeying the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.

This court would have no actual power, if our ruling class had not willingly given it that power. If Britain withdrew from the entire Council of Europe tonight, nobody could or would do anything about it.

But we don’t withdraw, because our governing class long ago discovered that, in the name of ‘Human Rights’, it could override our old laws without any need for a vote or a debate.

Our allegiance to the court exists only because of a well-intentioned blunder by our grandfathers. When they adopted the European Human Rights Convention more than 60 years ago, they never thought it would apply to us.

In those days we were rightly confident that our liberties were guaranteed by safeguards forged over seven centuries, from Magna Carta of 1215 to the Bill of Rights of 1689.

On the far side of the Channel things were profoundly different. Despotism, fanaticism, organised hatred and aggression were never far away.

Take Strasbourg itself, where the Human Rights Court sits. In 1950, that lovely, haunted place had only recently got rid of its own Gestapo office, complete with torture chambers. National Socialist pseudo-scientists at the perverted Reich university there had been working on setting up a mad, grotesque museum of Jewish skeletons.

These medieval horrors were taking place in a modern city as late as 1944. Had events turned out slightly differently, they would still be going on now.

No wonder it seemed a good idea to set up some sort of mechanism to stand in the way of such things.

But we never needed it on our side of the Channel, and we do not need it here now. We only continue to obey it because our establishment finds it useful in its unrelenting campaign to stamp out common sense, and abolish Britain as we have known it.

Wives deserve more than 'equality', Nick

Nick Clegg's smooth and smiley public-school exterior conceals a bitter and intolerant commissar. The Deputy Premier says he wants men and women  to be regarded on ‘exactly the same basis’. How odd, when women can have babies, and men cannot. Treating different people as if they are the same  is unfair.

And he thinks it ‘really weird’ that other people ‘find it odd that women want to be both mothers and have a career’. Those who have doubts about this have ‘got to get with it’ and are living in a ‘sepia-tinted yesteryear’.

The fact that something is happening now, and didn’t happen in the past, doesn’t magically make it right.

Mr Clegg, whose wife earns a giant salary as a lawyer, has an interest in this subject. I expect that, like most elite couples, they can afford the very best in nannies.

But most women work because they damned well have to, thanks to years of campaigning by people like Mr Clegg. Many hate handing their children over to paid strangers. What’s more, it’s obvious the absence of mothers from children’s lives is one of the reasons for so many of our social and educational problems.

Raising your own children is an honourable and important task, not to be scorned. In my view it’s rather more valuable than advising mining companies in Morocco. What luck not to be a Liberal Democrat.

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

After the 1976 drought, there was much talk of a national water grid. I wonder if this would have been built by now  if the water industry had not been privatised? Increasingly,  I cannot understand why Tories think privatisation is automatically good. It isn’t.

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

Stephen Fry - A Stupid Person's idea of What an Intelligent Person is Like

I have just returned from the USA, where I attended – and took a small part in - the memorial event for my brother, Christopher. I was in an odd position. I was a Christian at an occasion that was Godless by definition; I had known my brother for longer than anyone else there; yet I was not part of his milieu and couldn’t share their joy and glee in his assaults on religion, or a lot of the other enthusiasms celebrated along with his life.

But as it happens, I am on reasonably good terms with many of Christopher’s old friends and I had (as most people know) argued directly and strongly, but in a civilised way with my brother about our religious disagreement. We treated each other with respect and parted, shortly before his death, on good terms.

Thanks to an extremely tactful and thoughtful suggestion from Christopher’s widow, Carol, I was able to contribute a religious reflection to a generally atheist occasion without infringing the rules of politeness or pushing myself forward. I recited the 8th verse of the 4th chapter of St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (‘Finally, brethren; whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things’). As I explained to those at the event, my brother had chosen this passage to read at our father’s funeral in Portsmouth nearly 25 years ago. It had, as it were, his approval.

I met and spoke to many people at this occasion, some of whom I hadn’t seen properly for many years. I met some of his old friends whom I had never previously met.  I tactfully avoided meetings with any there who I thought might be made uncomfortable by my presence. I didn’t want any rows or scenes.

And I made a special effort to avoid a meeting with Stephen Fry, someone whose actions, writings and opinions I have always disliked. Nor have I kept my dislike a secret. I have cheerfully (and on as many occasions as possible) repeated what I believe to be the apt and accurate summary of him in the ‘Dictionary of National Celebrity’ which forms the headline to this article – ‘A stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like’.

What was to be gained by meeting him? I couldn’t pretend to be pleased to do so. He surely couldn’t want to meet me.

Oddly enough, I had argued with Christopher about Stephen Fry. We both agreed that his performance in ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ had been a ghastly travesty, but Christopher was prepared to forgive him for this and had rather taken to him after sharing a debating platform with him a few years ago. It being a matter of taste, I agreed to differ. Mr Fry’s supposed merits and attractions are a mystery to me, and probably always will be, and as for his books…. but we can’t all be the same, can we? And it would be terrible if we were.

As we gathered outside the Cooper Union in Manhattan, avoiding him was easy enough. I could see and hear Mr Fry from some way off, indeed I imagine he could have been seen and heard from space,  and I easily managed to circle round him, well beyond encounter range. Alas, a little later on, inside the building, an innocent third party took it into his head to introduce us directly, so I shook his hand and said (as I generally do when unavoidably introduced to people I don’t want to talk to) ‘How do you do?’ in my best very polite Edwardian drawing-room manner, before slipping away on an urgent errand (the errand being, to get as far away from S. Fry as possible) .

But it was not over.  Those who had spoken at the memorial went afterwards to a rather small and intimate bar in Greenwich Village. And there I was approached again by Mr Fry (I must stress that he opened the conversation, and the space in the crowded room was too confined for me to get away easily).

Very well, then, I thought. If he wants to talk, we’ll talk.

Funnily enough, we had a brief and perfectly reasonable discussion of St Paul and his epistles. I said I thought they contained a great deal of great poetry, but that (as I happened to think) that I was particularly fond of the Epistle of James. I am not sure Mr Fry was familiar with it, though I helped him along a bit.  

Mr Fry said he knew that I didn’t approve of the things he did and the things he said.  I said this was correct.  I assumed that he had the Bill Clinton-like urge to find the only person in the room who did not agree with him, or like him,  and seek to change his mind. Hard luck.  I was not willing to pretend a friendliness I didn’t feel. I decided that if he wanted to argue with me, and he had plainly chosen to do so, then he was welcome. I would be polite, but not friendly (as Kipling’s squire advises his son to treat Bishops in that great poem ‘Norman and Saxon’).

So  I responded by telling him, since he mentioned it, that I strongly disapproved of his conduct during a  debate in London against the Roman Catholic church (the one where he had shared a platform with Christopher). I explained why (don’t get me wrong. I think the RC Church’s performance on that occasion was pretty dire too, in its own way, and I am myself a rather dry Protestant) .

The discussion turned into a more general debate about the dangerous intolerance (as I see it) of the anti-God faction for believers. It seemed pretty clear to me that Mr Fry was unschooled in the subject, often mistaking his opinions for facts, and given to circular argument and cliché. It was rather like dealing with some of the more obdurate and dogmatic contributors to this blog, in fact. He was rescued by the incomprehensible and (to me) unwanted intervention of another person in the bar. This baffled us both so,  that it derailed the argument and gave Mr Fry the opportunity (no doubt welcome to him) to break off. Later he bumbled up to me again, and when he tried to summarise our conversation to the person I was then talking to, I said that we had established that he thought he knew several things that he didn’t actually know. He didn’t like this, and said as his parting shot that  it was Rumsfeldian. I said that the remark about known unknowns was the only good thing Donald Rumsfeld had ever said. He surged off and our first (and probably only) encounter was over.

Well, I had some goodbyes to say and a train to Washington to catch, and forgot all about it until I returned to London this morning to find that Mr Fry had soon afterwards Tweeted an uncomplimentary remark about me (so rude that even his own fans rebuked him for it, and he later wiped it, though it is still easily findable on the Web, even by me) . I wonder if you can find it?   Anyway, I still think the headline is right. And I suspect that Mr Fry’s Tweet may embody his own justified fear that the headline is right.

A Clod Writes

 

Don’t worry, not all of this will be about Stephen Fry. I would point out, though, that the point remains that Mr Fry posted, on the Internet, a deliberately personally rude reference to me (the word ‘clod’ was part of it) , on the day of my brother’s memorial event in New York, . He later withdrew it, after some of his own followers rebuked him. But, as he must well know, withdrawn doesn’t mean expunged.

 

I felt entitled to respond to it, by giving a truthful account of our meeting.

 

Some contributors seem to have concluded, from my last posting, that Mr Fry was wounded by some personal insult from me, and so felt justified in his behaviour.

 

Not a bit of it. In our conversation, which I never sought, I was entirely civil. I just made no pretence of friendliness, nor was I specially tolerant of Mr Fry’s rather feeble boilerplate on the religious issue (for those interested, I did, as I always do, make my simple point that the issue of God’s existence or non-existence could not be proved one way or another. Mr Fry, as dogmatic anti-God people almost invariably do, pocketed this enormous concession without any acknowledgement, and without grasping that it applied to him as well. This is an invariable sign that the intellect is not fully engaged in the subject, as exemplified here so many times, and at such great length, by the ineffable Mr ‘Bunker’). I called him no names. I made no remarks about his personal qualities.   

 

I noticed that those Fry fans who found their way here tended to indulge in the same sort of personal abuse that their hero had employed. One even denounced me as ‘petulant’ for turning away from the microphone when I had finished reciting my contribution at the memorial event. What was I supposed to do, stand and wait for applause? Time was running on, others had to speak. What was more, I was keenly aware of the fact that I wasn’t quite in tune with the general tone.   Good heavens, there are some people for whom I can do no right.

 

They should note (and would have noticed had they been as bright as they think they are)  that the description’ a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like’ is not actually directed at Mr Fry, though it’s not meant to be complimentary to him either.   It is directed at his reputation and at his admirers.  Mr Fry may well be intelligent, though he has so far concealed this effectively from me. What I find amusing are the legions of people, and BBC producers,  who swoon and sigh before him as if he were a combination of Oscar Wilde (though he’s terribly over-rated too) and Freddie Ayer.  They do this not because of his intellect, but because of his manner and because of the fact that they agree with his sentiments.

 

I tend to suspect that the fact that he delivers revolutionary sentiments ( and lavatory words) in conservative accents endears him to the Radio 4 audience who want cultural conservatism, and a comfortable middle-class urban life, at the same time as they desire the destruction of the morals, traditions and customs which uphold these things. That’s my most fundamental reason for disapproving of Mr Fry. He represents a desire to have it both ways, to ride free. If he spoke in the accents of (say) Kenny Everett or Russell Brand, I doubt if the act would have such a following.

 

Mr Fry is of course free to give his own account of our conversation. No doubt it would differ from mine. I wasn’t taking notes, or recording it, so can’t offer a verbatim version, as some contributors seem to think I should have done.

 

Now, the mention of Russell Brand brings me on to my latest encounter with this person, which took place in Portcullis House, the hideous annexe to the Houses of Parliament, on Tuesday.

 

Both of us were there to appear as witnesses before the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.

 

I had some detailed, factual, knowledgeable things to say, and arguments to make which were based on those facts and that knowledge, much of it obtained during the writing of my next book.  He didn’t.  In fact he seemed to be under the impression, which I do not think can be in any way justified by facts, that users of the illegal drug heroin are in some way harshly treated by the law. He attracted a great deal of coverage.  I attracted very little.

 

The one useful thing he said (and I might add he was strikingly rude to the Labour MP David Winnick, so much so that, had I been chairman, I would have required him to apologise) was to describe being arrested for drug possession as ‘an administrative blip’. This is quite accurate. Where the police bother to arrest possessors of illegal drugs at all, the action has no moral or legal force, and is done only for the sake of form.

 

The same could be said of our entire system of drug law enforcement. It exists only because the majority of voters would never accept open decriminalisation, and because our international treaty obligations prevent us from abandoning formal legal bans. This has been increasingly the case since 1971, with the law being salami-sliced away, year by year by year, until it is so feeble and thin that it no longer has any power or force.

 

Oh, as for Jeremy Hunt, Rupert Murdoch etc, the thing I cannot forgive is that David Cameron’s first action on receiving the backing of the Murdoch press was to come out (in ‘the Sun’)  in fervent support of the continued deployment of British troops in Afghanistan.  We shall no doubt find out what other prices he paid or did not pay for this, as various inquests continue, but brave people have died and been maimed thanks to Mr Cameron’s pig-headed persistence with this moronic, pointless war.

 

 

An Argument for Punishment

Modern Britain doesn't believe in punishment. It doesn't believe in punishment (and this view is common even among supposed conservatives) because it doesn't believe in personal responsibility. Otherwise intelligent people, for instance, accept concepts composed of baloney and bunkum, such as the almost universal belief in physical 'addiction' to various drugs and pleasures. Or they prose on about 'rehabilitation', a concept never defined and so impossible to disprove (but in fact non-existent).  Then there are the widespread beliefs that people are fat, or have sexual or other tastes they can't control, because of genetic determination.

As in so much of modern life, these absurdities flourish because of the almost total collapse of serious Christian belief and understanding, which has left a vast uncultivated wasteland in which all kinds of nonsense, from astrology to Trotskyism, flourish like mental bindweed.

But what, then,  are we to do about the homicidal idiocy of texting, or telephoning,  while driving?  In my local weekly newspaper this morning I read yet another appalling account of a horrible road accident in which a young woman drove her car headlong into another coming in the opposite direction, so ending her life and leaving her young son alive in the back of the car. The poor child had to scramble free and stood helplessly on the roadside, telling passers-by that his mother was still trapped inside. Actually, she was probably already dead.  Phone records show that the woman involved had been taking part in a text exchange at the time of the crash. I have very little doubt that this was so. The child is now bereft and will probably remember that terrible day, in one way or another, for all of his life. It is unbearably sad. Can we do nothing to prevent it happening again? Could we have done nothing to prevent it in the first place?

As I bicycle and walk, I constantly see people driving while holding mobile phones and either looking down frequently at them, or holding them to their ears with one hand.  This is both illegal and stupid, and known to be. It is not just mildly risky , but appallingly dangerous to themselves and to others. Yet they do it anyway. This makes me so angry that , if they are stopped in traffic, I rap on their windows and tell them that this is illegal in the (invariably vain) hope that a police officer might be nearby.  One such (a highly educated French professional in Chelsea)  actually jeered at me 'The police are never anywhere to be seen. Why should I care about this law?' before driving off with a smile on his face. Most of them are momentarily embarrassed, but as soon as they realise that I'm not a police officer, they recover their poise. If there is time, they will often give me a free character analysis.

It is interesting that if you point out to people in modern Britain that they are breaking a law, they will usually ask if you are a policeman, as if they were serfs in a country where the law belonged to the state, and not to the people,  and you needed a man in uniform to make you obey it, rather than your own conscience. (Don't they realise how lucky they are to live in a country where the people make, observe and enforce their own laws? Obviously not). Or they begin a lengthy, if ill-informed,  study of your personality and its failings. The fact that they are in the wrong is instantly forgotten. Indeed, it doesn't count. Laws only matter if you're caught by the cops.

So what are we to do, to avoid the sight of more weeping small boys on roadsides, crying for someone to wake up their mother, who is trapped in the car, which has crashed because she was on the phone, or texting?

Well, an advertising campaign on TV would be good. One of the Welsh police forces made a fiercely powerful short film in which a young woman's texting while driving causes a mass pile-up. I wish everyone could see it. Having been in a serious road accident myself, I can say that it is the most accurate depiction of the awful speed with which everything happens, and the terrifying silence afterwards (accompanied by the realisation that severe damage has been done) that I have ever seen.

But that would be useless if it isn't accompanied by *enforcement of the law*. No doubt, failing to enforce this law universally and consistently 'frees up' officers for more paperwork, for investigating journalists or pursuing allegations of homophobia. But is this the right approach? I think not.

I might add that I don't think just stopping these people and talking to them would be enough. I should have thought that (like persons accused of breaking PC speech codes) they should be placed in police cells for several hours, be fingerprinted, photographed and swabbed for DNA. And that they should then swiftly be brought to court and imprisoned for a week, it being made very clear to them that a second offence will land them in prison for a year.

And do you know what? I think people would then stop texting and phoning while driving.  If not, not. Any objections?

And They're Off...

I'm sure my Ironside ancestors, not given to gambling, wouldn't approve, but Ladbrokes on Monday were offering 33 to 1 on my becoming an MP before or during the next general election. My own odds would be rather longer, but I suppose that it's nice that they care.

Their press statement wasn't entirely flattering : 'Jessica Bridge of Ladbrokes said: "George Galloway has shown recently that anything can happen in politics. Hitchens shouldn't be ruled out as a serious contender." '

Anything can happen, eh? Well perhaps not. Anyway, grateful as I am for the encouragement I've received from many readers, I'll now go into a bit more detail.

One, this is not an attempt to found a new party. As I have said a thousand times, real political parties arise when there is a vacancy for them. There is, just now, no such vacancy.

Anything founded when there is no vacancy bears the same relation to a real party as a Hornby trainset does to the old Great Western Railway. You may call it a party, and make appropriate noises as you play with it on the sitting-room floor. But it will not be a party.

What I would hope, at this stage, is that concerned individuals would begin to think about forming small exploratory committees in existing constituencies, under the 'Justice and Liberty' motto. They should aim to find out if there is support for a candidate broadly in favour of the simple principles I set out. They should then look for a suitable person, preferably genuinely local prepared to put himself or herself forward, with all the time and commitment that this involves, and prepared to serve in Parliament if actually elected.

The first aim of such committees must be to undermine the duopoly of the dead parties, and to send a repeated signal to Parliament and the media that voters in sizeable numbers are no longer prepared to vote or work for MPs who ignore their most basic concerns.

Only if such a party begins to score sizeable votes, and eventually wins seats, will the next stage begin – the stage in which the duopoly is genuinely challenged.

Several possibilities occur. Here's an example: If such a committee manages to set itself up, it might then raise funds to organise an open primary election (those involved will need to become experts in electoral law quite quickly, as the duopoly will certainly try to use that law to obstruct them) which would be bound to attract a great deal of publicity and would, if well-organised, help to create a local presence for the candidate eventually chosen, and a legitimacy much greater than that held by the candidates of the duopoly.

I should have thought that anyone interested should aim for a long, slow take-off. The duopoly parties (and the Liberal Democrats as well) must be holed below the waterline before and during the next election (which will probably produce a Lib-Lab coalition, at this rate), so that they can be properly sunk in the next five years or so.  

The main purpose in the early stages will be to attack them for their complacency and their rejection of common sense, as well as their obsession with elite preoccupations, and their scorn for the real difficulties of normal human beings. There will be time enough, once the duopoly have been badly damaged, to begin to formulate a detailed programme. For the moment, it will be simpler, and not dishonest, for a radical movement to define itself by what it is against.

Thanks to the ghastly Fixed-term Parliaments Act, there will be time to take advantage of the increasing problems of the Coalition (though it would be wise to be reasonably well-advanced by the time the Coalition stages its inevitable fake split, something it is likely to do around the end of next year).

As for me, personally, I shall not rush into the first by-election that comes up, but will consider carefully before putting myself forward. Genuinely local candidates with real connections and loyalties will often have a higher claim. I have no illusions about the limits of my appeal. But I think it possible that, despite that, there may now be enough voters who are detached from their old loyalties, and willing to listen to a thoughtful alternative.

Quiz Show: 'We thought we were going to get TV … but TV has got us instead'.

I have at last managed to see for the second time the astonishingly good film 'Quiz Show', made in 1994 about the true-life scandals affecting American TV quiz shows in the 1950s. I first watched it on a long-ago weekend in Philadelphia, during a brief break in my then pursuit of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader who had been given a visa by Bill Clinton, to visit, propagandise and fund-raise in the USA. Somehow it fell to me, as Washington correspondent of another newspaper, to follow him around asking him unwelcome questions.

Mr Adams and I got on so well together that he once suggested in a Washington DC press conference that it was time I was  'decommissioned'. I felt a glow of pride, and something else as well, not quite so pleasant, whatever was it…?

But I digress. As I watched 'Quiz Show', I thought it must surely become a much-talked about classic.

It is a rather beautiful film, including a bold attempt to recreate the optimistic America of the 1950s (so very different from the grey, scraped, tired Britain of the same era), when TV was still a novelty. People who go on (in my view rather inexplicably) about the dull, dull, dull TV series 'Mad Men', standby of every magazine and fashion page for months past, might take a look at 'Quiz Show' to see a rather more lively and realistic recreation of the fashions, attitudes and manners of that time.

There are several wonderful moments in which the corruption of the soul is shown in exactly the form it takes in real life – that is, blithely smiling, very hard to resist, and clothed in acceptable excuses. There is also, in the character of Charles van Doren, an illustration of the old truth that the corruption of the best is the worst of all.

The heart of the plot is a Congressional investigation into the rigging of big-prize TV quiz shows. The director, Robert Redford, concentrates on Van Doren because he is a genuinely knowledgeable, well-read, thoughtful man, the youngest in a family of revered intellects and writers. At one stage he is shown at a family gathering, crammed with great literary names. His father refers to James Thurber casually as a friend, as he was. The men trade Shakespeare quotations and historical references. They don't own TVs or watch TV and they aren't frightened by the rapid takeover of culture by television, despite T.S. Eliot's warning some years before, in a famous letter to the London 'Times'.

In one scene freighted with foreboding, the young Van Doren gives his father Mark (played by the wonderful Paul Scofield) a TV set for his birthday. You know that this means the old, intellectual life at his handsome Connecticut farm will come to an end, just as it will end throughout the modern world as the great conformist box steals the minds of millions, and atrophies their imaginations.

I won't give too much away in case any of you decide to watch the film, which was as good as I remembered it being, if not better with the passage of 18 years (the even older film 'Witness', another film that ought to be a classic but somehow isn't, likewise stands up to the years very well). But there are two prophetic scenes: one in which a cynical character says there is no real point in having difficult quiz shows which need clever people to appear on them – easy ones with simple answers will do just as well (as it has proved) - and another in which the Congressional investigator sighs, 'We thought we were going to get TV … but TV has got us instead'.