Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 321

Time to leave the EU – the debate

I'm pleased to say that last week's Policy Exchange 'Policy Fight Club' debate on Britain's EU membership (in which I took part) is now viewable on line, and can be found here.

Why do we make such a fetish about voting?

All right, first of all, on the voting question, it really does seem there are some people out there who don't know what I have said about it. The answer is this.

Voting is not compulsory. You don't have to vote. If there is nobody standing who is worthy of your support, the best thing to do is not to vote. Voting is not some kind of sacred act. Not is it the same as freedom. For most of human history, people have sold their votes to the highest bidder – nowadays this is done through the welfare state.

Millions did not die for the right to vote. I don't recall many people dying for it. Most dictatorships have a right to vote, if they don't make it compulsory.  It was in fact pressed on us by politicians anxious to bribe us with our own money.

So, when I say 'Don't Vote Tory', it is as simple as that. Please stop looking for hidden meanings. There aren't any.   I don't mean (as some twerp suggests) that you should vote Labour. I don't support UKIP because I don't want that silly organisation round my neck ever afterwards, like a dead albatross. I mean 'Don't Vote Tory'.

I think this is actually the most effective way of using your vote in modern Britain. Because if you refuse to vote for them, you bring about their collapse. And in our two party system, that means you create a vacancy for a new party. That is where the hard work begins, once the Tories. This would have happened in 2010 if anyone had listened to me.  As it was, they formed the coalition.

But the Coalition has done me one great favour. It has made it quite plain to even the slowest mind that David Cameron actually prefers the Liberal Democrats to his own party. And it has destroyed the babyish fantasy that Mr Cameron is a secret conservative, who was hiding his real nature in the hope of winning the election.

The 2010 result has also deprived the Tories of their only really effective electoral weapon – Gordon Brown. It is simply impossible to whip up against Edward Miliband the sort of mad, unreasoning hatred that was whipped up against Gordon Brown. And without that hatred, the Tories would have done even worse in 2010 than they actually did. Now it is gone. And the Tories' ageing voter base has diminished significantly as well. So has their membership, which is evaporating at an astonishing rate.

I will remind readers here that I persistently pointed out that the Tories could not win a majority at the 2010 election. Even with his planned new boundaries, I think Mr Cameron faces the same problem in 2015. He would face it even if he had been lucky with the economy. But he hasn't been. Alas, if a Labour or Lib-Lab government emerges in 2015, it may allow the Tories to pose as a properly conservative party and prolong their life again, so that one day they return to prove (yet again)  that they are in fact not conservative at all.  But it may not. People's memories may not be short enough.

This is wishful thinking on my account, of course. In 2010, the Tories had lost three elections in a row. To lose a fourth, I thought, would finish them. Then they did lose a fourth, but because of the coalition, millions of people now genuinely think that the Tories won. And yet, and yet, I think David Cameron has done deep damage to the link between his party and his loyalists.

Anyway, we won't find out unless he loses badly in 2015, which is why I say, again, Don't Vote Tory. It means what it says. We have to get rid of them first, before we can build a new party. That is the way British politics works. Clear now? Sigh.

A Mr 'Jim new Lewisham' illuminates the surrounding landscape with this comment : 'I would suggest that the reason most of us vote for "The Clowns" is because the alternative is to vote for people like Peter Hitchens, an experiment that has been tried in other countries in other times with dire consequences. Mr Hitchens has made no secret of the fact that he thinks most of us are idiots, who have been brainwashed into voting for mainstream parties. His description of The Turkish Government is very different from the one described in last week's Time Magazine cover story, which sounds a lot more creditable than Mr Hitchens, so called facts, mixed in with a litany of abuse and name calling.'

I would love to know when this experiment (of voting for people like me)  was tried , and in what other countries, and what the consequences were. Perhaps Mr  'New Lewisham' ( any relationship to H.G.Wells's Mr Lewisham?) can explain?

I'm sorry to say that I don't read 'Time 'Magazine as much as I once did. But my description of the Turkish government seems to me to be spot on, and is based on two visits to that country (an account of the more recent one can be found (a href="http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.u...http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1299213/Peter-Hitchens-disturbing-picture-growing-repression-heart-Eurabia.html"target="blank". Perhaps Mr 'Lewisham' could explain why he finds the complacent fantasies of fashionable reporting and conventional wisdom more persuasive? Why does Turkey get away with imprisoning journalists and dissenters, and holding show trials? The delusion of 'Modern liberal Islamic governance' is as attainable as Hot Snow.

A Mr Jamie Robinson adopts a lofty tone to say : 'The standard of legal reporting in this country is truly awful. You would think that if you were going to write on a topic in a national newspaper you would at least find out the basic facts. Mr Justice Bean had to apply the law. This says that someone commits a criminal offence if they cause alarm or distress to another. Swearing is not by itself illegal, unlike murder, GBH, burglary etc. In this case the man swore while speaking to a police man who was searching him for drugs - denying, in strong language, that he had any on him (and not as you say swearing AT the police man). The judge found that the policeman was not caused alarm and distress by hearing the F-word - a word he probably uses himself. Therefore no crime was committed. You probably think that swearing should be by itself criminal. Fine - say so. At least that would be an honest argument rather than this wilfully misinformed anti-judge guff. (And burglary isn't becoming more common, as you imply. It has come down significantly over the last 10 years. Much of this is the result of householders taking the sort of basic precautions that you decry as defeatist.)'

Well, actually, Mr Robinson, I made it plain that I understood this argument. What the Judge was saying as that if we got used to a bad thing, then it ceased to be a crime. Funnily enough, I find the F-word shocking and offensive every time I hear it, and I work in a trade where it is commonplace and live in a country where it is commonplace. I find it so because those who use it intend it to be so. I am always touched, on the other hand to find that there are still people in this country who actually believe official crime statistics. Of course burglary is diminishing. I mean, how could anyone think otherwise if the government says it is so?

Oh, and if you swear in someone's presence, you are swearing at him or her. Anybody who finds swearing distasteful is angered by it whether it is directed at them or not . Undoubtedly it is worse for the person it is aimed at. But it is a mark of selfish arrogance and deliberate ill-manners whenever it is sued in a public place.

Is he not aware of the fact that crime statistics now largely consist of an opinion poll, that police often combine more than one offence in a single record, and that thousands, probably tens of thousands of people no longer have any possible motive to report burglaries and other crimes, because the police will do nothing and they are not insured? The standard of public scepticism in this country is truly awful.

Talking of scepticism, it did cross my mind that the burglar's letter was a fake. But I couldn't see why they would go to all that trouble.

Ian Guthrie asks about 'Tinker tailor' in the BBC DVD 7-episode version which I possess. Yes, Haydon does say that he hates America ( a view, I fear, rather close to that of Le Carre himself).  And Jim Prideaux does help the boy who becomes tongue-tied while reading the Bible. This latter scene is not, I think, anywhere in the book. I am interested to know whose idea it was.

Mr Wooderson wants me to discuss evil. It might also be described as sin, defined as deliberate defiance of the known laws of God. I never said anything about 'psychological dispositions to antisocial acts'. Hat is his expression, and one I would never use.

All of us can do evil acts. Almost all of us do. That is why we need to be restrained by conscience and the moral law and, where that fails, by human law and the fear of punishment. The absence of a father ( not of a 'father-figure') makes it hugely more likely that boys. Especially, will not lean morality by example, nor have their consciences educated by example and precept, nor be restrained and taught by punishment when they do wrong.

This seems to me to be a) simple and be) obvious. It is Mr Wooderson with his psychologies and his dispositions who has made it complicated.

The non-Christian or post-Christian does have difficulties, largely because he can see no way of taking responsibility for his own sinful actions, but also denies the grace of God, who forgives all those who truly repent. He also can't attribute responsibility to others.  His solution is to try to deny individual responsibility, in himself and others. In the end, nobody is to blame for anything, and the state must mediate ineffectually between offender and victim, in a ghastly chaos. As we see.

On Polly Samson, Roy Watson implies that I can't comment on anyone else's views or actions because I used to be a Trotskyist. Wow. Well, most people know I used to be a Trotskyist because I have taken care to publicise the fact, even though I ceased to be one 36 years ago.  What they also know is that I have many times, in books, articles, public appearances etc, stated that I was wrong in what I then said and did (the most thorough statement of this is to be found in my book 'The Rage Against God').

The quotations from Ms Samson and her son are to be found in the Guardian 24th February 2007, and 'The Lady' of 4th November 2010. So far as I know, Ms Samson has not repudiated or regretted any of the views or actions she expresses or defends or describes. What's more, she remains a much-admired and feted member of the London literary classes (her latest volume of short stories was selected as 'Book at Bedtime ' on BBC Radio Four – a major boost to any book – only last week). You wouldn't catch them serialising any of my books, unless I went back to being a Trot.

Meanwhile 'Steve B' accuses me of being 'dishonestly selective' in my quotation of Polly Samson's thoughts on shopflifting.

He writes :' To expand on the 'vindictiveness' of the Polly Samson remarks - I say this because I found the Guardian piece Mr Hitchens refers to and it seems to me as though he has quoted her words out of context in order to implicate. The quote referring to shoplifting is clearly (to me, anyway) not intended to be taken at face value and is instead an attempt at - what's it called again? - ah, yes, 'humour'. Perhaps poor taste, but still. Others may judge for themselves whether Miss Samson was, in fact, seriously advocating shoplifting: "At my most optimistic, I imagine my children will try most things - but just once - because there are activities I regret missing out on during my early teens. Shoplifting, for example. I was surprised that 65% of parents didn't think their children had shoplifted, because I assumed that most kids would give it a shot at some point. I would hate to find myself doing a Winona now, but I yearn to try my sleight of hand and it just isn't age-appropriate. So, off you go, children - but remember, only steal from large conglomerates and not from small businesses". As for the rest - the statements regarding pot smoking etc are accurately represented by Mr Hitchens and he has stated a fair and valid opinion. But I feel the above representation of that part of the piece was, at worst, dishonestly selective.'

I am interested to know what was dishonest about my selection. Here is what I wrote: 'A mother who 'yearns to try her sleight-of-hand' at shoplifting, though she reckons it is not 'age-appropriate' for her now... 'so, off you go, children, but remember, only steal from large conglomerates'.

She says exactly what I say she says, plus a bit more that I hadn't room for. I see no misrepresentation, no misattribution, no falsification.  I have certainly  left some stuff out but nothing which in my view alters the meaning or sense.  My point is ( and perhaps Mr 'B' illustrates this ) that there are sections of our country in which parents think it a light-hearted matter to think and say such things. And my other point is that there are places where people take a different view.

Somebody wonders why I read 'the Lady'. I don't. It was, as they say, drawn to my attention. And its editor was most insistent that I should credit her magazine with the interview.

Don't rage at the laughing burglar - save it for the clowns who let him go free

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

At last we know what thieves really think about the people whose lives they ruin. A bitterly funny and honest letter from a burglar to his victim disposes for all time of the notion that there is any point in being nice to crooks.

Remember that this creature has actually been caught and is in the hands of the police. Is he trembling and afraid? Not exactly.

He explains: 'I have been forced to write this letter... To be honest I'm not bothered or sorry about the fact that I burgled your house. Basically it was your fault.'

The victims, he argued, knew they lived in a high-crime area, so they shouldn't have left a window open.

What is doubly funny about this is that it is almost exactly the same message given to honest citizens by our defeatist police. They, too, are always telling us that if we are robbed, it is our fault for not turning our homes into fortified bunkers. They assume that nobody has any morals or conscience any more, and also that robbers are no longer afraid of the law.

And why should they be afraid? They know the law won't hurt them, or punish them. The courts yearn to find some excuse to let them go –because otherwise the prisons will burst.

It was while seeking an excuse to let the laughing burglar off that the police told him to write to his victim.

They let him off anyway – no prison, just an 'electronically monitored curfew' and 25 hours a week of so-called 'structured activity'. The more syllables these phoney sanctions have, the less they mean. They mean 'let off'.

Letting criminals off is what we are good at. Nearly 30,000 habitual criminals were also let off last year with cautions, after they had returned to crime. The prisons are bursting because hundreds of thousands of people who were once afraid of the law now laugh at it.

Eventually, after 15 or more crimes, the state locks them up for a few weeks in an effort to look tougher than it is. But it is just for show.

This is all quite obvious. Our Government refuses to learn from it because it is the slave of a foolish, Leftist dogma, that crime is a disease caused by hardship. It is not.

It is human evil let loose, and till we return to that view, it will get worse. Like the laughing burglar, I'm not going to show any sympathy for the clowns who have got us into this mess and keep us there.

No doubt you agree with me, in which case why do you keep voting for the clowns? That's the bit I don't understand.

* * *

Mr Injustice Bean (pictured right) says that it is not a crime to swear at the police because they hear foul language too often to be offended.

On the same principle, the time will come when burglary, mugging, GBH and even murder will no longer be crimes, because we have all got used to them happening all the time.

Well, when that day comes, we won't need Mr Bean any more.

Doesn't 'modesty' apply to footwear?

Perhaps because I travel a lot in Muslim countries, I am fascinated by Islam's growing need to swathe the female form in textiles. It has spread greatly in the past 20 years.

Officially it is all about modesty. But the key words in the Koran are rather vague, and don't seem to me to prescribe hijabs, niquabs, jilbabs or burkas.

I was once told by a North African Muslim activist in Antwerp that the hijab headscarf had been adopted in Europe mainly as propaganda, to wind up the Western world. It's been very successful if so, making several European countries try to ban it, which free societies can't really do.

But the founder of modern secular Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, thought Islamic ideas about women would hold back his country. So he really did ban  the hijab, especially in public buildings. And now that the fiercely and militantly Islamist AK party has taken over the government of that vital country, in a silent but earthshaking revolution, it is a very big  issue indeed.

Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, is a fervent Islamist, as is his wife Hayrunissa. She is  so keen to sport a hijab that in 1988 she was refused admission to Ankara University for insisting on wearing one, and came close to taking the issue to the European Court of Human Rights.

This week she appeared at Buckingham Palace (pictured) swathed in her headscarf and also balancing on astonishingly high heels. Are such heels Islamic? It seems unlikely.

But the combination  of nun-like headgear and  sexy footwear increased my suspicion that this is more about politics than religion.

Gilded lives... and squalid secrets

Whose home life is being described here? Is it perhaps some dismal tower-block existence in post-industrial Northern England?

A mother who 'yearns to try her sleight-of-hand' at shoplifting, though she reckons it is not 'age-appropriate' for her now... 'so, off you go, children, but remember, only steal from large conglomerates'.

A mother who 'doesn't hide her occasional joint-smoking' from her teenage son. A son who says 'my mother smokes more pot than I do'. A mother who held her child's 15th birthday party in her home at which beer and wine were provided – and vodka smuggled in.

The vodka wasn't removed once it was discovered. The mother recalls that amid the vomiting and the girls being walked in the night air to keep them conscious... 'out of my peripheral vision I witnessed [my son] smoke a joint, [and] swig vodka from the bottle'.

A son who says 'I was 13 when, with my older half-brother, I smoked my first joint'. A mother who says she has given dope to her mother and father, aged 78 and 82. A son who was present when this happened.

No, these are not from some sad social worker's report into misery and deprivation in the lower depths of our society. They are taken from two freely given interviews with gilded, fortunate people.

One, of all places, was in The Lady magazine, with Polly Samson, wife of millionaire Pink Floyd star David Gilmour. The other appeared in The Guardian, given jointly by Ms Samson and her son, Charlie Gilmour.

You may recall that Charlie recently emerged from prison after swinging on the Cenotaph in a drug-induced frenzy. I have to say I feel more sorry for him than I did before.

I didn't want to return to this subject. But when I found these interviews, I wondered – is this sort of upbringing what Britain's well-off chattering classes now regard as normal? I fear it may well be.

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Alec Guinness beats Gary Oldman, plus debating technique and Afghanistan

I have now watched, for the first time in more than 30 years, the complete BBC version of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy', and am confirmed in my view that the recent film of the same book is a miserable failure, both in absolute terms and by comparison.

I do have a slight suspicion that the DVD set has been edited – I am quite sure the scene where Ricki Tarr goes to Paris Embassy and hijacks the SIS station there is much briefer on DVD than it was when I watched it.  But then again, I know that memory is a fickle thing. On a recent visit to Moscow, I went to visit my old home and either they'd moved an entire Metro station (Akademicheskaya, since you ask) 500 yards north in the past ten years, or I had remembered the layout of the streets round my block quite inaccurately.   I am, however, certain that the sex shop wasn't there in 1992.

In listing things that the BBC version did and the film did not, I shall recognise that the film had to be much shorter.
But I shall also recognise that the film wasted large slices of perfectly good time with made-up scenes of George Smiley swimming, or roaming about the place, or of Peter Guillam sacking his boyfriend (Guillam in the book is heterosexual, but the TV version completely ignores his sex life).

The main thing that the BBC did was to understand the story. This illuminated its casting. Ian Richardson's seductive glamour, and Alec Guinness's
woebegone despair, together with Anthony Bate's perfect impersonation of a high government official, with all his grandeur and faults, made thenature of the conflict quite clear. I think the BBC also got far closer to Connie Sachs, in the unlikely shape of Beryl Reid (again, didn't she get longer in the original TV version than she does on the DVD?) . And Ian Bannen, as Jim Prideaux, successfully portrays a certain type of Englishman now extinct – but crucial to the plot – patriotic, sporting, ruthless yet kind,  unintellectual yet beautifully educated and a skilled linguist. In my view the depth of the long-lost pre-war homosexual relationship between Prideaux and Bill Haydon, revealed in the final pages of the book, is the key to everything else in the story, and adds greatly to the sense of loss and hurt, and of disappointed hopes, which the story so well portrays.  Haydon has remained sexually omnivorous to the end (Smiley has to pay off a girlfriend and a boyfriend, after his exposure) and was presumably playing a game with the young and naïve Prideaux.  Prideaux, by contrast, was loyal. And in the end, Haydon sold him to the Kremlin, to be tortured and broken, to save himself. That is why Prideaux stalks Haydon at the end, and why he kills him with his bare hands, not (as in the absurd film) with a distant and impersonal shot.

It also explains the haunting closing credits of the TV programme, the golden heart of Oxford on a summer's evening, as a choirboy sings that most melancholy of the Anglican canticles, the 'Nunc Dimittis' to Geoffrey Burgon's plangent setting.  Evensong, Oxford and summers long ago, combined with Simeon's plea to be allowed to 'depart in peace', for he has seen 'thy salvation' – it is perhaps a  clever allusion both to the root of the betrayal , and to Smiley's final effort of will and mind, which saves the service from treachery. I have always thought so.

The TV series also gives a far better account of Control, and is in a way much fairer to Percy Alleline, whose ambition at the beginning, pomposity when at his height, and  bleak devastation at the end is wonderfully portrayed by Michael Aldridge. The horrible Islay Hotel, the sort of bleak, sequestered location in which le Carre likes to set his heroes,  is also more faithfully shown.

It makes an attempt to show Haydon's own rather feeble attempt to explain his treachery (and Smiley's scorn for it). I wish I could see a repeat of John le Mesurier's rather fuller portrayal of a Philby-type figure, reminiscing about his treachery,  in the BBC play 'Traitor', shown in 1971. But I expect it's been wiped. I'm still waiting, in a way, for a real, honest account to turn up in an archive, by one of these people,  of why they did what they did. I think it might, even now, reveal too much about the wider demoralisation of the British governing classes. I have never forgotten the way in which establishment figures such as Graham Greene (whose brother Hugh had been a really destructive Director-General of the BBC) more or less openly sympathised with Philby.

On other subjects, I think the important point about the cannabis debate, which is now viewable on YouTube, is that this much is clear: There is no clear-cut case for legalisation. The arguments advanced as certainties by its supporters are all open to serious question. In which case, surely the wise thing is to retain the status quo. Once legalised, it could never be re-banned, or only with grave difficulty.

The general civility of the debate (greater than takes place when we discuss the matter here in writing) is easily explained. First, jests, sarcasm and teasing are easily understood in spoken language, and often unnoticed in written language.  An actual human being, with a face and voice, is bound to engage some of the sympathies even of his opponents, in the flesh. The same person's ideas, coldly expressed in print, come with no such filter. I think it quite permissible to hit hard at ideas I disagree with, and don't mind the same in return. And in written exchanges, this will happen much more than in personal ones. Mr Reynolds and I continue to disagree strongly with each other, and to dislike the other's arguments. But that does not mean we hate each other.

 

I should add here that I dislike the hostile tone of the some of the attacks on Mr Reynolds among the comments on the previosu thread. I don't in any way endorse them, but at the moment I think Mr Reynolds is quite capable of looking after himself and will leave him to do so. At the same time can I ask contributors to mind their manners from now on. My case certainly isn't served (and Mr Reynolds's case isn't harmed) by personal rudeness. It's the argument that matters.

 

As to who 'won', well, Mr Reynolds won the vote – but my pre-debate survey showed that most of the audience had already smoked dope and could be assumed to be partial. So perhaps I swung more opinions. In fact, 'winning' in such events is as important as the final score in 'Have I Got news for You' – not important at all. The point is, has it made anyone think, or helped anyone think?

I'd just like to offer a brief opinion on other thing.  Why have our soldiers been dying in such large numbers in Afghanistan, after a long period with few casualties?  They should of course not be there at all, but I had assumed that the government, realising this, had instructed their commanders to take fewer risks with lives. This seems not to be so.

From what I can see from the TV, the people of Carterton are making a praiseworthy effort to show their respects to the returning dead. But as they are compelled to do so on a suburban grass verge on the edge of that town, they cannot possibly replicate the scenes which used to take place in Wootton Bassett.  The cortege is (deliberately in my view) routed out of RAF Brize Norton by a back gate and away from the centre of Carterton. The official excuses for this route are pitiful and embarrassing. I still think this is shocking and wrong.

The Salford debate about Cannabis, now on YouTube

Many readers will recall my account here a few weeks ago of a debate between me and Peter Reynolds, leader of the Cannabis Law Reform Party. The debate is now accessible on YouTube, here. It lasts about an hour and a half.

 

SPECIAL REPORT: The overthrow of Egypt's despotic ruler was hailed a success but nine months on, Peter Hitchens reports on a fearful and violent land

How small Tahrir Square turns out to be. How scruffy and modest it is. It could be in Bradford or Sheffield, if it were not for the wistful, sad Egyptian sunlight and the gentle, dusty chaos that lies over almost everything in Cairo. Television broadcasts, like the photographs in estate agents' windows, have a way of making places look bigger than they really are. They also make them look simpler.

Just a few months ago a great revolution took place here, or seemed to. A mighty despot fell. The world gasped. Freedom and democracy, we were told, had come to Egypt.

But what really happened? And how will it affect us, in our safe and stable cities under our cool grey skies? Was it just a melodrama of shouting and posturing? Or has the world actually changed?

I sought to find out in this confusing, shocking city, so vast that its population, 17 million, is greater than that of many European countries, so old that parts of it pre-date the Bible.

Cairo is a puzzle, an education and perhaps a warning. In the warm November dusk, some beautifully restored streets of the old city could be in Seville. A few of its grander squares and avenues are like Paris, distinctly European in shape and atmosphere, much closer to Italy than to the great cities of the Islamic world.

But look closer and you find the sad neglect, the crumbling pavements and unpainted facades that are so common in this part of the planet – private affluence and public squalor. And where a European city would have churches, Cairo has mosques, even if some of them are incongruously flanked by branches of a cheeky chain of wine shops called Drinkies.

Here you may get a disturbing preview of what an Islamic Europe might be like if it comes to pass. Other areas are a little like communist Moscow in a heatwave – glowering offices and blocks of flats, colossal military bases and academies, secluded special clubs and hospitals for various favoured elites set in their own walled estates, grandiose murals recording military victories – the concrete legacy of Egypt's long Cold War flirtation with the former Soviet Union.

But a short distance away the ordered grandeur, and the Russian regimentation, both stop abruptly and give way to half-Middle Eastern, half-African claustrophobia and chaos, with tiny dwellings piled crookedly on top of each other and scruffy little cafes where each glass of tea comes with its own free cloud of flies.

Even lower down the scale are the great 'Cities of the Dead', cemeteries still in use, but where the hopelessly poor live, eat and sleep among long streets of ornate tombs.

Beyond this macabre zone, hastily built and largely illegal suburbs of crude red brick eat into the lovely green floodplain of the Nile, wasting some of the most fertile land in Africa, until they wash up in a drift of tourist tat  at the feet of the Pyramids. If it were not for the commercial power of tourism and the supervision of the United Nations, people would be living in the Pyramids too.

Nowhere else in the world is like this. You cannot put it in  any category. It is both modern and ancient.

It contains cosmopolitan thinkers, familiar with the ideas and fashions of Chicago and Shanghai. And it houses near-medieval peasants, with a shaky grasp of the outside world but a deep knowledge of the Koran.

Perhaps most important of all, this is much more of a real nation than most other Arab countries, with a long and distinct history and a strong, genuine patriotism. It is part of Arabia, but it is also very much a state in its own right, not a series of lines drawn in the sand by departing imperialists.

Out of this series of paradoxes and contradictions, how do you make a society? Can you have a democracy at all, and if so would it be a good idea?

The modern world tends to answer 'Yes' to both questions because the modern world doesn't think too hard about what makes the West free and prosperous. Is it, in fact, democracy?

 And are revolutions always good? Well, they are impossible to reverse. Everyone, every institution linked with the old regime of ex-President Hosni Mubarak, is now dismissed with the contemptuous word 'f'loul' (it rhymes with 'pool').

This means a combination of things: 'has-been', 'discredited', 'counter-revolutionary' and 'unwanted', with undertones of corruption and tyranny. If you are one of these, then you are well advised to keep quiet, for now at least.

Strangely, it does not apply to the military that actually propped up Mubarak. They are known by their English acronym SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces). They are let off because of their superb timing. They dropped Mubarak just in time, and sided with the crowd, or mob, who called for his dismissal. But I was told by a well connected source that their real target was Mubarak's younger son and would-be heir, Gamal. The army disliked Gamal and had for years chafed at the idea that he would take over.

But the old president had waved away the advice of his generals.  The generals saw Tahrir Square as a way of destroying Gamal – now in prison – while preserving the essential parts of their power. That is why they have been so keen, since then, to keep the revolution within tight limits.

Informed Cairo rumour, nearly as good as news, says that the ex-president is now being royally treated in hospital. And the trial of Mubarak has been postponed again and again, suggesting that the military hope the old man – he is 83 and far from well – will die before too much truth comes out, and before a verdict is reached.

No new president will be elected until 2013, by which time the army should have agreed on a candidate.

As Sally Toma, one of the original revolutionaries, puts it: 'They used us.'

Sally is a striking woman, and unusual in not wearing the headscarf that is virtually compulsory for females in Egypt. In quieter times she is a psychiatrist and an expert in cognitive behavioural therapy. Now she analyses her country, saying: 'They couldn't have removed Mubarak without us. We couldn't have removed him without them.'

But she fears the old Mubarak party machine will re-emerge under new names, predicting that the elections will be 'a disaster'.  

And while this curious revenge drama proceeds, the army is the supervisor and controller of the sinister limbo in which Egypt now finds itself.

Towering over the Nile, the burnt-out headquarters of the old ruling National Democratic Party reminds the city of the dangers of chaos. No effort has been made to clean it up, or to remove the cadavers of burnt vehicles from its forecourt. It is as if someone wants to make the nation's flesh creep. This could happen again. It could be worse next time. As one revolutionary said to me: 'This is a frightened society.'

In the coming poll, dozens of parties are preparing to contest long and wearisome parliamentary elections. There are more than 50 parties, many of them in complex alliances with each other, plus hundreds of independents, fielding more than 6,000 candidates for 498 seats in the People's Assembly, the lower house, and 270 seats in the Shura Council, the upper house.

Supposedly because the SCAF cannot guarantee order in the  whole country at once, the polls  will take place in three regional rounds, beginning on November 28 and not finishing until January 10 next year.

Meanwhile, the vital tourist trade shrivels as Western visitors nervously watch TV footage of riots and massacres on the Cairo streets, and wonder if anyone is in charge. Perhaps Turkey would be better this year, they conclude, and thousands of Egyptian families wonder where their next meal is coming from.

As in all Muslim countries where Christians are a minority, it is difficult to find out how bad things are. Muslim 'tolerance' of other religions, never very generous, has always been offered in return for submission. Keep quiet, and we'll just about let you survive. Complain, and you're in trouble. 

Egypt's fantastic bureaucracy, already horrible, has become even worse as nobody wants to take responsibility for anything. So business suffers. Prices have risen sharply, making life that little bit more miserable. But the thing that everyone complains of, high and low, rich and poor, is that the country has become less safe since the old order fled. In the stately old Al-Azhar Mosque, dossers slumber in the pillared courtyard. They would have been moved on in Mubarak's days.

 In Cairo's middle-class heart, professionals look on with dislike and apprehension as teenagers from the city's slums invade their once-select districts. Parking and traffic laws, planning regulations, restrictions on street-trading, all seem to have vanished, leaving a general impression that authority has gone on holiday. 

The most spectacular sufferers are the Copts, Egypt's huge minority of ancient Christians, who make up ten to 15 per cent of the population of 82 million, and proudly point out that they were in the country centuries before Islam had been invented. Under Mubarak, they were reasonably well protected, though there were serious outbreaks of anti-Copt violence a year ago. But now they feel very nervous.

As in all Muslim countries where Christians are a minority, it is difficult to find out how bad things are. Muslim 'tolerance' of other religions, never very generous, has always been offered in return for submission. Keep quiet, and we'll just about let you survive. Complain, and you're in trouble.

So I will not give the real name of Pierre, the young Copt who, speaking softly in a city-centre cafe, explains that many professions are closed to him, a problem that has grown worse in the past 30 years as militant Muslims have grown more common in Egypt.

He does not look or dress differently from his Muslim fellow citizens, though he has a small blue cross tattooed on the inside of his wrist. This is a sign he can show other Christians and it is useful  to the guards of Coptic churches, screening worshippers for dangerous infiltrators. But there have been cases of thugs demanding to examine the wrists of suspected Christians and, finding these crosses, beating them severely.

'We were very optimistic about  the revolution. We thought it would bring us justice,' Pierre says. 'But we are the ones who lost most. Since the revolution, the Salafi Muslim militants and the Muslim Brotherhood have become politically ambitious. All Egyptians are being hurt by religious extremists.'

When a Coptic church was destroyed by angry Muslims in the Aswan district in October, the authorities helped the Christians rebuild it. But Pierre complains that they did not punish the culprits.

'So it will happen again. If nobody is prosecuted, there will be more of these attacks, and it will get worse for the Copts.'

This is not idle talk. A few days after the church was destroyed the Copts massed around the state television station in Cairo to protest against the destruction of the Aswan church. Some Muslim eyewitnesses have told me, convincingly, that among the thousands of Copts were people prepared for violence, with rocks and Molotov cocktails. But that cannot excuse what happened next.

Soldiers drove armoured cars into the protesters, crushing people to death – and while they did so an anchorwoman on the main TV channel was urging 'honourable citizens' to defend the army against Coptic attack.

Pierre recalls: 'And the thugs responded, and came out carrying knives and clubs, and started beating us up.'

The same TV station never showed any footage of the appalling carnage that was going on yards from its studios, and also just yards from pleasure boats, full of dancers, cruising along the Nile. At least 27 died. Some witnesses claim they saw thugs throwing corpses into  the river.

Another Copt joked bitterly to me that if the country's Christians were such good fighters that the powerful, US-equipped army needed to be defended against them, they should obviously replace the army on Egypt's border in future.

Less humorously, a senior figure in the Egyptian elite suggested to me with a straight face that mysterious armed men had swarmed out of boats up the banks of the Nile, and had seized the armoured cars from the soldiers before using them to shoot and crush the protesters.

The person involved was so well connected, and the story so ludicrous, that I will spare his blushes. The only reason for such rubbish gaining currency – and in censored societies all kinds of hogwash quickly gain the status of truth – is that the army is deeply embarrassed about its behaviour. So it should be.

The question that nobody can answer is what this really means. Pierre's view is harsh and simple. 'We are scared of the coming elections because of Islamic involvement in political life. But it is not only us. All the liberals in Egypt are afraid of what is coming.'

Certainly the military seems to have allowed Muslim intolerance to rampage through the streets. Many reports of the Tahrir Revolution were coy – or silent – about the daubing of Jewish Stars of David on pictures of Mubarak. You can still see scribbles on the walls near Tahrir Square that make this connection. One, decorated with two stars, says baldly: 'Mubarak is a traitor for keeping links with Israel.'

 Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel has always been hated by the masses. This is a country where loathing of Jews, and venomous resentment of the Jewish state, are common among  all classes.

And this is a big difficulty. For Egypt's elite made their cold but practical peace with Jerusalem in return for £30 billion in American aid, cash that has sustained them in power for years. 

Egypt's proud patriotism is nowadays mainly based on the cult of the October War of 1973. That was when Egyptian troops drove the Israelis back from the Suez Canal, and overcame the burning shame of their rout at Jewish hands in the Six Day War of 1967.

Yet in September, Cairo's Israeli embassy (hidden on the top of a suburban block of flats) was sacked by angry demonstrators. It took hours – and American top-level intervention – before Egyptian commandos rescued the besieged staff.

This is a shameful breach of the Vienna Convention, under which all states are obliged to defend the embassies of foreign countries on their soil. It is also a sign that the Egyptian state may not be able or willing to sustain this bargain for much longer.

What does the Egyptian elite think? Well, the man who scaled the building and ripped down the Israeli flag, Ahmad al-Shahat, is a national hero and has been given a flat, a job at  a quarry and a commemorative plaque by his local provincial governor, in recognition of his illegal act.

And those who attacked the embassy with hammers (all new, and all the same brand) have been given suspended sentences by a military court. Islamic militancy is on the loose, directed against its external and internal enemies. But when you talk to, say, the official spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Freedom Party – modelled on Turkey's successful AK Party – any certainty about anything vanishes in a fog of emollient phrases.

In his peaceful, ornate apartment in a pleasant Cairo district, the devoutly bearded Dr Mahmoud Ghozlan is endlessly reassuring. His movement has been unfairly demonised by the regime over the years. There will be changes if his party is in charge – the borders of Gaza will be opened, the Israeli peace treaty will be revised, the Americans will not be able to use Egypt to interrogate suspects, but nothing fundamental will change, at home or in diplomacy. The Copts have nothing to fear from a Muslim Brotherhood government. 'We have lived with them for 15 centuries. We are fellow Egyptians.'

I have the feeling I so often get with Islam's more genial spokesmen, that I am not being told everything and that maybe another message is being passed to the voters. It is impossible to know for sure. There is, however, no doubt that many Copts are emigrating, or thinking of it. I would rely rather more on their actions than on reassuring words from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Of course there are other parties. And they too have their doubts. Amr Azz, a 28-year-old candidate for one of the many democratic parties, told me in his sparse shop-front headquarters  that the Muslim Brotherhood 'speak differently in the foreign media. They have more than one face'.

But shopkeepers and passers-by near his office echo the familiar themes of the ordinary Egyptian – life has grown more dangerous, jobs are few and prices have got higher. It sometimes feels as if the authorities want people to associate their new freedom with insecurity and poverty, so that they begin to wish for a return to a more rigidly ordered society.

And my own brief straw poll showed a strong feeling among Muslim Egyptians that the Muslim Brotherhood, now officially approved by the military, will do well in the elections, because it is the one force that seems likely to bring back some stability – and also because it is well organised and present in every village.

But will it win? I was given a fascinating prediction by one military insider, anxious not to be quoted. He said the Muslim Brotherhood hoped to win 31 per cent of the seats, as that would give it the power to dismiss the cabinet. But it does not want to win outright, as it would then have to take responsibility for the government.

 That might taint its hard-bought reputation, gained over many decades, for purity and cleanliness. Like most people, it prefers power without responsibility – and the generals may be willing to cohabit with the Muslim Brotherhood as long as they do not have to give too much away. The mystery remains, as to how much they will have to give for such a deal.

How much colder can the peace with Israel get, without it turning into open hostility? How much can Egypt side with the Hamas regime in Gaza without provoking actual war? Can Egypt's long and lucrative relationship with the United States survive if this important country abandons moderation, and joins the Islamic militants?

And if the spirit of Tahrir Square is suppressed by a new authoritarian regime, as corrupt as the old one, will the revolutionaries take to the streets again, this time without restraint?

These are the forces released by the Cairo uprising. Will those who applauded them at the start be quite so pleased if they now catch fire  again, with all the alarming possibilities they offer?

What surprises me most, and continues to puzzle me, is why the Western world is so carelessly willing to wish revolutionary chaos on other people, from the safety of our rich and stable law-governed societies.

The hidden persuaders, and the menace of TV

My favourite secondhand bookshop has once again delivered an unexpected delight – a vintage copy of Vance Packard's 'Hidden Persuaders', one of those books you think you've read and haven't.  I remember being repeatedly urged to read it back in the 1960s, when it was already quite old. In fact it's still very fresh. The advertising and market research techniques that it exposes are still very much in use, though Colour TV has made them infinitely more effective. And we are still not armoured against them.

In fact the continuing success of supermarkets, a sort of mass hypnosis under which we repeatedly buy large piles of things we don't really need, and which are not as nice as they look, is a tribute to our willingness to be seduced by clever lighting, cunning use of colour and the strange power of large heaps of goods to make us want to buy those goods.

I have a simple technique for dealing with this, much like Ulysses's neat trick for listening to the lovely music of the Sirens without being lured on the rocks and killed.

Well not that much like, as supermarkets don't lure you to your death, just into excessive spending. But vaguely like it. I simply make it physically  impossible for temptation to work.  Ulysses stuffed his crew's ears with wax and commanded them to lash him to the mast of his ship while they sailed by, so he could hear the beautiful singing and survive. There's a rather horrible picture of this scene from The Odyssey,  in Manchester City Art Gallery. The Sirens, a good deal cheekier and much more lightly clad than most women in Victorian art, sit smirking and carolling amid the decaying corpses of their past victims, while an enraptured Ulysses strives to burst his bonds and his grumpy crew sail on by with their plugged ears, well aware they're missing a great performance.

But I digress. My infallible device for resisting supermarket attempts to lower my blink rate and soothe me into idiotic lavish buying is this. I go to the supermarket by bicycle. With only a modest basket and a backpack in which to carry my purchases, I am forced to buy only what I really need. I try as hard as I can to buy as much as possible from proper butchers, bakers and greengrocers, buying from supermarkets only those things I can't get anywhere else.    Making a shopping list is also useful – and it is interesting that this old practice was almost entirely killed off by the spread of supermarkets.

I am of the British generation which can remember the days before supermarkets, days of small refrigerators, string bags, parcels and actual grocers with counters. The last one of these I can remember is a pleasant corner grocery in the Coventry suburb of Earlsdon, back in 1976. It had a bacon-slicer and a coffee grinder, and a pleasant aroma.  In Oxford in the late 1960s, Sainsbury's still had a counter, and assistants standing behind it who fetched things from shelves, rather than let you do it yourself. Small grocers, catering to students and little old ladies, would still sell four ounces of butter, cut, weighed and wrapped. Too unhygienic now, of course.

But the relationship between buyer and seller was more direct and, I think, more honest. In still remembea triumphant momentina shop in Swindon where a shopkeeper, assuming rightly that I was a callow recently-graduated student, but assuming wrongly that I'd never done my own housekeeping before, tried to sell me a bag of soft, decayed onions. When I pointed out the problem she swiftly replaced them, and never tried any such tricks on me again. Cunning supermarket packaging (especially of fruit) often prevents you realising your apples have been two years in cold store, and will turn to mush within hours of being taken out of the chill cabinet,  until it is too late.

We all know (or knew) about butchers pressing the scales with their thumbs (canny shoppers would sarcastically suggest that if the butcher's thumb was on the scale, then perhaps he would chop it off and include it in the parcel with the scrag end of neck). And in George Orwell's 'Coming Up For Air, there's the old joke about the Methodist grocer's bedtime litany :  

Grocer: 'Have you sanded the sugar?'
Wife : 'Yes'
Grocer : 'Have you watered the treacle?'
Wife: 'I have'
Grocer: 'Then come up to prayers'

But the moderately wily person could cope with all that sort of thing. The thing most of us can't cope with is marketing men getting inside our heads while we're not looking, and persuading us to do things we wouldn't normally do, while imagining we are making our own decisions.

There is a very enjoyable section in 'The Hidden Persuaders'  on the campaign to rehabilitate the prune, and the ways used to get Americans to buy this unlovely comestible after it had gone out of fashion . I wonder if this would have been possible in Britain – where the infliction of stewed prunes on several disgusted generations, and the grim portrayal of militant and aggressive prunes in the matchless Molesworth books, have surely driven the hated prune from our tables forever.

There are also interesting reflections on silly mistakes which advertisers used to make, before they began to consult market research men and psychologists. You can see here why such semi-sciences as psychology and sociology have become so important in our universities in the last 60 years or so. They have powerful and lucrative commercial and political applications. 

Packard's description of the extraordinarily rapid advanced of these techniques into politics is of course the most crucial part of the book. And his mentions of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew and one of the most significant men of the 20th century, are particularly fascinating. Adam Curtis's brilliant TV programme (yes, they exist, see below) 'The Century of the Self' rightly dwelt on Bernays, the father of propaganda, who invented the expression 'the engineering of consent' to describe what PR men do. Implicit in all this is a contempt for the basic ideas of 'democracy', i.e. that the people should rule,  combined with an outward respect for its forms. Thus the people are manipulated into deciding what the elite wants them to decide anyway. And this is then called the people's will, and used to legitimise various types of elite government.

They are also made to do things by being tricked into thinking that they are rebelling while they are being manipulated. People love to think of themselves as rebels, especially while they are conforming, which explains both the huge continuing market for denim jeans, and the unending fantasy of left-wing establishment types that their modish, hackneyed ideas are 'dangerous' and nonconformist'.

Bernays's  campaign to start women smoking in public by staging a 'march' demanding a woman's 'right' to smoke in public was an effective example of this. I wonder how many painful early deaths resulted from this piece of genius.  His technique of using more or less bogus 'surveys' to create opinion and demand is also still very much in use.

Now to TV. First, there's no question that some TV programmes, considered in their own right, are good. I hope the ones I've been involved in making were good, both in content, nature and purpose.  Secondly, as I've said elsewhere, a person such as me, who wishes TV had never been invented, is not debarred by that belief from appearing on it now that it *has* been invented. By refusing to do so, I wouldn't uninvent it. I would simply deprive my cause of a useful platform.

But there are caveats to this. TV-watching is usually habitual. That is to say, once someone has sat down in front of the TV he does not want to get up and start doing something else. Why, he isn't even required to rise from his seat to change the channel any more. I'm sometimes surprised that adult nappies aren't sold to allow people to watch continually without having to take physical needs breaks.

So the 'wonderful nature programmes'  which are the justification for allowing little Barnaby to plant himself in front of a vast plasma screen with a bowl of ice-cream will usually turn out to be a pretext. Barnaby may start with Polar Bears and David Attenborough. But it won't be long before he is slumped, slack-jawed and with dilated pupils, in front of the cartoons as his brain turns to grey goo and his imagination shrivels, atrophies and dies. The wonderful cartoon strip 'Calvin and Hobbes' has some superb satires on this, as well as on the appalling sugar-crammed cereals that form so much of the childish diet.

If TV could, in practice be treated like (say) alcohol, and kept in a locked cupboard away from the children, then it would be much less harmful. Most of its damage is done in the child's formative years (I recommend here my chapter on the Telescreen in 'The Abolition of Britain', some of it based on Neil Postman's superb book 'Entertaining Ourselves to Death').

But this is most unlikely. TV's hypnotic, soothing power makes it an immensely tempting child minding tool, the Third Parent in every home, a place where the child can be left transfixed and quiet, safe from physical danger on the traffic-infested street or out in the paedophile-haunted parks and countryside. The trouble is that that the TV is itself so mentally dangerous, at least as mentally dangerous as the outside world is physically dangerous, and more pernicious because its harms aren't obvious.

And since TV began to be broadcast in colour, even the most appalling dross looks warm and tempting on the screen. It is because its power to do harm cannot be controlled, and because very few humans have the will to resist it, that I wish it had never been invented.

I say this largely to stress to people just how dangerous and damaging TV is. I have no hope that it will be abolished. But I do think there is some hope that a substantial minority will start to resist it, and safeguard their children from it.

Those in doubt might like to read Ray Bradbury's disturbing satirical novel  'Fahrenheit 451' (nothing whatever to do with the awful Michael Moore), and/or watch the film that Francois Truffaut made of it. It is about a society in which books are illegal, and TV (on huge wall-size screens much like those we now have but almost unimaginable when Bradbury was writing in 1953) is virtually compulsory.  Robert Redford's very clever film 'Quiz Show' also makes a good job of portraying the corrupting effect of TV on civilised thought and on education. The moment when the TV arrives in the home of the poet Mark van Doren ( beautifully played by Paul Scofield) is heartbreaking. It is the end of a golden age of thought, reading and conversation, and the beginning of a plastic age of trivia and cheating.

Mindbending Drug bends minds shock. A non-impartial commentary

In response to Mr 'Macabre' ( and later to Mr Wooderson). I certainly don't claim to be 'impartial' . I can't imagine that anyone coming here thinks I am.  The briefest study of this site will show that I am not, and do not claim to be .  Nor do I have any duty to be impartial, as I am not financed by taxes or established in a position of unassailable monopoly by a Royal Charter. That is the BBC ( and it is a duty they consistently fail to observe). I am an openly partial commentator writing for an openly  conservative newspaper.  I am against the taking of mind-altering drugs on many grounds, perhaps the most important of all being that if we are dissatisfied with the world as it is, we should endeavour to improve matters and improve ourselves, not hide from  reality by frying our brains and becoming – what's the phrase? - ah, yes, 'comfortably numb'. There are many other reasons. I have discussed them before.

As for being 'prejudiced', Mr 'Macabre' would have to produce evidence that I had formed my judgements before establishing the facts. If he cannot( and I bet he cannot)  'prejudice' is just a word used by lazy conformist left-wing bigots to describe the reasoned opinions, based on facts and experience,  of people who don't agree with them. It is of no value in the argument.

As for 'insults',  the identity of Mr 'Macabre' is a secret and he  is in no way affected in his personal life by the hard things I say to him and about him. I cannot affect his reputation because nobody except him knows who he is.  But in any case I have not 'insulted' him. I have not made remarks about his appearance, his parentage or anything of that kind. I have merely described him truthfully as what he appears to me to be – a self-seeking apologist for law-breaking, who is happy for others to suffer as the price for his pleasure. 

If he doesn't want to be described thus, he should not say such things or aid such a contemptible cause. As the old jibe goes , if he stops telling lies about me, then I'll stop telling the truth about him.

I am amused that he thinks ethics are 'irrelevant'. This is not a view I share. In my view ethics( and in my case Christian morals) are always 'relevant' in every moment and corner or life,  but I suppose someone with his views would find it difficult to accept the idea that humanity is bound by an unalterable  moral code which sometimes prevents people from doing things they want to do.

He says ' There are millions of cannabis users in this country who would be willing to give their consent and participate in such tests. There are others who subject themselves to dangerous clinical trials of pharmaceutical drugs who would not think twice about participation here either.'

By 'such tests' he means tests in which people are given cannabis to discover if it makes them irreversibly mad. I don't actually care if people are *willing* to undergo such tests.  They could not be *permitted* to do so by any moral person. Were I a scientist, especially a qualified doctor of the sort who would be needed in any such study, I would have to say to such people 'No, I cannot permit you to take this risk'.  I would assume that anyone willing to do so had rendered himself unfit to decide by revealing such a recklessness about his own self-preservation. I suppose if these volunteers were cannabis users, as Mr 'Macabre' breezily assumes they would be, their attitude would provide something pretty close to proof of an association between that drug and insanity.


I think there is quite enough circumstantial evidence against cannabis ( see, yet again Robin Murray, the Swedish Army Survey, the South London Longitudinal survey etc etc etc) to argue wise caution on the part of the state on calls for 'decriminalisation'.  Apart from anything else, once made legal, cannabis could never realistically be made illegal again (as these campaigners well know). It is very difficult to re-ban something that has been unbanned. So as we are lucky enough to have a law, all we need, when examining class for its destruction, is wisdom and normal caution. 

Mr 'Macabre' is kind enough to repeat my jibe about the unsurprisingness of the connection between cannabis and mental illness. Good,. I think it rather a good point, neatly made. But of course he does not understand it, so gripped is he by his prejudice in favour of self-destruction.

He says, first quoting me, :  ' "…given that cannabis is not an innocent gardening aid, furniture polish, cooking oil or birdseed, in which a capacity to send its users mad might be a bit of a shock,"
I never argued cannabis was any of these things"

No he didn't, but then again,  I never said he did. My point was simply that it is hardly surprising that a drug which messes with your brain….messes with your brain. Some substances turn out to be unexpectedly and surprisingly dangerous in ways people would not have expected, such as industrial chemicals or asbestos. But cannabis, like its friend and ally tobacco, isn't one of them. Smokers must have had a pretty good idea, as, racked by appalling coughs and gurgling with phlegm, they lit up the first of the day, that this thing wasn't good for their lungs or throats. Cannabis users, as they zonk their brain cells, must have a pretty good idea that this activity might have a long-term baleful effect on their ability to think and reason. And that if it affects their brain,  a notoriously sensitive and easily-damaged organ, it might also be hurting that brain.

So when great piles of correlation show that cannabis users fail at school, suffer panic attacks, think they are persecuted and (of course) become highly sensitive to criticism and unable to cope with opposing points of view,  and that some of them become so seriously ill that they become permanently delusional and irrational, and incapable of leading proper lives,  it might be reasonable to connect the two. Indeed, it might be irrational and self-seeking self-deception to *refuse* to connect the two.
He then quotes me again "but is sold on the basis that it is a powerful mind-altering drug, as indeed it is. Well, I never. A powerful mind-altering drug that upsets people's mental health. I mean to say, who would ever have thought it ?" and adds; 'Well I imagine the answer to that would be you. But without the evidence, sans an "unethical" experiment, a thought would be all that your case amounts to.'
Well, I think one or two other people might have managed to form a  similar opinion.  And as for his attempted jeer that 'a thought would be all that your case amounts to', I'd say  *some* thought, certainly – a process apparently driven out of his contributions by a raging, all-consuming self-interest in his own uninterrupted and unrestricted pleasure, and who cares who pays, or how?

Correlation, as it happens, is the foundation of epidemiology and the method first used to discover the causes of cholera and lung cancer.  The fact that correlation is not causation does not mean that correlation means *no* causation.  Does it now?  If Mr 'Macabre' wishes to launch upon the world this revolting and dangerous poison, notorious for centuries for its baleful effects on its users,  the burden of proof that it is safe lies on him. He cannot ever prove that (though apparently he is prepared to risk irreparably ruining the lives of his human guinea pigs to try to do so). So it must stay illegal. Now I begin to see the meaning of his pseudonym. Macabre indeed. Dr Feelgood meets Dr Mengele.

Mr Wooderson joins in : 'Continually repeating the absurd claim that anyone who advocates reform of the drug laws must be doing it for entirely self-interested reasons doesn't make it any more true.'

The claim is not absurd. In almost all cases it is absolutely correct. I find most people tend to discredit arguments offered by people who are concealing a substantial personal interest in the outcome of a debate. I don't see why this shouldn't apply here. I have no interest here at all, save the protection of my fellow-creatures from a needless evil. And that is not selfish, and it is not secret. I say it again and again because it is true, and because of Mandelson's law, that you have to keep on saying something till you yourself are sick of the sound of it, before most people hear what you are saying. Oh, and the fact that it always annoys people such as Mr Wooderson suggest to me that it discomfits and disturbs them. Good.

The fact that he then advances a whole load of feeble and exploded 'arguments' which have been repeatedly and patiently dealt with, cut to pieces, shredded and pushed down the plumbing here ( see index) shows that we are in some way dealing with a force of unreason.  If it is not motivated by selfishness (the most powerful shaper of irrational opinions) , then I can think of one or two other explanations which are even less complimentary. I will leave him to guess what they might be.

But one of the great frustrations of this weblog is that I can repeatedly, with facts and logic, destroy various cases advanced here. And a few days or weeks later, I then see them advanced again, often by the same people, as if I had never taken the trouble. This is called 'being unresponsive'. I have criticised this bad habit, so damaging to debate, many times before.  I think I'm rather patient with this sort of thing.

How long before the grey dictators march on London?

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Civlian juntas have seized power in Rome and Athens. Soon, similar gangs of grey men may be sweeping aside national governments in Madrid and Lisbon. Nobody much is protesting. In time – don't rule it out – it could be our turn here, with Lords Patten and Mandelson forming a  cabinet of none of the talents.

Our ruling Left-wing elite seem oddly untroubled by the ruthless snuffing-out of national sovereignty across southern Europe. If the same thing had been done by a bunch of colonels, they would have been piously outraged.

But of course these putsches are the work of the European Union, a project the Left have long supported. And the EU is more subtle than any colonels. There is no need for midnight arrests or tanks on the streets. The enormous invisible power of the EU's law and institutions gets its way without any need for such things.

The sheer dictatorial nerve of Italy's new viceroy, Mario Monti, pictured right, is impressive. He has formed a government without a single elected politician in it.

You may well say that Italy's politicians are, like ours, a sorry collection of blowhards and amateurs. But that does not mean they should be replaced by something worse – robots under the command of the EU Commission.

Once again, please pay close attention. This is the best warning you will ever get of what the EU is really about. It is an empire, in which the great nations of Europe, including ours, are intended to disappear for ever.

It has from the start been based on a grave mistake – the idea that national differences and independence no longer matter and are obsolete. It is this mistake which led it into creating the mad single currency that is now ruining it. But people who are driven by ideals can seldom see when they are wrong.

You and I may grasp that the euro has failed, as we always knew it would. But in the high councils of Euroland, they are unable to recognise this blazingly obvious reality.

Inside their tiny, deluded world it is all the other way round. The euro is a sparkling success that must be kept alive at all costs. So is the European Union. We must march onward towards ever-closer union, even if it is so close that it suffocates us to death.
In the minds of Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, those to blame for the present problems are the countries that have inexplicably gone bankrupt, or the ones who are about to do so.

Their peoples must undergo collective punishment for their failure, and be driven mad by useless austerity programmes that devastate their countries while failing to dent their debt.

They must submit to direct rule from Brussels, no longer allowed even to pretend that they are independent.

It will be painful to see how much treasure will now be squandered on trying to fend off reality.

But, as Britain learned during John Major's Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis, you cannot keep out the ocean with a garden fence.

When all this is over – and let it be soon – it seems increasingly likely that several countries will have been forced out of the euro.

This country may have been strong-armed into imposing a ruinous EU-mandated tax.

Heaven knows what Germany will have to swallow. The sad thing is that, even after the  turmoil, the waste and the pain, the major British political  parties will continue to insist that this country should stay in the EU.

Why do they do this? There has never been any good reason for us to belong. There are now hundreds of reasons why we should leave.

When will we get a leadership with the courage to say so, and act accordingly?

The Cenotaph lout proves jail sentences are a fraud

Charlie Gilmour, in a drugged and drunken rage of self-righteousness, desecrated our most revered memorial to the fallen.

A judge 'sentenced' him to 16 months in prison. A number of silly female commentators, fooled by Gilmour's carefully styled courtroom appearance in which he dressed as HarryPotter, whimpered soppily about the savagery of the Bench.

Gilmour's mother Polly Samson and rich, rock-star adoptive father David Gilmour mounted a costly appeal and let it be known they thought it was all terribly unfair and out of proportion. Given the rock industry's long-term role in promoting drugs, and the fact the younger Gilmour's brain was ablaze with LSD at the time of his crime, it seems to me they would have been wiser to stay silent.

Now, after serving a paltry four months of his sentence, the Cenotaph Swinger emerges from jail with a hard-man haircut (this will be by choice – it is many years since prisoners were compulsorily cropped), a sulky face and a roll-up fag behind his ear, very different from the meek, lost boy we were shown at the trial.

And to those who say that prison doesn't teach anybody anything, I would only reply that Charlie Gilmour now knows precisely what the Cenotaph looks like, and exactly where it is – and so do lots of other people who will think twice before using it as an adventure playground in future.

What we have also learned, alas, is that prison sentences are even more fraudulent than they were. Criminals used to serve half of the term stated. Now it seems to be only a quarter.

A 'spy chief' with no intelligence

I am not sure what use Eliza Manningham-Buller ever was. MI5, which she somehow came to lead, is a bloated and expensive collection of plods which feeds on our fears and could probably be abolished tomorrow without any of us being less safe.

I always laughed when she was called a 'spy chief', as if MI5 was the same as the marginally more glamorous MI6, which does actually employ some spies. One thing she knows nothing about is drugs. She thinks there is a 'war on drugs' and that it has 'failed'. So the obvious solution is to 'decriminalise' dope.

The same hogwash has gushed from the mouths of various other airhead celebrities and ex-Ministers.

As I have repeatedly recorded here, cannabis use in this country is effectively decriminalised already, with most offences being dealt with by an unrecorded warning. Nor is this new. In February 1994, John O'Connor, former head of the Scotland Yard Flying Squad, said: 'Cannabis is a decriminalised drug.'

It is because we have given up the fight against it that the correlation between cannabis use and mental illness is now worrying our psychiatrists so much.
A security service whose ex-chief doesn't even know these basic facts can't be much good, can it?

Our security is going for a song

I am still amazed that this Government gets good marks for competence on defence. The US Navy and US Marines are to buy the 74 Harrier jets which were so stupidly scrapped by the supposed Conservative Liam Fox.

They cannot believe their luck. 'We're taking advantage of all the money the Brits have spent on them,' says American Admiral Mark Heinrich. 'It's like buying a car with maybe 15,000 miles on it.'

It's plain who is the loser in this deal.

Tories are a joke to Dave

I do wonder what David Cameron says in private about Patrick Mercer, who was so rude about the Premier the other day.

Actually, I don't wonder at all. Mr Cameron must spend long minutes every evening laughing at all the traditional Tories who continue so foolishly to vote for him.

Change is sometimes bad, sometimes good. How do we tell?

My thanks to Mr 'Demetriou', who seems to have been breakfasting on Semtex when he wrote his explosive contribution to the 'War War and Jaw Jaw (or was it the other way round?)' posting. He asked, perhaps with a touch of aggression 'Why do you think Britain could have got through the last hundred years by defiantly resisting any sort of change whatsoever? You think transport could have stood still, do you? While everyone else went road and car. We could have ploughed on as a major economy with a bunch of railway lines alone? Ridiculous. This is an example of where you make a farce of yourself.'

As Mr 'Demetriou' knows perfectly well, I don't think anything of the kind. What I don't think is that 'Change is Good' ( a slogan actually adopted by some people, often in the course of introducing such unwanted horrors as the various revised prayer books of the Church of England ) . I think that change, and those who keenly advocate it,  must be treated with doubt and some suspicion. In whose interests is it? Will its claimed benefits really come about? Have we carefully considered its unintended consequences?  If it is justified, then let us have it. if not, as Edmund Burke rightly pointed out 'if it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change'. The fact that it *is* change does not automatically mean that it is change for the better.

You might think (I do) that this is blazingly obvious. But listen and watch and see how often you find the idea being advanced that change is automatically 'progress' and that 'progress' is automatically good. In fact, see how often you come across the idea that there is such a thing as 'progress', and that something new is axiomatically better than what it replaces.

Think this absurd? In that case explain the supposed argument, sometimes used by contributors to this weblog, that 'For heaven's sake, it's the 21st Century'. This line is offered as a clinching, overpowering, irresistible reason for discarding any former belief or habit or tradition. Why should that be, unless the reader has accepted some bizarre historical theory which validates all things by virtue of their newness?

This whole idea seemed to me to be implicit in the ghastly celebrations of the 'Millennium' (marked, in any case, a year early) so keenly pursued by New Labour and its Tory allies. Somehow a new world would begin on the flip of a calendar. Regular readers here will know how much I loathe the New Year holiday, a meaningless celebration of nothing at all. But perhaps it is worse than that perhaps it has a meaning after all, and is a small-scale rite of the same cult of ever-progressing time.

Anyway, to return to Mr 'Demetriou' and his charge. 'why do you think Britain could have got through the last hundred years by defiantly resisting any sort of change whatsoever? You think transport could have stood still, do you? While everyone else went road and car. We could have ploughed on as a major economy with a bunch of railway lines alone? Ridiculous. This is an example of where you make a farce of yourself.'

I don't think, and have never said that 'Britain could have got through the last hundred years by defiantly resisting any sort of change whatsoever.'
I do think that Britain would be much better off if it had resisted some changes – the enormous expansion of the welfare state, mass immigration, comprehensive schooling, divorce law reform. I think it would also have been better off if it had been less willing to rush off and engage in foreign wars on the vaguest pretext, or in the belief that it had some global or European police function.

But I am all in favour of (for instance) the telephone, the electrical national grid, the building of international airports(I am less convinced of any serious need for domestic passenger traffic) , some limited expansion of the universities, the electrification of the railways (in fact, a great deal more of it than we have had) , the adoption of computers and the Internet, the Clean Air Acts, myriad advances in medical science, the restrictions on smoking and the general improvement in English food, at home and in restaurants. I'm sure I could think of plenty of others.

But I'm not in favour of television at all (I can't think of any circumstances under which it would be a good thing, or any alleged benefit it brings which in any begins to justify the damage it does. ) mass car ownership - not because I'm against the proles enjoying the benefits of the rich, but because I can see the need for cars in remote country areas, also the need for ambulances, taxis, tradesmen's vans and other individual forms of transport capable of carrying several people and a reasonable amount of tools, equipment or luggage.

Likewise I can see the need for a well-maintained roads (but not for a combination of heavy road spending, neglect of public transport and increased traffic leading to greater danger for cyclists and pedestrians on the roads).

I think this all perfectly rational, and it only takes a little imagination to see that a country shaped like ours would be better off, in terms of health, general wellbeing (!), physical beauty of landscape and many other aspects, if these changes had been resisted.

The idea that, in the meantime the railways and other forms of transport would have remained as they were is absurd. Had we not decided to go hell-for-leather for a car economy, our railways could have been almost universally electrified (diesel railcars might have been introduced on the lightest branch lines) and then also extended by sidings into every significant industrial and commercial centre.  The Great Central main line(ripped up by Beeching) had already be built to Continental loading gauge and was designed to link up with a projected Channel tunnel, so could have formed the sine of a national goods and passenger network linking British railways with the Continent.

Containerisation, another unmixed blessing, has led to huge increases in rail's share of goods traffic in the USA, and – if the money spent on Motorways were instead sent on widening tracks and raising bridges and tunnels in this country, the same thing could be achieved here. Why, we might even build more branch lines, connecting more of our countryside with the major cities, without in the process wrecking that same countryside.

Electric trams, now being successfully reintroduced across the continent ( and very marginally here) could have been retained and modernised, giving us an urban transport system that was clean, quiet and improved the look of the cities it served, and was not dependent on Arab despotisms for its fuel.

Such urban transport , together with suburban rail networks, fosters the creation of urban villages and works against the ugly and soulless ribbon development promoted by mass car usage.

Switzerland, it is true, has some Motorways, which largely serve as links with the road systems of Europe.  But its  rail and public transport links, rural and urban, make car ownership and use largely unnecessary in most of the country. I don't believe that Switzerland is viewed as backward my most who visit it.

I just offer these as examples of how the imagination can be applied to the inventions of the past, and so might guide us in judging the inventions of the future. Just because things are as they are, it does not mean that they were bound to be as they are, or that this is the best possible arrangement. It is not just an exercise in fantasy to think in this way. It is an exercise in helping to choose the future.

Establishment Hypocrisy about the King James Bible

Alas I was too ill yesterday to attend the Westminster Abbey service marking the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version (or, in the USA, the King James version) of the Bible. I am sure it was a glorious occasion (and yes, thank you, I'm better now). But I might have been grinding my teeth a little bit while I was there.

For while it is hard to find an establishment person - this year-  who doesn't say what a great and  wonderful book the Authorised Version is,  it is equally hard to find an Anglican church, Cathedral or Oxbridge College Chapel where it is still in regular use on the lectern. There are a tiny few, but that is all.  This has been so for years, and has been getting worse for years.

And that is all fairly normal. I try to take my own pocket copy to such places, so that I can read the disturbing, timeless  poetry of the Authorised Version in my head, to take away the plastic, diet cola taste of the modern version that has been read (through a needless PA system, in a building designed to allow the human voice to carry unaided).

But even in this 400th anniversary year, it doesn't occur to anybody much to give the King James an outing. At evensong in Lincoln cathedral, and again in Canterbury, in the past few weeks, I have encountered modern versions. Since Evensong is, for the most part, a service conducted in the English of the 16th century, it is actually rather incongruous to have a modern Bible read amid the sonorous rhythms of Cranmer's prayers, Coverdale's psalms and the ancient canticles. Why do they do it?

I think it is because, while Evensong brings in the tourists as a kind of religious concert (it is almost always stripped of the Confession or of any congregational prayers except the Creed), and is therefore more or less tolerated by the C of E establishment, the Authorised Version is too powerful a reminder of what Christianity used to be before the liberals got hold of it, and remains banned.  The only tribute to the Authorised Version that would be worth having, would be its restoration.

Don't believe any of that stuff about it being hard to understand. Much of it is in words of one or two syllables, and memorable words at that. The difficult passages are just as difficult in the new versions.