Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 332

Do politicians sometimes want to lose? And other matters

Perhaps I should award a red star each week for the posting whose author is most convinced that he or she is self-evidently right, and so does not need to actually argue a case.

This week's would go to Leigh d'Evans, who wrote (and do you know, he was one of the ones who thoughtfully reminded me of my own name. Look, Leigh, you don't need to, Leigh. I *still* haven't forgotten it, Leigh):

'Peter, your Cameron-bashing has become all a little bit pathetic and, more than that, beneath you.

For example, your latest suggestion (and saying you would not be remotely surprised were something to happen is logically equivalent of saying you imagine it did) that Cameron voted Labour in 1997/2001.

In 1997, he was a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate in Staffordshire and in 2001 a candidate for his current seat, Witney.

Your Cameron-centred attacks are becoming cheap, pathetic, remote from fact and representative of a man filled with hate.

I'm losing respect for you - rapidly.'

I am not sure what 'pathetic' or 'beneath you' mean in this context. Do they have any objective value or meaning at all? If not, they presumably mean that the writer disagrees with me. Let him do so. That is his right. But in return we are entitled to ask him to explain why. 'Pathetic' is a word of abuse I recall from the playgrounds of my increasingly distant boyhood. As for being 'beneath me', how is it 'beneath' a national newspaper columnist to criticise the Prime Minister? Nor do I specially mind about losing 'respect' from people who disagree with me. Did Mr d'Evans ever have any respect for me to lose in the first place? I'd be surprised.

David Cameron is , for good or ill, the most significant politician in the country, whose decisions and words can powerfully influence events (the British intervention in Libya, for instance, is almost entirely his personal responsibility). I have a particular interest as well. I have written a book about him. I have devoted much of my life to pointing out to Tory voters that he would betray their hopes, and he has duly done this and continues to do so. I should be glad to have said it once, and to have had it listened to, and to have moved on to other subjects. But alas, I know from long experience that important things must be said many, many times before they are properly heard and understood, and that people often will not believe the obvious until it walks up to them and personally strikes them upon the jaw.

On Sunday in Oxford I was approached by an attractive and articulate young woman, whom I had never met before, who wanted to tell me that I had been right about Mr Cameron, and that she regretted having ignored me and voted Conservative at the last election. I have received several other less direct communications of this sort, and I honestly cannot imagine how any sentient conservative can be satisfied by Mr Cameron's performance in office.

I am unsure how my attacks on Mr Cameron can be said to be 'remote from fact'. On the contrary, they are all based firmly upon recorded and undoubted acts or statements by this person, including legislation he has supported, and (most recently) the Bedford appearance in which he said that the country needed change in 1997. This astonishing remark deserves the widest possible currency, as it is hugely indicative of Mr Cameron's own true feelings.

By contrast, it is not actually true to say that: 'saying you would not be remotely surprised were something to happen is logically equivalent of saying you imagine it did'. That is why I used the words I used, rather than the ones the writer would like to misattribute to me.

The trouble is that certain words, designed above all to make people think, do not always have that effect. If people refuse to think, they become angry instead. And that is what I think has happened here. Mr 'd'Evans' is a loyalist, and does not want to hear his loyalty challenged or undermined. So rather than engage with the argument, he turns on the person who has made it.

People do sometimes want to lose conflicts, though they rarely say so openly. It might (for example) be argued that in France in 1940, the Communist Party wanted to lose to Germany, because Stalin was then in alliance with Hitler; and that French ultra-reactionaries, who loathed the Popular Front, also wanted to lose because they secretly believed (and some had been known to say) 'Hitler is better than Blum'. millions of others couldn't bear the prospect of France being bled white in another Verdun.

There are many technical and strategic explanations for France's defeat in 1940, despite her huge military strength on paper. But the speed of the collapse does seem to need a deeper explanation than poor radio communications or bad tank tactics. A nation morally ready to fight might have been badly shaken to begin with by such things, but might also have recovered the initial blow to fight back. But there was no stomach for it.

What about the Tory defeat in 1997? Quite a lot of Tories will - now - say more or less openly that they wish they had lost to Neil Kinnock in 1992, because he would then have had to deal with Black Friday and they would have been back in power in 1997, there would never have been the era of Blair, etc etc. I think this is hindsight. There was very little sign of this feeling at the time, is all I can say. the Tory establishment had committed a sort of matricide against Margaret Thatcher in 1990 almost entirely so that they could win, without her, in 1992. Chris Patten worked so hard for national victory that he lost his own seat in Bath.

But I have no doubt that some of the Labour establishment were quite pleased to lose in 1983, as that (amongst other things) allowed them to dump the party's opposition to European Union membership and to corner and exterminate the romantic old left as represented by Michael Foot - replacing him with the ruthless, devious new left which took over the party thereafter). I know for certain (because one of them told me so at length) that many Labour figures wanted to lose the Darlington by-Election of March 1983, in which the late Ossie O'Brien scored an unexpected triumph, largely thanks to the late collapse of the SDP candidate, a local TV personality who made a very poor showing at a televised debate. This gave the victory to the Tory candidate, Michael Fallon.

If it had gone the other way (as it did three months later at the General Election), I am told there would have been a putsch against Michael Foot and a move to install the far more dangerous Denis Healey as leader (I do not know if Healey was aware of this scheme). I think Mrs Thatcher would still have won in 1983, even against Mr Healey, but it would have been a far tougher contest and the SDP would have done far worse. But we all know what did happen. There was much gnashing of Labour teeth over poor Mr O'Brien's victory, though everyone had to pretend to be delighted. It reminds me of Conan Doyle's wonderful Brigadier Gerard story, 'How the Brigadier won his Medal' in which the stupid but courageous officer succeeds in a mission in which the Emperor Napoleon intends him (and expects him) to fail. (This is not to say that Mr O'Brien, a gentleman, was stupid. He wasn't. He was just unaware of the forces battling around him and unable to do much about them).

I remember, shortly before the 1997 election, doing a BBC 'Question Time' programme alongside a Tory Cabinet minister who made it plain in the Green Room that the whole thing was a terrible ordeal, that he had no pleasure in defending the government, and that he was exhausted, mentally and physically. While certainly not explicitly saying he hoped to lose, he implied that he would be in no way distressed.

What David Cameron felt personally in 1997 I cannot possibly say with certainty. I had never heard of him or met him or spoken to him at the time. His campaign in Stafford (as I showed in my Channel 4 programme) was conventionally Tory in almost every way, as it would have been if ( as I maintain) he had no particular principles. A less overwhelming Labour victory in 1997 would have put him in the Commons for that rather marginal, gritty seat, not necessarily a great advantage in a long political career, though there is a wonderful picture of him looking very cheesed off indeed when he lost. He is, as he no doubt now recognises, much better off where he is in Witney, a smiling region of prosperous golden-stoned houses and broad acres, where Tory votes are rounded up in flocks rather than counted.

Whatever personal result he may have hoped for, the interesting question is which national result he actually wanted.

If Mr 'd'Evans wants to pursue the actual issue of how he did vote, try adding these considerations: In either case his personal vote is unlikely to have made much difference. As we don't have Presidential voting in this country, the voter is free from any direct choice on such occasions, unless he knows himself to be in a very tight marginal contest indeed, and as far as I can discover ( and judging by his reaction when he didn't) Mr Cameron rather expected to win Stafford in 1997 and certainly knew he would win Witney in 2001.

But he now says he thought a 'change' ie a Labour victory, was 'needed' by the country in 1997. So Mr d'Evans, rather than quibbling about whether he did actually vote Labour, really ought to examine the huge implications of this statement. I can easily see why he doesn't want to, and prefers to make rude remarks about me (I have one hilarious Cameroon e-mail correspondent who bursts into print every few weeks with fishwife-style abuse of me for daring to criticise the great leader, and from time to time the gigantic, near spherical figure of Bruce Anderson looms out of the crowd at some party and lets me have it) , but it doesn't get him anywhere.

It may be that when he spoke in Bedford the other day, Mr Cameron was projecting backwards into 1997 feelings he has since developed, and did not have at the time. People have been known to change their views retroactively, like the millions who 'always knew' that Anthony Blair would be no good while voting for his party, or the millions who were against the Iraq war while telling pollsters, friends, family and colleagues that they were for it.

But if he did accept that Blair was bound to win - and felt that in fact he 'ought' to win, he would not have been alone in the Tory Party. I have many times contrasted the behaviour of John Major after his 1997 defeat (he went off to the cricket, with every air of being quite content) with Neil Kinnock's behaviour after one of his defeats, when he was so genuinely, indubitably angry that he made the best speech of his life, advising everyone not to be poor, or old, under the wicked Tories.

The truth is that the major political changes in this country are internal party putsches, rather than the elections which eventually confirm their message and purpose. The Blairite takeover of Labour, though in slow motion, replaced the remnants of a working-class trade union party with a metropolitan ultra-liberal faction. This was itself a by-product of a parallel Tory revolution, in which the Tory liberals destroyed Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

The Major-Heseltine government, which people often forget lasted almost seven years, was heavily pro-EU, egalitarian and as politically correct as it dared to be. It was in many ways New Labour Mark One. When William Hague attempted a counter-coup after 1997, he was constantly undermined by the Portillo faction (see the recent posting about the undermining of Ann Widdecombe), who at that stage were unable to unite around a credible leadership candidate, leaving the luckless IDS to step into the vacuum which resulted.

Much of what remained of Tory conservatism was extirpated in the Blackpool palace revolution against IDS, the appointment/coronation of Michael Howard (a liberal who was mistakenly thought of as 'right-wing' by ill-informed Tories and journalists) as caretaker and the ruthless centralisation of the party machine which followed. This prepared the way for the media-backed internal party coup which installed David Cameron, despite the apparent certainty, at the start of the leadership contest, that David Davies would win.(As he would have done, without media intervention. And just as the Tory Party would have collapsed under IDS without media intervention to save it, see my 'Cameron Delusion').

The general trend of British politics between 1990 and now has been towards greater integration with the EU, greater political correctness, greater devolution within the United Kingdom, higher taxation and spending, a stronger commitment to 'equality and diversity'. The Blair victory in 1997 was an important stage in pushing the Tory Party towards its current positions on marriage and drugs, on the EU, on immigration control, on Northern Ireland and on the NHS. Genuine conservatives have found it quite impossible to fight or reverse these trends inside the Tory Party. On the contrary, the Tory Party has forced these changes upon them.

The acceptance of an 'inevitable' Blair victory in the British establishment of 1997 was very widespread and was the consequence of the Long March Through the Institutions. This had placed 1968 cultural revolutionaries at the pinnacle of every institution except the government itself, and had resulted in the success of their ideas in formerly conservative bodies, including the Conservative Party itself (see my 'Abolition of Britain'). If you were of that generation, or influenced by it, the logical thing to do in 1997 and 2001 was to vote Labour whichever party you belonged to.

Now a note to Mr Embery, who says: 'Peter Hitchens, predictably, gets it completely wrong over the Colin Atkinson affair. He suggests that most union officials' commitment to "equality and diversity codes" would have led to their refusing to take on Mr Atkinson's case. Actually, the opposite is true. Religion was an embedded strand within the Equality Act 2010 - though why a belief system which one chooses to adopt should be considered worthy of the same protection as someone discriminated against on grounds of colour, age, etc is perplexing - and this has led to all unions being required to devise strategies for the new concept of defending the religious beliefs of members in the workplace. So that pesky "equality and diversity agenda" which Mr Hitchens constantly bemoans was probably the reason Terry Cunliffe came to Mr Atkinson's defence.'

First of all he misrepresents me (right under the passage which he subtly alters, why bother? ) in a way that has already caused some trouble elsewhere. He turns a general statement of 'many' into a particular, exact assertion,. 'most'. Will people please not do this? I did not use the word 'most', lacking the facts to justify this. I said :'Many unions are keen on 'Equality and Diversity' codes, and wouldn't have taken the case.'

Next I believe him to be factually wrong. The defence of the private right to hold to a religion *in private*, as enshrined in 'Equality' rules and legislation, is entirely different ( and meant to be entirely different) from the previous position (which I know Mr Embery did not like) under which Christianity was the accepted dominant religion of this country. Mr Embery regards such a position as 'wrongful 'discrimination' against non-Christian religions. To make Christianity 'equal' with any other religion is consciously and deliberately to diminish it. I regard Christianity's formal supremacy here not as 'discrimination' but as an acknowledgement of the beliefs which undergird our freedom and our civilisation (freedom and civilisation which will not long survive our society;'s abandonment of the ideas from which they sprang).

Take the case of Caroline Petrie, a community nurse suspended without pay after offering to pray (in a Christian way) for a patient ( who was not offended by the offer). Her Primary Care Trust said she had failed to demonstrate a 'personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity' by offering her prayers. Note the totalitarian requirement positively to demonstrate a commitment, not merely negatively to refrain from undermining it. The patient did not complain. In an article on the case on 8th February 2009, the MoS quoted Mrs Petrie herself as saying that an RCN (Royal College of Nursing, her union) official told her: 'You're in breach of your code of conduct. If you don't stop it, the NHS won't give you any work. If you're not careful they'll have you under laws of religious harassment and you'll be struck off.'

The RCN did not deny this. As the story went on: 'The RCN says it provided "appropriate, professional advice".'
NHS employees are in fact contractually bound by codes of practice requiring them to observe 'equality and diversity', which - by considering all religions as equal, and relegating Christianity to the status of a private opinion rather than the basis of public policy - removes the formerly privileged position given to Christianity in public bodies. As far as I know, the NHS unions have accepted this, and it would therefore be difficult for them to defend an employee on such an issue without a major change of policy. Mrs Petrie was, I am glad to say, reinstated anyway, thanks to the MoS and Christian campaigners.

I believe Mr Embery's own union, which is itself rampantly politically correct, has failed to offer any criticisms of the imposed sex quotas which have led to the general lowering of physical standards for both sexes in the fire brigades (or fire service, as Mr Embery no doubt refers to it -let's not be 'militaristic'). Some might argue that these quotas increase the safety risks of the job quite markedly - a legitimate union concern.

I have myself written about this pursuit of dogma at length in the past, and may post the articles here if there is enough interest. But it was also the subject of a recent story in the 'Sunday Times' of 10th April, which said: 'Fire chiefs have downgraded strenuous "ladder lifting" tests for new recruits in a bid to allow more women, and less fit men, into the service.

'Whereas candidates once had to extend a 100kg (220 pound) ladder on their own in 20 seconds before they could become firefighters, they now only have to raise a bar weighing 30kg (66 pounds) above their head.

'Physically demanding runs, in which recruits completed increasingly faster sprints, have also been scrapped. Nor are they required to carry a 12-stone person 100 yards in less than a minute.'

Personally I think this a classic example of dogma trumping common sense. I have no objection to strong, fit women working in the fire brigades on merit, and am aware of several who meet these criteria. But I object strongly to general standards being reduced in pursuit of a fanciful and unattainable total equality between the sexes.

Mr Embery also asks :' Would Mr Hitchens and his friends defend the prominent placing of a crucifix (or let's say the star and crescent, or a Sikh dagger) on a fire appliance racing to a fire? '

As I believe this to be a Christian country, I would certainly defend the placing of a Cross (terminology is important here: a crucifix, that is to say, a Cross bearing a figure of the crucified Christ, would be a specifically Roman Catholic symbol rather than a generally Christian one) on any vehicle dedicated to mercy, rescue and the exercise of selfless courage, since it is the principles of the Sermon on the Mount that lie behind the existence of such vehicles and the services of which they form a part. I suspect that many such vehicles do bear such a symbol anyway, since many local authority coats of arms in this country contain a Cross in one form or another (that of Portsmouth, in a remarkable anomaly, bears the Muslim crescent for historical reasons I have forgotten) .

I am surprised that so many contributors here post as if there was still a dispute about the actual existence of the historical Jesus. I had thought that serious historians were now in agreement that He did indeed live in the place and at the time that the Gospels affirm. I do not think that this settles the question of the truth of Christianity (I have repeatedly said that this remains a matter of choice). What I suspect is that God-haters of various sorts wish to find a way of attempting to declare that belief is impossible and that there is no choice.

This is so as to free themselves of the need to explain why they choose chaos instead of order, pointlessness instead of purpose, and power instead of grace and love.

Now, it is true that Guevara's bloodstained behaviour is an extreme, or distilled, example of revolutionary utopian behaviour. But then so is dying willingly on a cross an extreme, or distilled example of Christian self-sacrifice. It is the contrast between these two distillations that I wished to make.

As for the bloody killings perpetrated by some Christians, there is no doubt that these took place (I pass the site of one of them each day, where Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were burned to death in the heart of Oxford). But it is hard to see how those who conducted them could justify them through the words or example of Jesus of Nazareth, who - on the night of his betrayal - told his disciples to put up their swords and refrain from defending him with force.

Whereas any Communist executioner in any gore-speckled cellar could gain justification for his acts from the words (and actions) of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Guevara, and even from those of 'nice' Bolsheviks such as Nikolai Bukharin, whose role in the judicial murder of Social Revolutionaries presaged his own judicial murder at the hands of Stalin. See my book 'The Rage Against God'.

Jesus vs Che Guevara: A man who laid down his life for us ... or a murderous 'rock-star' rebel? We know which the Wakefield Cross persecutors will worship this Easter

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

We now have to be pleased that a man has not been sacked from his job for putting a small cross on the dashboard of his company van. Please forgive me if my joy is muted this Eastertide. The real meaning of the Wakefield Palm Cross Affair is not specially happy.

Colin Atkinson would have been fired if it hadn't been for the might of this newspaper – and the dogged courage of a union official, Terry Cunliffe. Many unions are keen on 'Equality and Diversity' codes, and wouldn't have taken the case.

And as it's Easter, I'd like to focus on the fact that the manager involved, Denis Doody, had a picture (perhaps I should say 'icon') of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara on his office wall.

Interesting. Why? Well, what we recall at Easter is the show trial and judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth. A mob is manipulated into calling for his death.

The judge, who knows he is innocent, feebly gives in. Such things are common in the real world, to this day.

The resurrection, which some of us still celebrate today, symbolises the ultimate defeat of cruel and cynical human power by a far greater force. Among other things, Easter enshrines the idea that what we do here matters somewhere else, that there is an absolute standard by which our actions are judged.

Down 20 centuries, this idea has restrained the powerful. They do not like it. Never have. Never will.

The worship of Christ, victim of a lynch mob and a crooked judge, is dangerously radical.

What about the cult of Comrade Guevara, embraced by Mr Doody? It claims to be radical too. But its devotees are the power-worshipping generation that now dominates our culture, using their slogan of 'equality' as a bludgeon to flatten opposition.

Guevara was an evil killer, the exact opposite of Jesus. There is no excuse at all for revering him. He personally slaughtered alleged traitors to his nasty revolution.

One of these was Eutimio Guerra, a peasant and army guide. Guevara himself icily recounted: 'I fired a .32 calibre bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain which came out through his left temple. He moaned for a few moments, then died.'

Later, when the rock-star rebel 'Che' was in power, he would lie on top of the wall at La Cabana prison, jauntily smoking a cigar while he watched the firing squads below punching bloody holes in the victims of his kangaroo trials.

Guevara's view of justice was typical of the smug Left, which knows it is right because it knows it is good. 'Don't drag out the process. This is a revolution. Don't use bourgeois legal methods, the proof is secondary.'

There you have it, rather neatly expressed – the two rival forces that compete for supremacy in what was once a Christian country – the Gospel of Che, hot with hate and splattered with other people's blood and brains in the pursuit of a utopia that never comes, and the Gospel of Christ, a life laid down willingly for others.

Care to choose?


Did Cameron vote for Labour in 1997?

David Cameron said on Friday that it was a good thing Labour won the 1997 General Election, something that a remotely awake media would have blazoned across the sky in vast headlines, but which they buried instead.

His words, spoken in Bedford, were: 'I think we know in 1997 the country needed change.'

Do we know that? Did it 'need' the 'change' it got – 13 years of political correctness, stupid wars, tax and spending? I hardly think so.

Generally, the Prime Minister pretends at voting time that he didn't like the Blair-Brown junta. But if it turned out that he'd voted Labour in 1997 and 2001, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Mr Cameron, in full election mode, is now banging on (as he would call it if anyone else did it) about drunkards and illegal drug abusers claiming benefits for being drunk and drugged. He doesn't mean it. He regards types like me, who think that you can stop drinking too much if you want to, and that people take heroin because they like it, as horrible reactionary brutes.

But unless you accept that people are fully responsible for their own actions – and modish liberals like Mr Cameron spend half their lives denying this – then the logic leads - inexorably to paying them 'incapacity benefit'.

Likewise his opportunist moaning about judges making privacy law. They do this because Parliament (under his beloved Blair) gave them the power to do it. He knows perfectly well that this is the case.

How can I begin to tell you how much this man and his party do not deserve your support? And how much they laugh at you when you give it to them?


Lewis and a drugs cover-up

The issue of psychobabble versus common sense – linked to the dangers of antidepressant drugs – is increasingly important.

If you think that people are unhappy because bad things have happened to them, and that giving them mood-altering pills is wrong, you find yourself viewed as a heartless monster.

In last week's episode of the occasionally enjoyable TV police series Lewis, the detective, played as an increasingly ill-tempered and crusty figure by Kevin Whately, started out being hostile to a tricky pill-dispensing doctor. So did his funky underling, James Hathaway, played by Laurence Fox.

But the real message was different. Their boss told the younger man: 'You're supposed to be bringing Lewis out of the Stone Age, not joining him there.'

And lo, by the end, the seemingly nasty psychiatrist was revealed to be a saintly and honest character.

I find these days that even asking questions about the huge prescription of antidepressants in modern Britain gets me into trouble. Actually, that's why I keep doing it. The twitchiness of the pill-popping faction suggests they are hiding their own grave doubts.


Mr Parris civilised? I've got news for you

Some of you may have enjoyed my cameo appearance on Have I Got News For You, in which I was filmed sneering lengthily at the presentation of an award to the slippery ex-MP Matthew Parris.

What got my goat was the description of Mr Parris as 'civilised', after he had gravely misrepresented my views on a public platform and refused to make amends for this cheap behaviour. As civilised as a rattlesnake, I'd say.


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As the Libya policy goes wrong, the nation's brakes have failed. Where is the high-level criticism? Where the questioning? The Prime Minister was interviewed at length on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and even managed to give some (duff) racing tips but, incredibly, was not asked about Libya.

Parliament has not been recalled – did you know that only the Government can do this? The main effect of our intervention has been to prolong a civil war, and the futile carnage in Misrata is largely our fault. Having intervened supposedly to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, we may be causing one in Misrata.

The only truly humanitarian course now available is to provide an evacuation fleet to get non-combatants out of that city as soon as possible.

Leave it aht, Dave! Nobody's buying your Alf Garnett routine (and you don't even believe it yourself )

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

The Prime Minister is an opportunist who doesn't believe in anything. Don't take my word for it.

This is what Robin Harris, David Cameron's first boss in the Tory Research Department, said of him back in 2007.

It's easily proved, by tracking his changing views on any subject you care to name since he first sought office. Zig, zag, and zig again where necessary.

But don't delude yourself that a man with no principles won't do any damage. Because his only concern is to gain and hold office, he will do all he can for that end.

And to win and keep office these days, you need to be either politically correct or courageous. Mr Cameron is not courageous. That is why one of his two big outbursts this week means something, and the other means nothing.

Outburst number one was worthy of Gordon Brown, and apparently modelled on his brainless intervention in the case of Laura Spence. Mr Cameron attacked Oxford University for rightly refusing to choose its students on the grounds of skin colour.

Can you think of any other country where a Prime Minister would seek to enhance his reputation by an inaccurate and frankly thuggish attack on one of the few great institutions left standing? This is how debased we are.

Outburst number two was a patronising Alf Garnett impersonation, in which he gave the impression he plans to curb mass immigration, without actually doing anything about it.

Mr Cameron's travelling chorus of tame political reporters duly plugged this transparent vote-grab as if it were a real initiative.

I often think these people should get their salaries direct from Downing Street rather than from the news organisations that officially employ them.

Now, a couple of years hence, if this Coalition manages to stay together, which of these two policies will have borne fruit?

It's not difficult to work out that Oxford University will be doing its utmost to find black-skinned students, rather than judging people by their ability. If this is wrong in one direction, why isn't it wrong in the other?

Meanwhile, mass immigration, and the official  PC dogma that prevents integration, will continue as before.

Sinister truth about Brixton 'uprising'

I have this terrible habit of actually reading official documents.

So I know that the much praised Scarman report into the 1981 Brixton riots was a disgraceful document that repeatedly excused lawless violence and played down the organised and criminal character of the outbreak.

Even Lord Scarman mentioned that two men (one white, one black) appeared to be directing one attack on the police (paragraph 3.53).

Even Scarman noted that the rioters 'offered terms' to the police, clear evidence of a directing leadership (though he said elsewhere, in paragraph 3.77, that it was a 'spontaneous combustion').

And even Scarman recorded the 'sinister contribution' made by 'strangers' in 'making and distributing petrol bombs' (paragraph 3.104).

There was 'clear and credible' evidence of such organised bomb-making given to him in private session by two witnesses.

It is my belief that a less soppy judge could have written an entirely different report with utterly different conclusions. Yet now this nasty, sinister incident is being dignified as an 'uprising'. I hope historians won't
be fooled by this.

As for the unhinged Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, don't get me started.

Why not outlaw muffin-tops too?

Gosh, it's fashionable to be tough on Muslims these days. We invade their countries. We tell them what not to wear. And we lecture them on how our 'way of life' is superior to theirs.

Is it, by the way? We have lots of drunken, tattooed slags with lardy muffin-tops protruding out of their waistbands. They have lots of women dressed as bats. I'm not entirely sure this proves that we're better.

As for the bat outfits, is it really such a great idea to ban them, as the French have done? As anyone could have foreseen, the law gave a number of attention-seekers the chance to get arrested on TV – but it did nothing to make France less Islamic than it was before. And it set a dangerous precedent.

The Muslim vote is getting more important every year in many European countries. One day, there may be a law telling women they must cover their faces. And those who protest will be reminded of what they did when the boot was on the other foot.

Most of the anti-Islamic blowhards are neo-conservatives who also favour what they
call 'free movement of people', known to you and me as unrestricted mass immigration.

And it is that policy which has turned Islam into an increasingly powerful minority in our societies, one whose growing demands for a more Muslim Europe cannot be challenged or resisted by unenforceable laws or secular liberalism.


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There's yet more whimpering from the government about the spread of fortnightly bin collections. They just can't admit that the reason for this unwanted change is the European Union's Landfill Directive, which forces British councils – which rely more heavily on landfill than those elsewhere – to recycle more or pay huge fines. Oh, to live in an independent country again.


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Tristan van der Vlis, the Dutch rampage killer who murdered six people last week, is said to have spent time in a psychiatric institution. Was he prescribed antidepressants?


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Why do dictators refuse to quit? Simple. They see what happens to those who give up.

Nicolae Ceausescu was killed after a kangaroo trial. Erich Honecker was hounded from country to country until he died of cancer. Slobodan Milosevic was locked up until he died. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is now under arrest and his sons in jail.

Are they wishing that – like the rulers of Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria – they had killed more of their own people and stuck it out?

I wouldn't be surprised.

If the 'West' really wants Colonel Gaddafi to go, it would be wise to give him an easy exit.


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I cannot think of any one fact which more clearly shows the speed and depth of our national decline than the news that when our Navy catches pirates, we give them nicotine patches and let them go.

The Civil Sword

'Bert' opines (in one posting): ' There's nothing wrong with being squeamish'.

That depends what one is being squeamish about. Being squeamish about the careful use of force and violence against guilty persons convicted in fair trials to defend peace, order and safety is quite different from being repelled (as so few are, but I am ) about blowing innocent German civilians to bits in their homes, or baking them to death in firestorms, because you can't make contact with the enemy's army.

Funny, in fact, that so many who are squeamish about the swift and humane execution of justly convicted killers are so relaxed about the mass murder, often by tearing them to pieces with metal instruments, of unborn babies, the bombing of Belgrade, Baghdad and Afghanistan (and now of Libya).

'Bert' continues: ' and just because you don't think it's right for the state to kill doesn't mean that you don't want to defend what is right.'

Well, yes it does, if you think it's fine for the state to kill, or license killing, for other purposes that suit you. Which is why people who support such policies always claim(though without explaining why) that the predictably lethal wars or predictably lethal transport policies they like are not in any way comparable to the existence of a death penalty. Not to mention the predictably lethal arming of the police, a direct consequence of the abolition of lawful execution in Britain.

And it also does if by disarming yourself you unleash much greater violence on those you are supposed to be protecting. And I have established here that greater violence has followed the abolition of the death penalty, something my emotional spasm opponents don't like discussing.

He then asks: ' As for your peroration, do you really think, in the cold light of day, that scrapping the death penalty is a "betrayal of civilisation"?'

Absolutely. The colder the light, the more I think it.

A civilisation that won't defend itself will soon cease to exist. QED.

'Curtis' submits :'What about John's gospel, 7.53-8.11? A crowd asks Jesus if a woman, just caught in adultery, should be executed, by stoning. This was the law in Jerusalem then Jesus stops the execution by saying 'That one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone.' This passage makes me think that if Jesus were around today, he would oppose the death penalty, on the grounds that no one is good enough to execute anyone'.

(A note in brackets: This provides an illustration of how much we have lost thanks to the discarding of the Authorised Version of the Bible, in which the words are rendered so much more memorably as : 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her'. (How is this hard to understand as it is? Or archaic? It only contains two words of more than one syllable, and they are 'without' and 'among') )

The incident seems to me to be too specific, to the sin of adultery, to allow of this interpretation. Also, taken in company with Christ's behaviour before, during (and, as it happens, after) his own trial and execution, it cannot be used to make such a point. Without the latter, it might serve. With it, it does not. He intervenes to prevent an act of gross hypocrisy and (as so often in his life and ministry) to take the side of a woman against male hypocrisy or dislike. Not to object to the penalty as such ( had there been a sinless person there, that is to say anyone who had not committed adultery himself, Christ presumably could not have objected if he had cast the first stone).

Mr Walker runs away from the argument thus :'You yourself were the person who started the emotional side of this debate. All that nonsense about 'wielding the sword of civil society' etc. Sounds good but is not an argument'.

I didn't offer it as an argument. I have set out my argument in detail in articles findable through the index, and in the relevant chapter in my book, which Mr Walker ( despite my urgings) has chosen not to read , preferring to get het up and then flounce off. Like so many abolitionists, he prefers self-righteous emotionalism to a cool analysis of the practicalities. He is, perhaps, afraid of losing in such a contest. The phrase 'The Civil Sword' is just an expression, used by persons as various as John Milton and Andrew Jackson to refer to the state's monopoly of violence. If it upsets or otherwise unsettles Mr Walker, I cannot help it.

The person hiding behind the name 'Scaramanga' thinks he is being satirical when he is in fact just being boring.

Mr Charles writes: ' "Strict pacifists can use the risk of innocent death as an absolute reason for opposing execution (provided they also wish to ban private motor cars)." This utilitarian nonsense could've been written by Jeremy Bentham.'

Really? If I were to advance the perfectly good Christian arguments for a death penalty, namely the greatly heightened chance of genuine repentance and remorse on the part of the killer, not to mention the large number of murderers who commit suicide, which is gravely distressing to a believer, Mr Charles and others would jeer at me for superstition and mumbo-jumbo. So I stick to the things they can understand, which are measurable on a materialist calculating machine (however desiccated) and are equally true. But people who would jeer at a transcendental argument cannot really, in all consistency, also jeer at a utilitarian one.

He continues: 'PH exhibits a massive failure of imagination in regard to what capital punishment does to society as a whole.'

He should be more specific. I am not sure what imagination I need to deploy here. I have myself witnessed two executions in a foreign jurisdiction. I grew up in a society with a death penalty, and it was chiefly different from today's in being more peaceful and less violent, and having an unarmed police force.

He adds: 'I would HATE to live in a society that was ruled by retribution. I aspire to something better. I'd refer him to my earlier post on this thread if he wants clarification.'

I still don't see what's wrong with retribution forming part of a criminal justice system. Indeed, I can't see how it could function or long survive without it. And I suspect Mr Charles doesn't have my experience of seeing inside several prisons. I have no doubt that long-term imprisonment is immeasurably more cruel than swift execution. But 'ruled' by retribution? Hardly. Though the anarchy towards which we are heading, as justice fails, will be ruled by vengeance and blood-feuds.

What not to wear

French plans to outlaw the wearing of Islamic face-veils will not achieve anything of importance, and are, for the most part, a crude interference with private choice. I suspect that, after a few  weeks during which Muslim militants will create deliberate confrontations, the law will be as rigorously enforced as (say) Britain's rather more important law against using a hand-held mobile phone while driving.

The real problem for France and for most other European countries is that they have permitted large-scale immigration from Muslim countries, and under the rules of multiculturalism they have from the start permitted and even encouraged Muslims to live differently from other citizens. the choice has  been made. It's gone too far to stop with gestures of this kind. A ban on Islamic dress, by failing, will only serve to emphasise that these countries are well on the way to an accommodation with Islam. All that remains in doubt is how generous that accommodation will be. I have long said that it is quite possible that much of Europe will become formally Islamic in the years to come. The only real question is how long this will take.

                

The eradication of Christianity from laws, customs, ceremonies, education and culture in general will make this process much easier than it would have been when these countries were actively Christian. I only hope Professor Dawkins is pleased as amplified calls of 'Allahu Akhbar' waver and echo from the Islamicised towers of redundant Victorian churches in the damp and misty air of North Oxford.              

Islam is in general becoming more militant about the veiling of women.  Only 30 years ago in the Middle East, most urban women went uncovered in cities such as Cairo or Beirut. Now the hijab, or headscarf, while not a legal obligation, is fast becoming universal. Not wearing it has become a statement, just as wearing it was a statement 30 years ago.

Conformity makes life simpler, so most women conform, and it is virtually impossible to find out what they really think about it any more.                           

Something similar is happening in Central Asia, where Islam was once driven back by the combined force of Kemal Ataturk and Josef Stalin. Veiling is common in the formerly Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tadzhikistan. On a recent visit to Turkey, I noted the growing popularity of Islamic dress among urban women. Or is popularity the wrong word? Prevalence, certainly. The popularity is (I suspect) largely among increasingly Islamist menfolk, though I spoke to some young women who had enthusiastically adopted the hijab at some cost to their careers - wearing it is still, I think, forbidden on the campuses of state universities.         

By the way, can we try to get the terminology right in any discussion? There's a tendency for people to assume that all Islamic female headgear is described by the word 'burka' (spelled in several different ways). It is not. The hijab - by far the most common -  is a headscarf, usually worn to cover all or most of the hair. The Niqab, almost invariably black, is a mask which covers the whole face apart from a narrow slit for the eyes, worn with a scarf which totally covers the hair. The burka is a garment which shrouds the entire body,. Rather than having a slit for the eyes, it has a cloth grid, through which the eyes cannot be seen. There is also a garment, whose name I do not know, worn by the women of Kashgar, in which the face is entirely covered (not even the fine grid of the burka) so that the women look alarmingly as if they have risen from their graves and are walking the streets in shrouds.         

For myself, I don't mind all that much. The first time I saw a woman in full niqab scurrying through the security barriers at the BBC TV Centre in London, I thought it ridiculous and muttered something along the lines of 'Oh, for heaven's sake!'. Though the place was busy and noisy, and I had spoken softly, she (with the amazing sensitivity which people sometimes have to scrutiny when they are themselves a bit nervous) turned and gave me a long, surprisingly expressive look, of mingled annoyance, resentment and scorn. It is amazing how much expression can be conveyed by the muscles around the eyes.                 

Since then, I've come to think that - providing they lift their veils for full facial inspection on the rare occasions where facial identification is desirable and necessary - they're welcome to wear what they want. In fact, I suspect that Islamic militants would be most displeased if we just ignored this aggressive separatism, and behaved as if it wasn't going on.               

But if you don't want an Islamised society, rather than messing around with clothing laws, here's another thought. May I suggest that you work out what your answer to that fierce, simple and easily-understood religion's consoling precepts is. Yes, we currently have bigger guns and better bombing planes, but so what? We are richer. But will we always be? We can get drunk (and we do). Is this a big advantage, either morally or materially? Likewise, the use of our women's freedom to dress as they like. Faced with the choice of beholding a tattooed ladette displaying  a muffin top glowing with fake tan, or a Muslim woman in full niqab, most of us would at least hesitate. I put this mildly.     

I have more than a suspicion that our existing society continues to survive without revolt or collapse only because it gets a little richer each year. Once that prospect is gone, and the succeeding decades instead bring shrinking pay packets, higher prices and fewer jobs, where will minds hungry for solace and comfort and hope turn to? Thanks to half a century of active secularism, most people in this country are quite clueless about Christianity and wouldn't know where to begin with it. If a religious revival comes (and we're about due for one) who is best placed to take advantage of it?

More Hitchens than most people could possibly want - Sky Arts 1, Thursday Night, 10.00 pm

I think I can be pretty sure this one will happen. Those of you who have access to the Sky Arts 1 channel can see an hour-long interview of me by Professor Laurie Taylor at 10.00 pm on Thursday 14th April,  and if that is not enough for you, a further hour after 11.00 pm when Prof. Taylor interviews my brother Christopher.

Having already seen both (and read transcripts of them) I may well be asleep at the time. There comes a point when all interviews of me, and of Christopher, seem to me to be more or less the same (though his recollection that he tried to persuade me that I was adopted might interest some. I mainly only ever hit him, or doused him with soapy water using old washing-up liquid bottles) .  But I have been amused by one or two of the previews in the TV listings magazines  contrasting my hectoring, lecturing style with my brother's greater affability.

There's no arguing with the fact that I like a good hector. But the joy of this interview, recorded in Harrow-on-the-Hill late last summer (Cleo Laine was in the same Green Room, as they were recording several that day back-to-back) is that for once I am allowed to develop my points and finish my statements without the usual hostile interruptions I would get from the BBC. Christopher (whose interview was recorded much more
recently) has also been known to use the edge of his tongue, and even go in for a little lecturing. But I would say that people you agree with tend to sound more affable, and people you disagree with tend to sound more hectoring, as a general rule. For some reason, I suspect my following among the writers of TV previews is small.

Laurie Taylor and I are vaguely acquainted. He was the famously culturally revolutionary sociologist , and leading light of something called the 'Deviancy Symposium' when he was a professor and I was an undergraduate at York 40-odd years ago. In those days I was a dogged Bolshevik, dreaming of strikes and barricades, and of storming barracks and Winter Palaces, and regarded his interests as frivolous. I now grasp that he had understood the nature of modern revolution far better than I.

He's also a pretty good interviewer, though I must admit to being more than a little bored with being asked why I stopped being left-wing. I think my interviewers are all secretly afraid the same thing will happen to them, and want to know how to avoid it. What would their friends and colleagues say, if they came out as conservatives?

Killing no murder?

I am here re-posting a couple of comments I placed on the 'General Debate' thread late on Saturday, on the assumption that quite a few people won't have read that far. The first deals (I think comprehensively) with the ill-informed objection to Christians supporting the death penalty, often raised by Atheists, on the grounds that the Commandment says 'Thou Shalt not Kill'.

This is annoying because the atheists themselves couldn't care less what scripture says, and are trying to catch Christians out - and because they so seldom seem to realise that the matter has many times been dealt with before, and is not as they think it is. This should now go into the index under 'Capital Punishment' or 'the Death penalty', and so should be easily found. Not that this will stop them.

At the bottom, I've appended a response I have made to 'Bert', after he responded to a criticism from me that his postings here are essentially frivolous, opposition for the sake of opposition. I still think this, despite Bert's protestations.

On the question of the Commandment 'Thou Shalt do no Murder', it is so rendered by Christ himself (Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 19, 18th verse, Authorised or 'King James' version).

This is why it is also so rendered in the service of The Lord's Supper in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Now, as this dispute is supposed to be about what Christians believe the Commandment to mean, and Christians believe that Christ is God himself, or they would not be Christians, this rather closes the debate. If God himself in his most recent appearance among us (as believed by Christians) says 'Thou shalt do no murder', then that is what the Commandment is, superseding and overriding any previous version, or clarifying it if you prefer.

Atheists can believe what they like. I cannot see why they should care one way or the other. But they really need to be better-informed before trying to tell Christians how to interpret their own scriptures, don't you think?

I might add that Christ himself was subject to the death penalty, and his sayings were recorded when sentence was passed on him and while it was being carried out, and He did not take the opportunities offered to condemn it in principle. I agree that arguments from silence are not always reliable. But in this case, the silence is pretty eloquent. He did say much on other subjects during this event. What is more, one of the two thieves stated from his cross that they were justly punished for their crimes, and Christ did not contradict him.
I might add that both the 39 Articles of the Church of England (Article 37) , and the Roman Catholic Catechism, both conclude that the death penalty is justified in certain circumstances. Those who compile these documents do not do so without much study of scriptural texts, or without much thought.

Non-religious persons trying to make trouble will just have to accept that mainstream Christianity somehow manages to distinguish between lawless murder and lawful execution - even if Atheists appear to be unable to do so. Likewise it manages to observe that the destruction of a baby in the womb is the wrongful taking of life, which atheists also seem unable to perceive.

I am impressed that Mr Saunders is confident enough in himself and in our civilisation to say that the author of these words was an 'ignorant semi-savage'. I wonder how many of his words or deeds will be remembered by anyone 2,000 years hence, and what the people of that age will think of ours, especially the unpunished murders and the millions of massacred babies?

'Bert' contributes the following ( I have interspersed my responses with his comment, marking them **): 'I have no personal hostility to you (more the converse, I'd say). I've never met you, and while I disagree with you about most things, I've no objection to you having your say in your newspaper and via this blog.'
**That is very generous of him. Not to object, I mean.

Bert: 'This is an internet forum where people are able to comment freely, using pseudonyms if they wish, whenever and on whatever they like. In my case, I sometimes choose to comment when I think that your posts do not match up to the high standards of rigour that you set for yourself and contributors. The unqualified assertion about crime at the start of this particular post seemed to me to be an egregious example of this. (And your post of 8 April at 10.44 am, while I agreed with it, was irrelevant to the point that I had raised.)'
**I don't think it was irrelevant at all. Why was it irrelevant?

Bert: 'Let me say that I could not do what you do: offer my view for public consumption, in a well-argued way, on a whole range of topics. If I did, I would quickly get shot to pieces. It is hugely to your credit that you often engage directly with posters. But you choose to colonise the high moral ground, and to adopt a sneering tone when it suits you with those who disagree with you. It's your blog and that's your prerogative. But you shouldn't be surprised if, on occasion, some posters choose not to lie down before the weight of your prose.'
**No, I'm not. But I do get exasperated when this is done for reasons that appear to me to be unserious, namely a general oppositionism for the sake of it. This is just mischief, which wastes my time and energy, and does not conform to the high-minded purpose (of enforcing rigour) stated above.

Bert: 'You're right: I'm not that bothered by the classification of crimes.'
**Exactly. This isn't something he cares about. So why get involved at all? I do care about it, a lot.

'However, I am interested in the point of principle: if you can claim that crimes are being downgraded with little or no evidence, how should we treat some of your other claims – about the existence of dyslexia, or the "wickedness" of taking some drugs?'
**I like that 'little or no'. I have explained (irrelevantly?) the legal difficulties of stating in a public forum that a person has been convicted of manslaughter who ought to have been convicted of murder. I have stated that I have received (necessarily private, and I might add , deeply distressing in their details) letters from the relatives of victims of homicides , where the matter has been treated in this way. The writers of these letters have nothing to gain by untruth. No civil suit is affected, no claim for compensation contemplated. There is instead an unsatisfied thirst for justice and right. This I share.
Nor, it seems to me, is my analysis of the homicide figures unlikely to be true. On the contrary, it is highly likely given the nature of our criminal justice system and of our times.
This seems to me, under the circumstances, to be pretty compelling evidence. But 'Bert', dismisses it as 'little or no'. Well, it's certainly not 'no' evidence. But is it so 'little' that it can be dismissed as without worth? I would like him to tell my correspondents so, and see what he received in return. He dismisses it because he wishes to pick nits, on any possible occasion. I think a man who picks nits with the authenticity of the communications of the relatives of persons cruelly and unlawfully killed is more concerned with the nits than he is with the facts. In fact 'more concerned with the nits than with the facts' is a very good pithy summary of 'Bert' in general.

**As to this from 'Bert': How should we treat some of your other claims – about the existence of dyslexia, or the "wickedness" of taking some drugs?'

I reply **These are different sorts of statements, as 'Bert' really ought to understand. On ''Dyslexia' I am required to prove nothing. It does not exist, and its proponents cannot show that it does, (Indeed many of them simply do not understand the nature of proof, like the advocates of 'ADHD', who think that because they *think* that a thing that they have observed is 'x', then it must therefore *be* 'x'. (As in 'if you came and stayed in my house for a weekend, you'd know that 'ADHD' exists, once you'd seen my Timmy').

They will not accept the rather dispiriting conclusions for their activities which flow from the fact that 'Dyslexia' doesn't exist. As a minor industry has now sprung up around 'Dyslexia' (and quite a major one round 'ADHD'), and as it excuses decades of bad teaching and dud education theories (and in the case of 'ADHD' excuses even more bad teaching, and anti-boy discrimination, and bad but generally-accepted child-rearing practices), it is easy to see why there is so much resistance to this conclusion.

I simply challenge the proponents of the existence of 'Dyslexia' to provide an objective diagnosis for its presence in the human body. Or a 'treatment' for it, which wouldn't also 'treat 'illiteracy. I also provide a sound and rather neat alternative explanation for the mass illiteracy of children in countries with bad schools. It is curiously missing in countries with good schools, and also curiously missing in the pasts of countries which once had good schools, and now have bad ones. Can he guess what it is?

My view on self-stupefaction is based upon general Christian morality. Those who don't have a moral foundation for their views, and believe that 'do what thou wilt' is the highest law (and there are lots of them) will necessarily not agree with me about this, or many other things. Those who share my Christianity won't necessarily agree with me about my interpretation of it on this matter. So I cannot expect to construct a coalition for legislative change and proper enforcement of existing law on this view alone.

Generally, therefore, I argue from the practicality, that nobody can actively want significant numbers of young people to have their minds overthrown or their lives, and the lives of their families, otherwise ruined by the use of drugs. On that, we enter the realm of fact. And also the realm of obfuscation and misrepresentation which the pro-drug lobby ceaselessly use against me (see the latest ignorant (and/or false) suggestions that I have no proposals for the control of alcohol, and that this attitude is formed by my own vanishingly small consumption of alcohol).

These things are not the same as pointing out (after much study and thanks to direct, privileged personal communications from people involved) that claims that the abolition of the death penalty has had an insignificant effect on the murder figures are open to question from many directions.

I should note (since he asks) that I remain baffled by the contributions of Mr Aspinall, who seems to have taken a weird wrong turning at some point and cannot find his way back. I suggest he just stops. What is he on about? My reference to suspensions of the death penalty was quite clear. It referred to two specific occasions when it was suspended, and nothing that he has said has added to the understanding of the point I made. The fact that other people may have mentioned or discussed suspensions at other times has no bearing on this at all, unless those suspensions actually took place. They didn't.

From draper's son to judge . . . THAT was social mobility

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

The phrase 'social mobility' has been twisted round by the elite to mean the opposite of what it once did. In their mouths it signifies 'crude discrimination against those who seek to advance themselves or their children through effort and talent'.

This is a wicked perversion. Here is what it really means: when this was still a free country, you could climb thanks to your talent and hard work. My favourite example is that of Lord Denning, one of six children of a Hampshire draper who became the greatest judge of our time.

One of his brothers, Reginald, helped plan the D-Day landings and became a general. Another, Norman, became an admiral, and Director of Naval Intelligence. The boys' mother, Clara, must have been quite a person, but Whitchurch National School and Andover Grammar School should take a little credit too.

In their austere, disciplined, orderly classrooms, children from poor homes could learn real knowledge, and gain the habits of work and diligence that might take them to the very summit of our once-open society. If they had talent, it would be nurtured and encouraged.

If they were studious, they would not be bullied for it, but rewarded.

Faced with ferocious exams, which it was possible to fail, they learned that real life wasn't easy and had to be tackled with application and determination. That's how a proper middle class, confident, strong and open to talent, is made.

But those who now shape and direct our society long ago destroyed these places. Believing it was kinder, they scrapped the discipline, the order and the rigour, and turned the exams into feeble jokes.

When the truth became clear, they refused to change their minds but carried on as before. The three Denning brothers would rapidly have had their hopes crushed by today's state school system.

If three such boys – or girls – now exist, we will never hear of them, except perhaps in the courts, because the corruption of the best is the worst of all, and a bright and energetic mind, when all the doors of ambition and hope are slammed in its face, can easily turn to wrongdoing.

I cannot express on paper just how angry this makes me, or how angry it ought to make you. The nearest I can come to it is this – to say to Nicholas Clegg, David Cameron and Edward Miliband that they are all three of them cruel, contemptible and stupid, enemies of promise, enemies of their country, and enemies of the poor.

And in each case the crime is especially serious because of their own immense personal privilege. I hope all their political careers end in abject, howling failure, preferably with them being laughed out of office, the only punishment they are likely to understand.

Because all three of them, and their wretched parties, have set their faces against the honest self-improvement that is the mark of a free society. Instead, they gargle the discredited slogans of equality – an equality they don't even believe in for themselves or their children.

You will have to ask yourselves why the leaders of supposedly democratic parties in a supposedly free society have endorsed a policy that is more or less identical to that of the Eastern European communists of the Forties.

More importantly, you will have to ask yourselves why on earth you have continued to vote for them, knowing what they are and what they stand for.

Were the varnished toes a hit, Baroness?

The sight of a barefoot Baroness Warsi, in full hijab, accompanying Mr Cameron (in his socks) to a mosque in Islamabad prompted a number of irreverent questions to which I do not know the answers.

They go (in no particular order): Would the mullahs have approved of the Baroness's daring choice of toenail polish? Why doesn't she wear a headscarf on public occasions in Britain?

Was Mr Cameron trying to buy votes among British Pakistanis when he announced a huge £650 million dollop of aid to the Islamic Republic? Do Pakistani leaders visit Westminster Abbey when they come to London?

Since then, I have been consumed with curiosity about those other pictures of Mr and Mrs Cameron on their cheapo Ryanair holiday to Spain.

Does the Prime Minister really need to go to cashpoints? And when will the real holiday be?

Daft Dave's 'leasehold' Empire

The Prime Minister was right when he pointed out that most of the major crises in the world have their roots in the British Empire. It's unquestionably true. Afghanistan's stupid border? Our fault.

The endless Indo-Pakistan tension? Our fault. The mess in the Middle East? Our fault. The destruction of democracy in Iran? Our fault.

I am myself a child of Empire, born in what was then Malta GC when the mighty Mediterranean Fleet still filled the Grand Harbour at Valletta. And, having seen one or two other empires in action, I still say ours was the best.

What's more, it seems to me that in this cruel world you either have an empire or become part of somebody else's, and I know which I prefer.

The problems I list above were mostly not caused by the Empire itself. They followed its sudden, rapid collapse after the disastrous surrender of Singapore in 1942, one of the worst of the many failures and retreats that took place under the over-praised leadership of Winston Churchill.

People keep saying that we made a good job of withdrawing from Empire.

It's just not true. The scuttles from India and Palestine were needlessly bloody and crude. They left grave, unsolved problems.

If you take over someone else's country, you have to stay there for good, and commit yourself absolutely.

The current fashion for leasehold colonialism, where you barge in with bombs and soldiers and then clear off, is guaranteed to cause more difficulties than it solves.

That said, I have never seen such an adventure crumble into chaos and failure as quickly as Mr Cameron's ill-considered Libyan affair. Bombing our own side?

Well, I never. But how on earth do we get out now we're in? So much for the brilliance of Etonians, eh?

****************************
I don't think the Tory leadership really want us to vote NO in the AV referendum, do you? They're not trying. All the more reason to vote NO, then.


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Almost every year, the presentation of the winners' prize on the final of University Challenge is ruined by some celeb, or Jeremy Paxman himself, saying that the show proves there's no 'dumbing down' in British education. This year, it was the turn of the ever-so-slightly over-praised historian Antony Beevor.

Actually the programme is gripping evidence that education is going down the plughole, as undergraduates goggle blankly when asked to identify easy quotations from major classics of English literature. It's not just that they don't know the answers.

It's that they don't know they don't know. Meanwhile, the supposedly all-knowing Mr Paxman still can't cope with German words or place names. Halle doesn't rhyme with ballet.

Bunker mentality Part Two - Mr 'Bunker' contradicts himself

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air. But I wouldn't want this response of mine to Mr 'Bunker' to be confined only to the intrepid few who struggled all the way to the top of the last 'Bunker Mentality' thread, way above the tree line, into the high, parched zone where the oxygen is thin and altitude sickness strikes at the unwary.

So here it is again. I might subtitle it 'When 'Can't' means 'Won't':

'I think the best witness against Mr 'Bunker' is in fact himself. He makes my point so well, that I will here give him the opportunity to do so, in a selection of quotations from his earlier posts:

On Saturday (2nd April) he said:

'I have a position of absolute unbelief in gods. Absolutely.'

Three days before, he wrote :

'The truth is:- I am agnostic by your own definition - "one who acknowledges the possibility of God's existence" '.

The day before that: 'I do acknowledge that it is possible that God exists. I do acknowledge that it is possible that God exists. I do acknowledge that it is possible that God exists. I have never said that his non-existence can be proved. Why? Because it can't. It is logically impossible.'

Three days before that:

'I'm at a loss as to why you introduce the compatibility of science and religion into the discussion. As far as I remember, I haven't mentioned science. (Actually he has. On 12th March he said: ' Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the bible could not be true.') And I'm certainly not someone who thinks that science has all the answers. Far from it. '

He then hilariously states (first quoting me): ' Mr 'Bunker' ... denies any personal involvement in his own choice of belief." What? My "choice"? I thought we'd sorted that out long ago. You may have "chosen" a belief, a religious faith. I didn't. I couldn't. Because I found religion impossible to believe in.'

Why was that? We do not know. We cannot tell. And nor can Mr 'Bunker' seem to accept that 'impossible' is a word that permits of only one meaning, and it is not compatible with 'unlikely', 'improbable' or even 'incredible'. Yet he uses it as though it is. If he 'found it impossible' to believe, what was his reasoning for this finding? And if there wasn't any reasoning (and there is no evidence of any so far) my hypothesis, that it was his personal choice, comes lumbering over the horizon again.

But does he really deny the influence of personal preference over publicly stated opinions? Let us delve deeper onto the archive. We find (six days ago) Mr 'Bunker' acknowledging that motive and desire play some part in belief: 'What a very odd business this "belief in God" (or gods) is. I ask myself - just what is the reason why obviously intelligent people go in for it. And actually believe it. Or - as I think may often be the case - say the[y] believe simply for opportunistic reasons. Why do some people believe - and others don't? '

A good question.

(Yet on 17th March the same Mr 'Bunker' (who now acknowledges that people may have reasons for their beliefs) had said :' I cannot CHOOSE to believe[r]. What an odd notion - choosing (!) to believe.')

A week ago, Mr Bunker was saying :' there were two positions open to me. I agree. But - as you will agree - I reached a considered opinion. To have opted for the other position was an impossibility for me in the light of my assessment of the evidence and probability. You perhaps call that "choosing". I call it being "forced" to adopt the only position left open to me. '

This confirms my stated point, that Mr Bunker is using terms appropriate to proof and truth for a decision which can only be based upon evidence and probability, and introducing possibility and impossibility into a question where they cannot be established. He also uses the term 'forced'. which means either that it was against his will or that facts and logic offered no alternative. Yet he has repeatedly accepted, during this discussion, that facts and logic alone cannot close the question.( I quote the precise words of Mr 'Bunker' :'I have never said that his non-existence can be proved. Why? Because it can't. It is logically impossible.')

On 21st March he was saying:' ...(If I remember rightly I said atheism was forced upon me. I didn't choose it.) Well I'm afraid you've got it wrong - once more. You shouldn't be asking "who", but "what" forced me ... And the answer is quite simple. Circumstances forced me. Intellectual honesty with myself. The inability to believe something which I found impossible to believe. -- Is that clear now? - Yes? '

Well, no, not to me it isn't. How can someone be 'unable' to believe in the existence of something whose non-existence he himself says cannot be logically established (see 'Bunker' above, passim)?

On 19th March he had said: 'I have not chosen unbelief. If I may say sloppily, unbelief has been forced upon me.'

This was shortly after he had proclaimed: ' If we continue this discussion on religion/belief/atheism on the basis of logical and rational argument, I shall win. For the simple reason that I have logic and reason on my side.' and ' I, an atheist, am not illogical.'

Not long before this, he had said :' When I say I believe there is no God, I am stating my considered opinion, a very firm conviction admittedly. But not absolute certainty.'

This would appear to me to be a direct contradiction of his recent statement that :''I have a position of absolute unbelief in gods. Absolutely.' '

I would add here that , since I posted this comment, Mr 'Bunker' has been whizzing around like a dying bluebottle on a windowsill, in smaller and smaller, and more and more erratic loops, to which my only response is to smile indulgently. While his ally, Mr Wooderson has been amusing us with the distinction between actual impossibility ( ie real impossibility, which is actually impossible) and something he terms 'psychological' impossibility, ie not impossibility at all, but a groundless conviction of impossibility lodged in the Atheist mind, resting on the prejudices, desires, wishes and fears of the individual.

General Debate

On the question of the homicide rate in this country, I have mentioned before that many crimes which would once unhesitatingly been classified as murder are now listed, and prosecuted, as 'manslaughter', largely to save time and resources for the CPS and the courts. Comparisons with the past are also made difficult by the huge improvements in trauma surgery since the 1960s, which enable doctors to save many people who would undoubtedly have died of their wounds and injuries 45 years ago. The heedless, cruel violence which leads to such injuries ( and which in my view is at least partly a consequence of the abandonment of deterrent hanging) has increased far more than the number of death resulting from it. This increase was until recently reflected in the figures for attempted murder and of 'wounding to endanger life' (this quadrupled from 155 per year to 634 between 1976 and 1996) but I strongly suspect that the CPS are no longer bothering to charge at this level, in their constant effort to ease pressure on the prisons.

The death penalty plainly does not restrain all murder. But there is a strong case to suggest that it deters murders done for calculated reasons (the removal of a witness to another crime, rape or robbery) . And there is evidence from the two suspensions of the death penalty, in 1948 and 1957, that the use of firearms by criminals increased during this suspensions, and began its long, unremitting increase to the levels of today after final abolition.

All this can be found in the relevant chapter 'Cruel and Unusual' of my 2002 book 'A Brief History of Crime', still available through libraries to the determined.

A contributor states that: ' To have had any chance of preventing the shooting of this little girl would mean having armed police on every street corner.'

I don't see how this follows from what I said, and can only follow from a prejudiced misreading or part-reading of what i said. My prescription is threefold. A restoration of the death penalty for murder, combined with a resolute justice system backed by austere prisons controlled by the authorities. And to rally the law-abiding and discourage the lawless, a constant presence of police constables patrolling the streets on foot.

These things are all possible (they existed in living memory) and not specially expensive. I believe they would have widespread support if proposed, and if introduced. What annoys me is that such ideas are absolutely excluded from mainstream political debate, and subjected to silly abuse when aired. I've yet to encounter a reasoned objection to them, only yells of execration.This of course encourages me to persist.

As for defence of the police from within the service, persons who say they have never heard police officers refer to the public as 'civilians' strain my credulity. I have heard it, and read it, countless times. Others seem to think that arrests and convictions are a measure of police success. This is to compound the misunderstanding. An arrest is a failure. A conviction is a bigger failure. Why? Because the crimes that led to them should never have taken place. The purpose of the police, above all things, is to *prevent* crime in the first place. If you are injured, burgled, or bereaved by crime, how much consolation can the prosecution of the culprit provide for you?

And much of the crime they prevent will be officially classified as *petty", the low-level disorder and menace hard to record in statistics, but exactly the sort of thing people most want stopped, above all else. What's more, according to the 'broken window' theory, it is precisely when this low-level disorder goes unchecked that more serious crimes become more common.

British police officers are not civil servants. They are sworn constables, whose oath obliges them to uphold the *Law* and entitles them to refuse a direct order if they believe it to be unlawful. I can see no barrier to a movement among police officers for the reinstatement of preventive beat policing, provided it is conducted within the rules of discipline. And when I see such a campaign, I shall commend and encourage it. But as long as it fails to begin, I shall be uninterested in airy claims that large numbers of officers really want to return to proper policing.

I am fascinated by Mr Sepulveda's statement that "I think lots of people, like Harriet Harman, support the idea of targeting drug users as criminal and leaving the dealers as the victims."

Really? When and where did Harriet Harman say this? Or anyone else?

By the way, I am shocked and rather appalled by the complete failure of anyone, at the time of writing, to comment on the terrible story of the 10-year-old boy who took his own life while on a dose of Ritalin and 'antidepressants'. What's wrong with you all? Posts on religion can attract hundreds of comments. The death penalty gets people going like anything. But this enormous scandal of the drugging of children, which needs only a little outrage to be checked, doesn't seem to move anyone but me and its terrifying, dogmatic advocates. Why is that?

Oh, and some twit suggests that GPs should be allowed to prescribe heroin. Wouldn't that be a breach of the bitt of the Hippocratic Oath about doing no harm? And presumably, apart from in England, and possibly there too under some rule, it would mean *free* prescriptions. Paid for by whom?

As it happens, through the Methadone programme, the British state supposedly 'prevents' crime by robbing the taxpayer through HMRC, spending his hard-earned money on stupefying drugs for criminal parasites, and giving them these drugs. Thus the crime is nationalised. It does not cease. It is done instead by the state. If I object to the spending of my money on this purpose, and refuse to pay taxes for it, I will go to prison. Unlike the heroin user, who openly breaks the law against possession of heroin, but is treated as a victim. I fail to see the moral difference between being mugged for my money by the state, so that some deadbeat can stupefy himself, and being mugged direct by the deadbeat.

The institutionalised wickedness which follows the acceptance of drug-taking among us is almost limitless.