Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 326

On Missing The Point

In one of his latest comments, Mr Charles writes : 'PH entirely misses my point. I was not arguing for the rights or wrongs of Grammar Schools. I was asking him to tell us how he would sell their reintroduction to the voting public.'

But I dealt precisely, in detail and at length with that issue. I only mentioned the possibility that he really didn't grasp that grammar schools were better, in case this was his problem.

I do sometimes wonder if people such as Mr Charles make any serious effort to  read what I write here. For likewise Mr Charles says : ' If PH really believes that those of us on the left believe we have had things "our way" for so long, he is monstrously deluded. Every Labour government since Attlee has betrayed its founding principles.'

But I didn't say the left *believed* it has had things all its own way. I said (emphasis added by me) : 'They *have* had things their way for many years now.'

The Left's strange ability to believe that it is still an outsider rebel faction, far from power, long after it has taken over the establishment, is one of the principal features of the argument I have been making ever since I published 'The Abolition of Britain' (and ever since my critics started not reading it, while thinking that they had) in 1999.

I recall particularly making fun of the fact that the horrible Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, one of the most repressive state apparatuses on earth, has an official radio station called 'Radio Rebelde' (Rebel Radio) . This seems to me to be a good metaphor for the Left's difficulty in taking responsibility for, and taking satisfaction from, its accession to power. A few years ago the editor of the Radio 4 'Today' programme paid me the great compliment of delaying the 8.30 news Bulletin, so that I could continue my debate with Lindsey German, of the 'Socialist Workers' Party', in which I tried (yet failed) to explain to Ms German that she and her comrades had much to be pleased about in modern Britain.

The fact that the Secretary of State for Defence (himself a not-very-apologetic ex-member of the pro-Soviet Communist party)  had just quoted Antonio Gramsci in an interview (and only I, of those in the studio, had realised this) seemed to me to be a good example of how it takes an ex-Bolshevik to grasp what's going on. Things have surely changed a bit, if Britain can have an ex-Communist, Gramsci-quoting Defence Secretary.

If The Left don't like the anti-sovereignty, liberal intervention policy of the Blair and Cameron governments, then they haven't understood the founding principles of their own movement. Or perhaps they just don't like the look of the 'abolition of national borders' when they see it being done. Actually this has often been the problem for sensitive leftists.

They will the end of a socialist, secularist, internationalised, egalitarian society – but they dislike the means necessary to bring about this Hell-on-Earth, when they find out in too much detail what they are. The charming Nikolai Bukharin was quite happy for all kinds of repression to be used against non-Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. But he was surprised and shocked when the same thing was done to him by Stalin a few years  later, in the same cause.

I can, by the way, think of few British governments of modern times which have fulfilled their manifesto commitments more fully than did the Attlee Cabinet of 1945-51. For better or worse (and often for worse) they did what they said they would do, and did it so thoroughly that Churchill himself didn't dare reverse it in 1951. Similarly, the 1964-70 Wilson government conducted a moral and social revolution of vast dimensions. And the Blair-Brown government likewise hugely expanded taxation and the public sector, shrivelled our national independence, adopted liberal interventionism on a large scale and blanketed the country in political correctness. If, after these three eras of profound change, a leftist person thinks himself betrayed or ignored, then I can only imagine he doesn't understand politics, economics or diplomacy has no interest in culture or morals, or is simply half asleep. But as we see here, there are such people.

One of the many things to be said for my brother Christopher is that at least he is prepared to look the consequences of his beliefs in the face, and acknowledge them as essential to what he desires.

And so he thinks (though he still hesitates over several points).

The problem with most Leftists is that they are in the grip of a dogmatic faith, and therefore cannot think. And so they must twist reality to suit the dogma, for they would be bereft if they had to accept that their dogma is wrong. That is why they all believe this self-serving fantasy that they are poor, sad excluded minority figures, when in fact their ideas dominate the country.

Mr Gibson says ; 'I went to a comprehensive. I achieved straight A grades at A level, went to get a 1st class honours degree, Master's with distinction and a PhD. Stop generalising!'

Two points. In a devalued education system these grades and qualifications do not necessarily mean what they would have meant in a system that was not dependent on comprehensive state secondary schools, and hadn't needed to lower its standards to conceal the decline in quality, as we have done (see John Marks, 'The Betrayed Generation').

Indeed, were Mr Gibson a regular reader here he might know ( see *index*!) that the devaluation of all examinations, all grades , including  A levels and University degrees is often discussed. Thus his experience proves nothing. Second, while I have no doubt that comprehensives destroy the educational hopes of many who go to them, some people have such natural gifts, and such strong backing from home, (and attend one of the comprehensives that is less bad, less disorderly and less hostile to learning than the majority) and can therefore obtain a reasonable education in spite of being forced to attend a bad school.  It is Mr Gibson who is generalising.

If Mr Wooderson can direct me to research showing that secondary moderns were worse for social mobility than comprehensives, I will examine it and comment on it. I have not heard of it. In fact I am often struck by how little is written about these schools ( some of which, by 1985, were offering A level courses and getting pupils into University) . But I would point out that secondary moderns were not *designed* to achieve social mobility. That was the job of the grammar schools.  It would seem to me that you would have to take both sorts of schools together, and compare their joint results with those of comprehensives.

On the question of private tutors, etc, I have no doubt that some parents will always use private tutors. The financial incentive for a parent in a grammar school area is huge.  Mr Anthony Blair, for instance, did so, even though his sons were at one of the best state schools in the country. I believe many other socialist politicians do the same, rather than admit that comprehensives are inferior to selective schools. This is only one of many hypocritical actions they undertake, to conceal this truth from themselves and others (a recent edition of BBC Radio 4's 'The House I Grew Up In ',  featuring Toby Young's recollections of his education, under the influence of his egalitarian anti-grammar school father Michael, provides an example of this which is both poignant and infuriating).

But if in every area of the country there were grammar places available to between 30 and 40 per cent of children, obtained not by a single exam but by (as I advocate, see *index* !) the German system of mutual agreement between parents and teachers, with second chances at 13 and even 15, I doubt if it would happen very much. I don't think it does in Germany. Perhaps any Northern Irish readers might wish to comment on whether such tutoring is common there. I have no idea. But my guess is that, while it happens, it is not remotely comparable to what goes on in Kent and Buckinghamshire.

Tutoring was not unknown in the days of the eleven-plus, and it will not die out entirely if we reinstate a national grammar school system covering the whole of England and Wales. But the current situation where heavily oversubscribed grammar schools, within commuting distance of the capital, are overwhelmed by demand, is a result of the *abolition* of selection in neighbouring areas, not of its existence where it survives. It gives no indication of the operation of a national selective system.  This too has been discussed many times before (see *index* !).

Some responses and a revelation

I'll get to the revelation in a moment. But I am sometimes amazed at the points which critics make here, which they for some reason imagine to be devastating.  As I don't share this view, I don't respond to them. They then come back and make them again, sometimes with the implication that I'm avoiding a tough question – when in fact I've ignored something I thought unimportant and far from challenging.

One such is Mr Charles, who has (I think) more than once asked how I think a return to selective state secondary education could be got past the electorate, which he imagines to be mainly hostile to such a thing. Actually, I suspect that those without school-age children are largely indifferent.  This is a pity, but it's the case.

He also seems to think that it is axiomatic that the majority of voters want bad education for their children, or would deny a good education to the children of others, even though it didn't make the education of their own children any better. I suppose such dog-in-the-manger attitudes do exist, but I doubt if there are many votes in them.

If it's just that he's not persuaded that grammar schools offer a better education that comprehensives, a matter many times addressed here and fully indexed, I don't know what to say. There just isn't any doubt about it.

Comprehensive campaigners don't want  to abolish selection to provide a better education. They do it to make our society more 'equal'.

The only serious complaint against selection in practice , from the pro-comprehensive people, is that it deprives comprehensives of what would otherwise be their best pupils. This complaint shows rather well how their minds work. Like so many socialists, they see the state from the point of view of the producer, not that of the consumer.

They look at the education system as theirs, not for the pupils but for the employees,  a thing for creating  organisationally successful versions of the sort of school that they want. No doubt, if you take bright pupils out of comprehensive schools, their results, discipline and general state will be worse than if you don't.

But a) the purpose of education is not to create a smooth organisation for teachers and bureaucrats; it is to educate the children well. And b) comprehensive schools are a flawed idea in the first place, based upon political and social egalitarianism rather than on a desire to provide a good education. So who cares if good grammar schools make bad comprehensives worse? Provided that we then have enough sense to admit that comprehensive schools – as a concept – are pitiful, tear-stained failures, and get rid of them, then what harm will a bit more evidence of their failure do?

It is only damaging if we persist with the failed idea in the belief that, if we force enough clever people to go to them, they will eventually be any good (See Einstein's definition of insanity).  Or if we do it on the grounds that our dogma is so sacred that all must submit to it, even if the outcome is awful.

Even if all other schools in the country were abolished and everyone forced by law to attend comprehensives, they would still give those who went to them a worse education than selective schools.

The Labour manifesto of 1964 did not by any means assume that people hated grammar school education. It lied, in a slippery and misleading fashion: 'Labour will get rid of the segregation of children into separate schools caused by 11-plus selection: secondary education will be reorganised on comprehensive lines. Within the new system, grammar school education will be extended: in future no child will he denied the opportunity of benefiting from it through arbitrary selection at the age of 11.'

Note that 'within the new system, grammar school education will be extended…no child will be denied the opportunity of benefiting from it'. This either a flat lie, or a statement of incredible arrogant stupidity. You may choose. But it was told because Labour assumed that voters thought (indeed knew) that grammar education was good.

In fact, in every education authority that obeyed Anthony Crosland's circular 10/65, and Margaret Thatcher's continuing implementation of it after 1970, all children in the state system were denied the opportunity of benefiting from a grammar education. Everyone would go to secondary moderns, though in rich areas the secondary moderns would be better than the ones in poor areas.

So the idea that in some way Labour (which nearly lost the 1964 election anyway) abolished grammar schools on a wave of popularity is false. They had to pretend, to get a majority at all, that grammar school education would still be available.

There's a further point.  Two, in fact.

Voters who care about education tend to be those who most expect their children to benefit from it. They would certainly be in favour of schools which aided the talented children of poor homes. But why would selection make education or anything else any worse for the parents of those who would not qualify for grammar schools? Had the money wasted on comprehensive schemes and ludicrous academic-education-for-all policies been used to create technical and apprenticeship schools, millions would by now have benefited and we might still be a major manufacturing country. Comprehensive schools don't in any way benefit the non-academic. On the contrary, they imprison them in pointless classes gaining so-called 'qualifications', pseudo-academic nonsenses without practical use or educational value.

Also, parties stand on general manifestoes, covering many issues. In general, people vote for them on balance, with some items being enough to win a vote , and some to lose it, but most only influencing it.

Say my putative party existed and stood for ( as I would wish) :

An end to mass immigration
The reintroduction of punishment, including capital punishment, into the criminal justice system
The return of the police to preventive foot patrol
Departure from the EU
The restoration of selection in secondary education
Reforms of the welfare system to discriminate between deserving and undeserving recipients
Severe reductions in foreign aid
The rebuilding of the armed forces
The abandonment of liberal foreign adventures
The repeal of the Human Rights Act and British departure from the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court,

Mr Charles and like-minded Guardian readers would have several reasons not to vote for such a party. I would hope so. I neither want nor expect their votes. They have had things their way for many years now, and it is time we cleaned house.

But millions of others would have many reason to vote for it. And I doubt very much if they would regard selective education as what I believe is known as a 'dealbreaker', if they could get the other things - even if (as I very much doubt) comprehensives are popular among the masses. Or anywhere else. After all, even, or perhaps especially the politicians who claim to support them, all avoid them in practice.

Now to the revelation.

I have for a long time complained about the difficulties of obtaining information on what really happens to those convicted of drug possession.

I did manage (in the course of wiping the floor with the over-rated Professor Nutt, see Index)  to obtain detailed figures about the 'criminal sanctions' (ie, in most cases,  two parts of nothing at all, in the form of an unrecorded 'warning' ) visited on the tiny minority of dope users who are actually arrested for possession of cannabis.

But similar figures on the 'hard drugs' were harder to get. This was irritating, as we are always told that the abandonment of any effort to control cannabis will 'free up' police resources to deal with 'hard drugs'  (as if cannabis weren't hard as nails when it comes into contact with the human brain). Why 'free up', by the way? This is like the railway expression 'arriving into'.

We might get lightning-flashes of truth ,as in the Injustice System's  pathetically indulgent  treatment of the 'singer' Pete Doherty, let off after actually being found in possession of heroin while in a criminal courtroom on another charge.

But I would be told that this was 'anecdotal' or perhaps 'cherry-picking' (this is the practice of quoting evidence which supports your arguments as described by druggie lobbyists, whose own patrading of surveys claiming that all is well is somehow not 'cherry-picking').

Now, thanks to Tim Knox of the CPS, the superb Kathy Gyngell and the Tory MP Nicola Blackwood (my profuse thanks to all of them ) , the written answer to  a Parliamentary question has revealed a great deal more of the truth.

(The Hansard source is HC Deb, 15 June 2011, c839W. The Minister answering is Crispin Blunt)

It contains comparative tables for what happened to those convicted of drug offences, 2007-2010.

They don't vary all that much, year to year, so I'll extract some facts from the most recent table, that for 2010.

So, for 'Class 'A', drugs supposedly the most serious, we had 12,175 sentenced for simple possession in 2010.

Of these ,779 were sent to prison.  There is no information in the answer on which I can base even a guess as to why these were selected for imprisonment and the rest not, though one might suspect that a long previous record, a combination of this offence with other crimes, or a very large quantity possessed, might make a difference.

Of these, just two , repeat two, received the maximum sentence of seven years (three years six months, in practice). The others, 11,396, received 'other sentences'.  I am now trying to find out what these were. I suspect most were, in effect, let off provided they agreed to undergo some 'rehab' programme or other. The figures don't say anything about how many offences had been committed previously, either.

By the way, even for *supply* of Class 'A' drugs (supposedly so serious that the maximum sentence is 'life' in prison, which of course doesn't mean anything of the kind),  774 out of 2, 530 convicted offenders did not go to prison at all, let alone for life. For the similar offence of 'Possession with Intent to supply, the figures are higher but the proportions are similar, 3687 sentenced, 908 imprisoned, one for life).

In the past four years,  only two life sentences have been handed out for simple supply, both in 2008.

And, if the relaxation of cannabis law enforcement has 'freed up' police and courts  for pursuing the 'evil dealers', why have convictions for supply of Class 'A' drugs remained more or less unchanged for the past four years ( 2,633 in 2007, 2,968 in 2008, 2,804 in 2009 and 2,530 in 2010) ?

We're cheering on a football crowd with AK-47s, who could be worse than Gaddafi

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

The moment has come to admit that I loathe the Arab Spring and almost everything about it.

It looks to me pretty much like a football crowd armed with AK-47s and bazookas, with the added ingredient of Islamic militancy. Why am I expected to like it?

For we are all supposed to approve of it. Every media outlet, every politician, every church pulpit, treats it as an unmixed Good Thing.

Not me. I look at these wild characters in baseball caps and tracksuit bottoms blasting ammunition into the sky (often killing or injuring innocents far away, but they don't care) and I am mainly thankful that they are a long way off.

I suppose it is possible that this lot will miraculously create a law-governed democracy with freedom of speech and conscience. But I somehow shan't be surprised if they don't.
 
Just because existing regimes are bad, it does not follow that their replacements will be any better. The world has known this since the French Revolution of 1789, when bliss and joy turned to mass murder and dictatorship in a matter of months.

The test of any revolution comes not as the tyrant falls, but two or three years later, when the new rulers have shown us what they are really like. Power can be given (not often) or taken, and shared out in different ways. But it never ceases to exist.

Egypt's upheaval has already begun to go bad. Libya's has been plastered with danger signs from the start. The anti-Gaddafi rebels are an incompetent and fractious mess. They have already murdered one of their own leaders.

And – I think it very wrong that this aspect is played down so much – their victory would never have happened without Nato providing them with an air force, as it did for the equally suspect Kosovo Liberation Army in the early days of Blair.

We have given them the military gifts of cool self-discipline, long training and competence which we ought to reserve for ourselves and for protecting our own freedom and independence. If they don't possess them, I don't think they deserve to rule a country.

The official pretext, that we are 'intervening to protect civilians', is lying hogwash and should be laughed at every time it is used. In the past few days – according to reliable reports – Libya's rebels have been guilty of indiscriminate shooting into civilian areas and the brutal and arbitrary arrests of suspected opponents.

It is false to claim, as some instantly will, that by saying this I am defending Colonel Gaddafi. I am not. He is indefensible.

The questions are these: Will what follows be better? Will the burned, bandaged bodies, the crammed morgues and the hospital wards full of stench, screams and groans have been worthwhile? Were we right to take sides?

Here are some problems for the cheerleaders of this event, most of them modern Left- liberals. The savage regimes that are now falling are the direct result of the destruction of the empires of Europe. America, which encouraged this, quietly hung on to its own large land empire. So did the USSR.

These campaigners for 'colonial freedom' argued – I recall them doing it – that it didn't matter what sort of regimes arose when independence came. What mattered was that they would be free from us. That 'freedom' led directly to Colonel Gaddafi.

True, Europe's empires were often violent and cruel, though ours was generally better than the others. And they were frequently corrupt, though again ours was cleaner than the ¬others. But their misdeeds were petty set beside those of most of the newly 'free' countries of Africa and the Middle East.

Now it is the very same Left-liberals who are most set on using bombs and sanctions to overthrow the states they were so keen on. How strange that, more than half a century after the Suez bungle finished us as a Mediterranean power, British military force is now in action again in North Africa, bolstering a farcical yet sinister army in pick-up trucks whose aims we don't even know.

Violence and bad language – is that really the best we can offer children of 12?

I was beguiled into seeing the new film Super 8 by enthusiastic reviews. It was suggested that it was the new 'ET', a rite- of-passage drama about an unhappy boy discovering important truths through contact with an alien.

I really should have known better. I should also have known that a '12A' rating doesn't mean what someone of my generation might think it means.

Super 8 seemed to me to be needlessly violent, frightening and noisy, with many moments at which a 12-year-old might want to hide behind the seat or look away.

Even the train crash was overdone, while being less impressive than the better and more believable one in The Fugitive. There's also a scene that makes a joke out of the brain-wrecking, indeed life-wrecking drug cannabis, probably more dangerous to teenagers than to any other part of the population.

Its rating only emphasises the complete uselessness of our film classification system, which seems to think that really rather young children should be able to see 'moderate violence', 'occasional' gore, 'brief indications' of sexual violence and 'disturbing sequences' and hear the f-word spoken, provided these things are not frequent or sustained.

The s-word, used like punctuation in Super 8, is apparently unrestricted now. 'Infrequent use of very mild bad language', as they call it, is now permitted even by the rare 'U' classification. I know the s-word also appears in ET, and I think it shouldn't. Plenty of children are still brought up not to use it.

And 'realism' – usually advanced as the case for this sort of thing – isn't an argument in a film in which an alien comes to stay in a suburban house.

Like, hello? If we can be unrealistic about a telepathic extraterrestrial in the wardrobe, and airborne pushbikes, then we can be unrealistic about the s-word, too, can't we?

But even with this fault, ET is a far gentler and more appealing film – and a far better one – than Super 8. And it is sad that in the 20-odd years between them, our idea of what it is suitable for children to see and hear has changed so much.

The education con is collapsing at last

Britain's disastrous education establishment are at last being found out. They said history was being properly taught, but the truth is now revealed – fewer than 30 per cent of comprehensive pupils in England and Wales study it at all.

They say the GCSE is a good exam. But now a distinguished private school head has confessed (after years of pretending otherwise) that it is 'the worst exam of its kind in the world'.

Next, Labour admits that abolishing the 11-plus was a stupid mistake? Alas, not any time soon.

 

The picture that tells you everything you need to know about the Great Faker

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

It is now clear that we have learned nothing from seeing our cities in flames and our streets ruled by violent thieves.

The governing elite have decided to respond by pretending to be fierce for a few weeks.

But they will do nothing to change the policies that brought us to this state. Those policies will continue, and so will the consequences.

The Prime Minister, who has a great talent for faking anger and concern over things he couldn't care less about, gave a speech on Monday that could have been delivered by his idol Anthony Blair. It even contained several of Mr Blair's favourite verbless sentences.

We had the usual lies, told now for more than 30 years by politicians of all parties, about scrapping police paperwork, putting constables back on the beat, replacing rights with responsibilities, and distinguishing right from wrong again. Nothing will happen.

We had the curious confession that 'you can't say that marriage and commitment are good things – for fear of alienating single mothers'. And, lo, the word 'marriage' was not mentioned again in the entire oration. Why not? Because of that very fear.

We will continue to subsidise the fatherless families that create the conditions for gangs and feral youth.

There was praise for the few exceptional state schools that work. But there was no commitment to build the new grammar schools that would spread such standards to the whole country. Why not? New grammar schools are currently illegal – yes, illegal – under an Act of Parliament.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, made a commitment to stick with the tried, tested and utterly failed egalitarian stupidity of comprehensive schooling more clearly still. He delivered his thought-free post-disorder speech at a comprehensive school which was presumably opened up specially for him.

Mr Cameron's choice of location was also significant. By that I don't mean it was near the expensive house in the country which he could have afforded himself but which we taxpayers kindly helped him to buy with the (now discontinued) special housing benefit for MPs – though it was.

I mean that the place was picked to send a careful message to the liberal elite that he remains one of theirs, and that they can ignore his claptrap about the 'broken society'.

He chose to deliver his words at Base 33, a 'youth centre' in Witney, a solid symbol of the failed policy of appeasement towards vandalism and feral behaviour.

Behind him, plainly deliberately selected for the purpose, was a wall vividly covered in graffiti – that ugly, hateful and aggressive blight that law-abiding people rightly see as a sign of menace and a warning that the neighbourhood is troubled. It is loutishness rendered in spray-paint.

Mr Cameron also declared that 'government cannot legislate to change behaviour'. This is both defeatist and untrue. The whole Fabian socialist project, which revolutionised our nation throughout the 20th Century and which eventually took over the Tory Party itself, was intended to change behaviour, and did so. So is the new programme which has replaced it, the politically correct drive for 'equality and diversity'.

The 1969 Divorce Reform Act completely changed the nature and standing of marriage. The Children Act of 1989 sharply reduced adult authority.

The consequences of the Human Rights Act are limitless. The Misuse Of Drugs Act 1971 decriminalised cannabis, with huge results for behaviour. So did the abolition of the old alcohol licensing laws.

Numberless Criminal Justice Acts have robbed the courts of power. What does he mean, 'government cannot legislate to change behaviour'?

It can, and it does – but always in the wrong direction.

Gripping day that changed the world

It is 20 years since I woke up to find tanks trundling down my Moscow street, gun barrels aslant in the early morning sun. It was, in a way, what I had been waiting for and expecting during my entire time as a correspondent in what was then the capital of the Evil Empire.

I had hurried back from the Black Sea coast the day before because of rumours that something of the kind was about to happen.

Yet the actual sight of naked force near my home was still a fearful shock, and I have never claimed to have understood fully the world-changing events that followed.

There's still a tremendous unsolved mystery in the supposed suicides of several
people at the heart of the failed communist putsch – especially those of Nikolai Kruchina
and Georgi Pavlov, the chief treasurers of the fabulously wealthy Soviet Communist Party, who both 'jumped' from high windows in the days after the coup.

But we now have a clear and exciting account of these momentous times, written by my old friend Conor O'Clery of the Irish Times, one of the great reporters of our age.

Crammed with fascinating and telling detail, it describes Mikhail Gorbachev's final evening as President of the USSR, with a series of flashbacks to the events that led
to the hauling down of the Red Flag from the Kremlin.

It also explores and illuminates the bristling personal rivalry and loathing that crackled between Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.

It is a marvellous read and would make an unmissable TV docu-drama. It is called Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day Of The Soviet Union.

Please read it.

Pull the plug on Child Power

Those who seek to blame or indeed punish parents for the misdeeds of their children should heed the painful cry of one such parent this week, a respected TV cameraman.

'I am heartbroken and totally ashamed,' he said of his daughter's criminal actions.

'This is the end product of a society that tells you that you can't discipline your children.'

Those who do, he said, risked being reported to police or social services.

He concluded: 'Children now have the power over their parents, not the other way round.'

I think all modern parents will recognise the truth in this. Except for David Cameron and Ed Miliband.


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News that watching too much TV can shorten your life comes as no surprise. It certainly makes us more easily fooled and more conformist, and is the only explanation for the electoral success of the Blair creature – surely a form of mass mental illness.

I think it's worse than that. You can, of course, argue that it's the slumping in the armchair and the grazing on junk food that actually kill people. But what if TV, by switching off our imaginations, weakens important parts of the brain?

Could it be the explanation for all this dementia and Alzheimer's which are afflicting the first generation to be exposed to lifelong TV-watching?

If so, then expect these scourges to strike at younger and younger victims in decades to come.

***********
If the courts always behaved as they are doing now, we wouldn't have many of the problems we have. But the current frenzy of 'toughness' is a public-relations gesture and will not last.

Suspects who would normally be given bail are being held in custody. Magistrates, who normally send two per cent of convicted criminals to prison, are now sending 70 per cent there. Sentences are up to 40 per cent longer than average.

Within weeks, things will have settled back to where they were before, not least because the jails will be bursting.

The absence from public view of the Injustice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has been one of the most interesting features of the past week. He is biding his time.

Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure

Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why? I have been saying for years that it was coming, and why it was coming, and what could be done to stop it.

I have said it in books, in articles, over lunch and dinner tables with politicians whose lips curled with lofty contempt.

So yes, I am deeply sorry for the innocent and gentle people who have lost lives, homes, businesses and security. Heaven knows I have argued for years for the measures that might have saved them.

But I am not really very sorry for the elite liberal Londoners who have suddenly discovered what millions of others have lived with for decades. The mass criminality in the big cities is merely a speeded-up and concentrated version of life on most large estates – fear, intimidation, cruelty, injustice, savagery towards the vulnerable and the  different, a cold sneer turned towards any plea for pity, the awful realisation that when you call for help from the authorities, none  will come.

Just look and see how many shops are protected with steel shutters, how many homes have bars on their windows. This is not new.

As the polluted flood (it is not a tide; it will not go back down again) of spite, greed and violence washes on to their very doorsteps, well-off and influential Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally.

No doubt they will find ways to save themselves. But they will not save the country. Because even now they will not admit that all their ideas are wrong, and that the policies of the past 50 years – the policies they love – have been a terrible mistake. I have heard them in the past few days clinging to their old excuses of non-existent 'poverty' and 'exclusion'.

Take our Prime Minister, who is once again defrauding far too many people. He uses his expensive voice, his expensive clothes, his well-learned tone of public-school command, to give the impression of being an effective and decisive  person. But it is all false. He has  no real idea of what to do. He  thinks the actual solutions to the problem are 'fascist'. Deep down,  he still wants to 'understand' the hoodies.

Say to him that naughty children should be smacked at home and caned in school, that the police (and responsible adults) should be free to wallop louts and vandals caught in the act, that the police should return to preventive foot patrols, that prisons should be austere places of hard work, plain food and discipline without TV sets or semi-licit drugs, and that wrongdoers should be sent to them when they first take to crime, not when they are already habitual crooks, and he will throw up his well-tailored arms in horror at your barbarity.

Say to him that divorce should be made very difficult and that the state should be energetically in favour of stable, married families with fathers (and cease forthwith to subsidise families without fathers) and he will smirk patronisingly and regard you as a pitiable lunatic.

Say to him that mass immigration should be stopped and reversed, and that those who refuse any of the huge number of jobs which are then available should be denied benefits of any kind, and he will gibber in shock.

Yet he is ready to authorise the use of water cannon and plastic bullets on our streets (quite useless,  as it happens, against this sort of outbreak) as if we were a Third World despotism.

Water cannon and plastic bullets indeed. What an utter admission of failure, that after 50 years of the most lavish welfare state in the solar system, you cannot govern your country without soaking the citizenry in cold water and bombarding them with missiles from a safe distance. Except, of course, that it is because of the welfare system that this is so.

Here is an example of how little he knows about Britain. He says that the criminals of August will face the 'full force of the law'. What 'force'?

The great majority of the looters, smashers, burners and muggers have not been arrested and never will be. Our long-enfeebled police were so useless at the start that thousands of crimes were committed with total impunity.

Now we know why they don't call themselves 'police forces' any more. But they aren't 'services' either, for they certainly don't serve us or do what we want them to do, preferring to arrest us for defending ourselves. The criminals, who are cunning without being intelligent, all know this. They will wait for the next chance.

The loping, smirking, shuffling creeps who eventually appeared before the courts were the ultimate losers – the ones who came late to the looting and  who were too slow or too stupid to run before they were put in the bag.

And what courts they are. In the one I sat in last week, self-confessed thieves are courteously addressed by magistrates and clerks as 'mister' and asked politely to stand up or 'accompany the officers' back to the cells or – more often – out into the street on bail. In the part of the dock reserved for those already free on bail, nobody has bothered to clean up the scribbled and disrespectful graffiti.

Why should anyone respect or fear this chamber of indifference? The wall-hangings behind the magistrates are scruffy and scratched. There is no sense of awe or determination or of much purpose. There is only a strong sense of going through the motions for the sake of appearances.

Nobody is directly punished for what he has done. Excuses must first be sought, and indulgence arranged where there should be cold rage. There will be 'social inquiry reports' and 'youth offender teams' who bustle smilingly in and out ready to start work on yet another 'client'.

All this piffle enshrines the official (and hopelessly wrong) view that crime is caused by circumstances and background, not by unleashed human evil. It is precisely because of this windy falsehood that the cells are crammed with young men who broke the law because they felt like it.

Hulking louts – black and white, for this was an equal-opportunity crimewave – are accompanied before the bench by alleged 'parents' who are obviously afraid of their broods. Nothing is said or done to express official disapproval of crime. The accused are treated more like patients than like wrongdoers.

Many in this rogues' parade are still trying to qualify for prison, but are only, as it were, at the GCSE stage. They have sheaves of previous convictions, no doubt a tiny sample of their many acts of spite, selfishness and cruelty.

You can bet their neighbours hate and fear them. Some are on bail for other offences, a state of affairs so common that it is almost funny. At least one is subject to a 'suspended' prison sentence, one of the many fake penalties handed down by the courts to fool the public into thinking that something significant happens to criminals.

They have all learned what most British politicians somehow cannot grasp – that the more encounters you have with our justice system, the less you fear it. A few 'exemplary' sentences – none of which will be served in full, or anything near it – will only help to spread the word that arson, robbery, violence, spite and selfishness are not punished here any more. Indeed these are the things we are now famous for around a world that once respected us.

And that is why we have many more nasty surprises waiting for  us, here in The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain.

Radio Silence

I know that many people will have visited this site in the past few days looking for my response to the so-called 'riots' which began in London on Saturday night. I am sorry to have disappointed them – though I hope that my thoughts on Hugh Walpole, written last Friday and Saturday, have given pleasure to some.

As it happens I've been busy (first on another project and on Wednesday in one of the courts, watching our 'Criminal Justice' system  dealing with those arrested) and couldn't have posted anything before now anyway.

But I also wish to concentrate my writing on this subject, as far as possible, on my Mail on Sunday column.

So rather than give a full response, I would make some very brief but fundamental points:

1. These were not 'riots'. They had no political purpose and no origin in discontent or deprivation.

2.Those apprehended by the police appear to me for the most part to be stragglers and losers, the slow runners and dimwits who were still on the scene when the constabulary eventually arrived. They are not the  main actors. I have no sympathy for them, but the idea that the law is about to take a severe revenge on the culprits is laughable. Most of the culprits got away with it.

3.This is an equal-opportunity crime wave. The lawbreakers are not from any distinct ethnic group, and attempts to explain this behaviour on these ground are baseless and poisonous.

4. Nothing of any substance has been or will be learned by our political class from these events. The 'debate' is already drivelling away into irrelevant discussions about police cuts or misleading confrontations between people who appear to be different but are in fact fundamentally the same. In these (for example) Michael Gove (whose government is in practice as feeble and politically correct as any in our history) is portrayed as a hero of debate because Harriet Harman is so immeasurably thick, and Michael Gove looks sensible by comparison.

5. My reluctant conclusion, that Britain is finished as a civil and civilised society, is unaltered. I suspect quite a few more people may now grasp this point, but the majority of our 'intelligentsia' will continue to regard me as a 'fascist' and my solutions to these problems as unthinkable. They will even accuse me - falsely - of believing that the 1950s were a 'Golden Age' but I can promise them that they will soon look upon this decade as a 'Golden Age' compared with what is coming.

Yet they cheer on the introduction of plastic bullets and water cannon to our streets, a terrible admission of defeat and a further step down the dark staircase to the strong state and the end of liberty.

Holiday Reading

I promised to post, during this less busy time, a few thoughts on the forgotten novelist Sir Hugh Walpole, for those who are interested in such things. Here is the promised article. I am travelling at the moment, but not very remotely, so later in the week I hope to respond to readers' comments on this and other matters.

One of my favourite second-hand bookstores (I won't say where) pretends to be something else. It masquerades as a greeting-card and poster shop. No doubt many of its customers think that is what it is.

But the thoughtful display of interesting if obsolete Pelican books (remember those blue-covered storehouses of serious knowledge and controversy back in the 1960s?) on a bench outside, mingled with an interesting selection of old and unfashionable orange-covered Penguin novels, is a sign to the passer-by that someone inside loves reading, and knows what he is selling.

Many of them are quite rare, and some of the prices quite high. But they aren't stolen, because the sort of person who wants that sort of book wouldn't dream of stealing it. Or so I think.

In some ways better still is the mountain of old volumes inside, only partly catalogued, spreading up the poorly-lit stairs in thrilling heaps leading in the end to an upper room piled to the picture rails with yet more books, waiting for the day when the owner finally buys a new lightbulb and sorts them out. Who knows what obscure treasures might be there?  It was there, a few weeks ago, the bookshop's proprietor found for me a copy of Hugh Walpole's 'Jeremy' stories, in a 1941 edition before 'war economy' forced publishers to use crumbly thin paper, still with its original dust jacket showing a truculent small boy and a disreputable mongrel confronting a black-clad and stout middle-aged lady, perhaps an aunt.

These are quite forgotten now, though I suspect there are quite a few Jeremies of my age or older (Mr Paxman, are you one?) who owe their Christian names to them. For they were very popular. Written in the 1920s, there are three of them, spanning the life of a small boy brought up in an English Cathedral city (rather like Durham, but not wholly) in the 1890s, at first infested by governesses and aunts, then sent away to school at eight or nine, and following him to his (fictional) public school until the age of perhaps 15 or 16. Also featured is his mongrel dog, Hamlet, a character in his own right, through whose sardonic eyes the author sometimes looks. I read one, or perhaps two of these books in my own childhood (the third, even then, was too hopelessly unfashionable with its ancient public school slang and its embarrassing and unashamed anti-semitic moment). I have been amazed ever afterwards at the way in which they have stuck in my memory and my imagination (and I know it isn't just me. I have spoken to others who have similarly clear memories of Jeremy from just as long ago).

His late-Victorian world, though very different from my 1950s suburban one, was still not so hopelessly remote that it was impossible to understand. On the contrary, Jeremy's life had much more in common with my childhood – despite the total disappearance of servants by then – than it does with the world of children today. But I think that, as a child reader, gulping down the prose, I simply missed much that I now see.

The books were thought fit for children because of their subject. My mother, I think, had read them in her 1920s and 1930s childhood. But because a book is about a child, it does not mean that it is a children's book, and I am by no means sure that the author meant it as such (I am always infuriated by the way in which one of Penelope Lively's finest novels,  'The House in Norham Gardens', is marketed as a children's book because it is about a child. It is a very serious and adult story, overshadowed by loss and approaching death).

Take this passage from 'Jeremy' (the first of three volumes). Aged eight, he has just discovered the joy and power of bullying the weak, the victim in this case being a new and pathetic governess who – if dismissed – faces penury and utter misery. Hoping to ingratiate herself, she shows her weakness to her charges by giving in to one of their demands. Many modern teachers will give a start of recognition as they read the beginning.

'From that instant her doom was sealed. The children exchanged a glance of realisation. Jeremy smiled. The lesson was continued. What possessed Jeremy now? What possesses any child, naturally perhaps, of a kindly and even sentimental nature at the sight of something helpless and in its power? Is there any cruelty in after life like the cruelty of a small boy, and is there anything more powerful, more unreasoning, and more malicious than the calculating tortures that small children devise for those weaker than themselves? Jeremy was possessed with a new power.'

It was something almost abstract in its manifestations; it was something indecent, sinister, secret, foreign to his whole nature felt by him now for the first time, unanalysed, of course, but belonging, had he known it, to that world of which afterwards he was often to catch glimpses, that world of shining white faces in dark streets, of muffled cries from shuttered windows, of muttered exclamations, half caught, half understood. He was never again to be quite free from the neighbourhood of that half-world; he would never be quite sure of his dominance of it until he died.'

I am amazed that adults allowed me to read such stuff when I was 11 years old. Perhaps they thought I wouldn't notice, and perhaps they were right, for I don't recall that bit at all, though other passages are quite clear.

Now, Walpole excels in description of detail, in the painting of landscape and weather and time of day. He sees light and shadow, and their subtle colours, much as the Impressionist painters do (and he knew quite a bit about them). He is also very good at portraying dreams, and the things half-seen at the borders of consciousness. His description of the death of Sarah in 'Judith Paris' is astonishing. At the moment of death, she clearly sees her long-dead husband and,  transfigured with joy and pride, calls him by name. Having seen something rather similar myself, I had to put the book down for a moment to recover when I read this, as the description was so sudden and powerfully affecting that, unprepared for any such thing, I was almost in tears.

In another passage in the same book,   an old man seeking vengeance for the murder of his son comes to live with that son's killer (He is enormous and old, with a great white beard like God, and, while he makes no reproach, he will not go away) and by the simple force of his terrifying presence, forces the murderer to confess. Then - with extraordinary speed and violence - he seizes and kills him. The images created by this passage will not leave my imagination.

He is very good at the sinister and menacing   But that bit about 'shining white faces in dark streets, muffled cries from shuttered windows…' What is he suggesting? When I read the passage, the thing that came instantly to mind was Philip Larkin's merciless poem about death's invasion of apparent normality,  'Ambulances', with its terrifying line : 'A wild white face that overtops/ red stretcher-blankets momently/
As it is carried in and stowed'.

But there's something much more going on here. What I think Walpole is writing about is the world of cruelty and ruthlessness, and of predatory sexual desire, that lies beyond the safe, lighted circle of family and familiarity, modesty and restraint. What did he know about that? We'll come to that too.

But the startling thing is this. Apart from my childhood brush with Jeremy, already beyond the limits of fashion, I had not until a few weeks ago read a word of Walpole  (I'm now putting that right).

Yet between the First and Second World Wars he was one of the most popular (and admired) novelists in Britain. He was knighted. Henry James and John Buchan praised him.  Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were kind about him. What's more, his books sold enormously well on both sides of the Atlantic, he was knighted, and he became very rich, with a lovely Lakeland house in his favourite part of England, a flat in Piccadilly and a superb collection of modern paintings including a Manet and a Renoir.  Yet now he has vanished completely, his books not even to be found on the back shelves of most second hand shops, dismissed as 'unreadable'.

Part of the reason for this is a very enjoyable and deeply unfair attack on Walpole as a ludicrously ambitious social climber, in Somerset Maugham's wonderful little book 'Cakes and Ale', which has so many good things in it that I just urge you to find out for yourselves how marvellous it is. Most of the book is about Thomas Hardy and the reverential cult which was built up around him after he died. But a major secondary character, 'Alroy Kear', was recognisable to everyone in the literary world as a cruel caricature of Walpole, who in some ways never recovered from the mockery visited on him. 

But my guess is that Walpole's real disadvantage in our world is that he was too much of an Edwardian, whose books appealed to those who had grown up before the catastrophe of 1914 (or, like me, wish they had done). If he hadn't been short-sighted, and rejected by the Army, he would have been slaughtered at the Somme with everyone else of his generation. Instead, not lacking courage, he went to Russia as a medical orderly (later he would be a propagandist) and won a Tsarist medal for rescuing a wounded soldier under fire on the Russian-Austro-Hungarian front.  The books of his that I have read are uncomplicatedly patriotic, open to the supernatural , certainly not baldly materialist) and sexually modest and cautious. His descriptions of violence are frightening without being obscene. He seems to me to have a very good understanding of children.

Oh, and he was a discreet homosexual in an age when that meant shame, blackmail and danger, a fact which may possibly explain the 'shining white faces in dark streets, muffled cries from shuttered windows, muttered exclamations, half-heard, half-understood'. I don't know, as of course he never wrote directly about this part of his life. But it strikes me as likely that it was this that plunged him into the unsafe (and 'indecent, sinister, secret') parts of some big city, where those twilit words lodged and hardened in his imagination.

  I owe to another writer on the web (I can't currently trace him, or I'd name him and thank him) my knowledge of the opening words of another of Hugh Walpole's books 'The Captives' (I haven't yet read it but after this beginning I absolutely must). It begins thus:

'Death leapt upon the Rev. Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar. It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him before he could find one.
At one moment his mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was stricken with a wild surmise, a terror that even at that instant he would persuade himself was exaggerated. He saw before his clouding eyes a black pit. A strong hand striking him in the middle of his back flung him contemptuously forward into it; a gasping cry of protest and all was over. Had time been permitted him he would have stretched out a hand towards the shabby black box that, true to all miserly convention, occupied the space beneath his bed. Time was not allowed him. He might take with him into the darkness neither money nor clean clothing.'

I think that's pretty good myself. I long to know what happened next.  Luckily for me and any other lost Edwardians, there are plenty of Hugh Walpole books still to be found up shadowy staircases and at the backs of old shops in little country towns. Who knows? Maybe his reputation will have one of those mysterious recoveries. But I doubt it. I suspect the audience for such things is shrinking as those who can still visualise this lost world go off one by one into the dark themselves, preferably not in the way experienced by the Rector of St Dreots. Modern people would rather read Ian McEwan. Good luck to them.

Australians kick Blair where it really hurts – if only we would do the same

AT LAST the world has begun to see through Anthony Blair. Organisers of his latest tour in Australia and New Zealand have had to slash the prices of tickets by half to fill up empty tables.

In cities such as Brisbane, the cost of breaking bread with the Conqueror of Baghdad had to be cut from £640 to £320.

The same thing happened in Auckland, where they would have had empty chairs if the price hadn't dropped from £500 to £250. As it is quite wrong for the Blair creature to be making money out of a failed and bloodstained premiership, let us hope his ticket prices go on dropping till they reach zero. Far from getting rich on the lecture circuit, Mr Blair should be doing penitential charity work in the children's wards of one of the many cities he helped to bomb and shell. And that's for his own sake as well as ours.

Personally, I'd pay a tenner just to get out of any room where this wretched, pitiful figure was orating. But I have a few years' start on the rest of the world, having met him before he was famous, and hadn't started calling himself 'Tony'.

I have never been able to take seriously as a statesman a man who didn't know – weeks before becoming Prime Minister – that they speak Portuguese in Brazil.

Those who want him arraigned as a war criminal are on the wrong track. He genuinely didn't understand what he was doing. He let us be dragged into the invas¬ion of Iraq not because he was brave and bold, but because he expected to get UN cover for the action. When it did not materialise, he lacked the nerve to tell the Washington hard man, Dick Cheney, we were pulling out. Jumping off a moving train takes more courage than he has.

The real problem of Mr Blair, which we as a people are reluctant to face, is that we enjoyed being fooled by him and we are not prepared to admit it. The exaggerated hatred directed at Gordon Brown, much of which ought to be aimed at Mr Blair, is one of the main results of this unwillingness by many people to accept that they were happy participants in the bankrupting of the country and the rush to war in Iraq, and all the other New Labour rubbish David Cameron is so keen to copy.

Until the millions who were willingly defrauded are prepared to admit that they liked being seduced by this transparent phoney, we cannot really call ourselves a grown-up country. But my congratulations to the people of Australia and New Zealand for kicking him in the wallet, where it really hurts.

Now it's Harry Potter and the English subtitles

HAVING opted to see the new Harry Potter film in only two dimensions (I think 3D is an expensive flop), I was told that we would have to watch it with subtitles.

Baffled, I asked if these would be in Polish, which is, after all, the first language of many citizens of my home town these days. Perhaps the cinema had mistakenly bought – as I have once or twice – a DVD with subtitles in Korean?

No, they would be in English. What could be the point of that in Britain? Apparently they had been brought in to help the deaf.

And not just the deaf. I am not well up in Potter lore. Who, I wondered, is this treacherous goblin who looks just like Vince Cable, only with more regular and sharper teeth? Easy. The subtitles told me who the characters were. Helpfully, they would also proclaim 'loud slithering noise' or 'muffled roaring' to explain the many curious and alarming sound effects.

By the end of the film, I was wondering how I had managed without them all these years. I just hope they haven't been introduced to punish cheapskates like me for not paying the heavy premium to watch in 3D.

This is why Assad kills

ACCOUNTS of the trial of Egypt's ex-President Mubarak in Cairo generally seem to assume that this is a good thing.

The same news organisations then report the massacres in Syria as if these are a bad thing.

Can't these dimwits see that their incessant encouragement for the futile and over-rated 'Arab Spring' is one of the reasons for the murders in Syria?

Syria's President Assad sees Mr Mubarak in prison garb, displayed in a cage, and decides with utter determin¬ation that this will not happen to him. Instead, he kills and kills and kills to stay in power and out of the dock.

By the way, can we please have a ban on the use of the expression 'Killing His Own People', used by smug Western commentators and politicians all the time as if it were the worst sin in the world?

It strikes me that 'Killing Other People's People' – which we in the West have been doing quite a lot of, with the support of many of those righteous commentators – is just as bad if not possibly worse.

**********

THIS country is dotted with reminders that we no longer rule ourselves, for those with eyes to see.

The latest is the appearance of speed-limit signs painted on large vans and buses.

I have nothing against this (favouring as I do the return of the man with a red flag walking in front of all motor vehicles).

But look at the actual limits. Goods vehicles more than three-and-a-half tons are limited to 56mph. Coaches and buses to 62mph. Why these strange numbers?

It is because the Real Law (EU law) sets the limits in kilometres per hour (90 and 100, since you ask). And while we are still allowed the symbolic right to use miles (though for how much longer?) we must convert them from the authentic text of a foreign-imposed law, drafted in foreign measurements.

**********

FREE the Foam Pie One. The man who thrust a plate of foam into Rupert Murdoch's face, and so added to the sum of human gaiety without harming a soul, should not be in prison. But Charlie Gilmour, who swung from the Cenotaph in a rage induced by illegal drugs, definitely should be.

Mr Murdoch, unlike the Cenotaph, is not a national monument.

**********

WHAT useless safety valves these new e-petitions are.

They don't even promise that Parliament will debate the issues raised. And what they certainly will not do is restore the death penalty, sensible though that would be.

MPs are not chosen by us. They are picked by the centralised machines of the

state-subsidised, billionaire-backed political parties.

We then vote for them, like the suckers we are.

MPs are not afraid of us, because we obediently vote for the big parties whenever a

General Election comes round.

I've tried telling

you not to do this, but you wouldn't listen.

Summer Timetable Comes Into Force

This site is now going on to its summer timetable. I have some travelling to tackle and a lot of legwork to do on my next book. My weekly column will continue to be posted as usual, and I will dive in and out with occasional comments and one or two longer postings (I am considering one on the strangely forgotten author Hugh Walpole, whose neglected books I've been sampling lately. I might also take a look at the life of Richard Webster, whose recent death was a sad loss, as he was a courageous opponent of conventional wisdom and an effective foe of injustice).

The intense heavy bombardment of recent weeks has been well worthwhile. Nobody who has visited here could have come away without being better informed than he or she was before about the cannabis debate – and about its real meaning, namely what sort of society we aim to be.

I am grateful for the contributions of all those who have debated here in a responsive and thoughtful fashion, whatever their view.

I'm also grateful to the Labour MP Paul Flynn (pictured), with whom I disagree about most things, who has posted on his website the following kind and welcome words on the subject of Anders Breivik and steroids: 'I am about to say something astonishing.
'Peter Hitchens is correct. There I have said it. It's today only. We share a view on which we have corresponded in the past.
'It's a bit of a puzzle to both of us that few others have noticed. About 80% of mass killers were on drugs - usually anti-depressants or anabolic steroids.
'The blame for most of these terrible tragedies is sought on the availability of fire arms. The failure to observe out-of-character aggression by drug-users is disregarded.'

It is very important that people who are opponents on some issues should be able to distinguish the ideas from the person, and offer support across the chasm when possible. Perhaps the involvement of Mr Flynn in this important controversy may persuade some of the reflexive oppositionists here that, just because Peter Hitchens thinks something, it doesn't mean it is axiomatically wrong.

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

Keele Hauled

This exchange between me and Jayelle Farmer seems to me to deserve a bit more prominence.

Here it is, with some later responses from me inserted.
 
Ms Farmer said : 'Mr. Ryan Patterson, UK gov commissioned the Keele Study "Assessing the impact of cannabis use on trends in diagnosed schizophrenia in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005" in an attempt to prove that cannabis skunk was causal to schizophrenia and psychosis. The Keele Study came back with its conclusions: "The most parsimonious explanation of the results reported here are that the schizophrenia/psychoses data presented here are valid and the causal models linking cannabis with schizophrenia/psychoses are not supported by this study." Gordon Brown was aware of the results of the Keele Study while UK gov was discussing the return of cannabis from Class C to Class B, because the UK mainstream press reported on his knowledge in connection with the Study during their reporting of the news about the reversal of Class, and the Study was not published until after the return of cannabis from Class C to Class B was accomplished. If this Study would have confirmed what UK gov was wishing to prove by their commissioning of the Keele Study, i.e. that cannabis use is causal to psychosis and schizophrenia, then the results would have been published far and wide. Seeing that the results of the Keele Study came back negative, it is thus reasonable to conclude that cannabis prohibition is purely political and that UK gov seeks only to maintain their agenda of cannabis prohibition, at all costs - including political deception. If anyone on this commenting thread wonders why there are a disproportionate number of cannabis campaigners commenting on this thread, one needs wonder no more.'
 
I responded :' Jayelle Farmer cites the Keele Study, without apparently having read my articles here with any care. My point was that definitions of mental illness remain extremely vague. Thus this statement: "…to examine population rates in psychosis and schizophrenia and to compare these to known trends in cannabis use. [It ]is analogous to investigating changes in the incidence and prevalence of lung cancer following changes in smoking trends" is not in fact correct. There are two things wrong with this. 1) Estimates of the prevalence of cannabis smoking are guesswork based on an opinion poll which excludes large parts of the young population, the BCS. Estimates of tobacco consumption are not estimates at all, but measurable sales figures from the tobacco companies. 2) 'Schizophrenia' and 'Psychosis' are not exact quantities, and are subject to subjective diagnosis. Incidence of both is said to have fallen during the study period, quite independently of cannabis use. Is this really likely? When the incidence of two subjectively measured mental illnesses both experience a falling trend, in the absence of any other reason, isn't the most likely explanation that diagnostic standards have altered?
 
Further, we note that the study makes heavy use of the General Practice Research Database . And it states: 'Approximately 95% of the UK population is registered with a general practitioner, and age and sex distributions of patients within the GPRD are similar to those reported by the National Population Census' Yes, but what about the unregistered 5%? I would hazard a reasonable guess that heavy cannabis users are greatly concentrated in that 5% of unregistered persons, who tend to be those without stable employment or fixed housing, living in rented, multi-occupation houses, Hospital statistics, you may rightly point out, also show a fall in schizophrenia and psychosis admissions, but the report concedes ' the latter data could be due to policy, e.g. less care for such patients in hospital settings, ' This is very likely. Further, and I quote here from the Keele report: 'A recent study in Zurich drew comparisons between trends in cannabis use and the incidence of psychotic disorders in young people between 1977 and 2005 (Ajdacic-Gross et al., 2007). First admission rates for psychotic disorders remained constant for men and showed a downward trend for women; in the second half of the 1990s however there was a strong increase in the youngest age groups, particularly among males. This coincided with a distinct increase in cannabis availability (i.e. hemp shops) and consumption in the 1990s (Delgrande Jordan et al., 2004;Kuntsche, 2004). This is contrary to reports that increases in population cannabis exposure have not been followed by upward trends in the incidence of psychotic disorders.' How about that, then?
 
This blog has not in fact adopted the 'stronger skunk' argument. Nor does it care about 'classification', in fact it opposes it, believing that all illegal drugs should be equally punished and that 'classification' (which doesn't even exist in Sweden) is a device to promote the falsehood that cannabis is a 'soft' drug. Ms Farmer states 'it is thus reasonable to conclude that cannabis prohibition is purely political and that UK gov seeks only to maintain their agenda of cannabis prohibition, at all costs - including political deception.' I don't think either statement is correct. She says that 'prohibition' is purely political. Does she actually read what is written here? First, as shown here, 'prohibition' was abandoned by the British government in 1971 by the Misuse of Drugs Act (may I remind her of the statement by John O'Connor, former head of the Flying Squad, in February 1994, that 'Cannabis is a decriminalised drug', plus my demolition on this site of Professor Nutt's claims about 'criminal sanctions' imposed on cannabis users ) . The only political deception by the British government (both parties) is that it is opposed to decriminalisation. Its rhetoric says that it is. Its actions show that it is fully in favour of decriminalisation. Please do pay attention.'
 
Ms Farmer replied : '@Peter Hitchens >The only political deception by the British government (both parties) is that it is opposed to decriminalisation. Its rhetoric says that it is. Its actions show that it is fully in favour of decriminalisation. What actions? There are no actions. All current law enforcement prosecution against the individual's connection to raw cannabis is operated under the MoDA 1971. This has been true for the past 40 years. The government does not action the MoDA - law enforcement does. As long as there is no government movement in the form of a Bill to amend the MoDA to reflect a policy of decriminalisation e.g. a simple ticket for possession of under a specifically, defined amount, instead of a court appearance, criminal record, fine or possible prison time, (the means of decriminalisation that happened recently in the US State of Connecticut) then it is true to say that raw cannabis remains in prohibition - and it doesn't make an iota of difference as to what the government (both parties) says in their sometimes long-winded rhetoric - only a positive pro-vote on a Bill for decriminalisation in the House (or even a Bill to tax and regulate raw cannabis along the similar lines of alcohol availability, over the counter, to adults who choose to buy it - and not everyone does, but they still have the choice) will change the current status quo of raw cannabis prohibition in the UK. '
 
**My subsequent comment(not made at the time, but inserted here): Why is a formal government declaration necessary, if possession of the drug is no longer actually treated as a crime?  For political and diplomaticreasons, the UK government( signatory to several internaional conventions) cannot formally legalise cannabis. IBecause many voters oppose such a move, it fears to make its inentions plain. But the MoDA implemented most of the recommendations of the pro-decriminalisation Wootton Report, and the 1976 Criminal Jutsic Act reduced penalties for possession to *below* the level recommended by Wootton. Subsequently, the association of Chief Police Officers has been permitted to introduce (without legislation) the 'cannabis warning', a non-criminal non-sanction for disposing of those cases of cannabis possession which officers cannot actually ignore, as they prefer to do. I should have thought the state of affairs in real life was the most basic test. Cannabis possession has been decriminalised in this country, as can be (and has been, see above) openly admitted by the police officers who allegedly enforce this eviscerated law.
 
And then again:
 
'@Peter Hitchens > Further, and I quote here from the Keele report: 'A recent study in Zurich .... etc >How about that, then? The Keele Study is simply referencing a different study that was made in Zurich, the results of which do not form part of the Conclusions of the Keele Study. Since the Keele Study was commissioned by UK gov, the Conclusions, concerning schizophrenia/psychoses should surely have been considered in the government's discussions and eventual decision concerning the reclassification of cannabis from Class C to Class B, for the simple reason that the governmental perceived issue of cannabis use being causal to schizophrenia/psychoses was claimed to be of governmental concern as a public health issue, in respect to this reclassification. Thus, concerning said Conclusion of the Keele Study - "The most parsimonious explanation of the results reported here are that the schizophrenia/psychoses data presented here are valid and the causal models linking cannabis with schizophrenia/psychoses are not supported by this study." The fact that these Conclusions were ignored by the very body that commissioned this Study - the UK government - and the fact that the whole Keele Study was buried until after the reclassification of cannabis took place, shows implicitly that the government is dishonest in its modus-operandi towards the issue of cannabis classification and will just go right ahead and do what they want to do anyway. And in the event that we now have such proof of deception, this then begs the question - "how far-reaching into other political areas does this deception actually reach?" The response from any cannabis user, whether as a medical or recreational user, should be clear: "I will not vote for any politician whose political platform is anti-choice and anti-civil rights of the use of cannabis, either as a medicine or as a recreational drug, while they (ignorantly or knowingly) continue to sentence cannabis users, their children and future generations to a life of criminal records and penalties for a relatively harmless drug called THC - a drug from which nobody has died." For a cannabis user to vote against these principles is to end up getting what they deserve - to be totally ruled and mandated by totally ignorant people.
 
**My further comment, written subsequently. Whether or not a cited report in a study forms 'part' of that study I am not qualified to say, nor am I terribly interested. It's certain;ly *in* the text of the report, and viewed as important by those who compiled it.
 
There is no doubt that the Keele Study makes reference to it. And it does provide strong evidence of a connection between cannabis use and mental ilness, of the kind insistently denied, ignored or belittled by Ms Farmer and her allies, who then have the blazing nerve to accuse me of 'cherry-picking'.
 
Those who cite a report are citing it all and can expect to have it quoted back at them . As I say, I have, since my researches into Wootton, lost any interest in classification as a method of enforcement. It is in fact a device to give a false good name to the very dangerous drug, cannabis. I don't doubt that the government is dishonest in this matter. It wishes to appear 'tough' without actually doing anything to justify this reputation.

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