Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 338

Multiculturalism, Stalingrad Revisited, Death on the Nile, the Peloponnesian War, the Measure of Moral Worth and Other Minor Issues

Far too much to write about this week. For some discussion on David Cameron's alleged attack on multiculturalism, look at the earlier section of Sunday's BBC1 TV programme, 'The Big Questions', still available on BBC iplayer. I hold to the view that Mr Cameron's 'muscular liberalism' is a contradiction in terms, - like rigid jelly, an angry whelk or a ferocious hamster. And that the principles of 'equality' which he recommends are a) for the most part not British and b) designed to enforce the very 'State Multiculturalism' which Mr Cameron says he is against. For instance, if all religions are equal, then Christianity ceases to be recognised as the dominant faith in the country, and what could be more multiculti than that?

Those who have been fooled into thinking that Mr Cameron is somehow being 'tough' should bear this in mind: The real Fleet Street, in which one met journalists on rival newspapers every day, long ago ceased to exist. But a tiny corner of this lost paradise has been recreated. The Associated Newspapers building now hosts the offices of the 'Independent' and the 'Independent on Sunday' and I occasionally bump into John Rentoul, one of the few remaining Blair disciples and a distinguished IoS columnist. We generally tease each other, with him trying to annoy me by claiming to agree with things that I have written and me encouraging him to support the Cameroons. On Saturday we were both reading Mr Cameron's speech when I bumped into him in the atrium. He pointed out to me that Mr Blair had made more or less precisely the same speech three times.

I shall return later in the week to the removal of Dr Hans-Christian Raabe from the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs. It appears (hence my reference to Stalingrad) that it is Dr Raabe's (he is a medical doctor) statements on homosexuality which are supposed to have led to his abrupt removal from a position to which he had only just been appointed. Stories have appeared saying that he 'failed to disclose' a 2005 study in which he wrote the (factual) summary. The ACMD has nothing whatever to do with homosexuality.

He is said by unnamed sources to have been specifically asked to disclose anything about his past which might cause embarrassment to the government or the committee. I am interested as to what the official definition of 'embarrassment' is, or whether Dr Raabe could reasonably have been expected to view what follows as potentially embarrassing to the Home Office or the Advisory Committee.

The study concluded that there was a 'disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles'.
I have no information on this matter myself. Perhaps one of my well-informed contributors can tell me if it is factually accurate? If so, then why is it controversial?

The words used were: 'While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there is a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles and an overlap between the gay movement and the movement to make paedophilia acceptable.'

Once again, I am not expert in this area, and would welcome any accurate information which anyone has, in support or refutation.

The report also stated: 'Despite the impression given by the media, the actual number of homosexuals is quite small. Essentially all surveys show the number of homosexuals to be only 1-3% of the population.'

I think this is now generally accepted and uncontroversial. The absurd Kinsey figure of 10% was long ago discredited.

You will have to read the whole paper (I have not yet done so) to make any judgement on the quality of the work. But this event does seem to be an instance of the existence of a new Test Act, under which a person's views on homosexuality can disqualify him from public office, even where that is wholly separate from any matters touching on sexual behaviour.

Two points. If Dr Raabe had not involved himself in the homosexuality controversy, his enemies in the drug liberalisation lobby (whom I believe to be behind his removal) would have had to attack him directly because of his views on drugs, which would have been far harder. This confirms my 'Stalingrad' view, that other more important battles are lost because of the engagement of social conservatives in this futile siege.

The second, that this is a freedom of thought and speech issue, not one about sexuality. The 'embarrassment' clause and the 'disclosure' clause, under which Dr Raabe has apparently been ejected, both involve murky and subjective definitions of what constitutes 'embarrassment', or what is so bad about being 'controversial' and raise important questions about what can and cannot be said. I have written to the Home Office to ask them:

1. In what way is the report (which gives the results of a factual survey) controversial?
2. Who decides what 'controversial' means?
3. How controversial does a report have to be to for its non-disclosure to cause embarrassment?
4. At what level was the decision taken to revoke Dr Raabe's appointment?
5. Were any other factors involved, apart from the allegedly embarrassing report?
6. Will Dr Raabe's successor be chosen from among opponents of harm-reduction policies, so as to ensure that this view is represented on the ACMD?


Egypt

Is it immoral to refuse to egg on a revolution abroad? Is it immoral to refuse to mistake general idealism in distant, unknown places most of us will never even visit, for practical neighbourly charity among those known to us? One contributor quotes William Blake against me. I quote Blake back at him:

'He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer'.

I regard most statements of joy in foreign revolutions as mere posturing, the use of someone else's country as a moral playground in which one can be a utopian at no charge. By the time the utopianism has solidified into equivocal (or nasty) political reality, the journalistic poseur is long gone to a new playground and is generally not pressed to defend the regime his views may have helped to bring about . How many of those who posed about the place in former Yugoslavia ever even revisit Bosnia and Kosovo to review the paradise they helped to establish there? How many of those who confused a righteous loathing of apartheid with unconditional support for the African National Congress revisit the increasingly squalid state which the ANC has created in South Africa?

There is no direct connection between my point on the European Union and Britain (the end of the Cold War hugely intensified the centralisation of the EU under German leadership) and the dangers to Britain from a change of regime in Egypt (see below). I am sorry that I was so unclear as to leave anyone with this impression. The indirect connection is this parallel: the freedom of Eastern Europe led to disadvantages for Britain and its people. The 'freedom' (if such it be) of Egypt may lead to disadvantages for this country.

What might they be?

Most likely, more instability in the Middle East. This has limitless bad consequences for us. The last thing our weak, sick economy needs is a new Middle East war. Leave aside the destruction and loss of life, which all will deplore, the inevitable rise in the price of oil and severe inflation which will follow are exactly what we do not need.

Most of the reports of the crowds in Tahrir Square (note by the way - as no reports have - the word 'Tahrir', meaning variously freedom and liberation, which also features in the title of the dread Hizb-ut-Tahrir party, 'the Party of Freedom') seem to me to have been unconsciously self-censored.

I doubt that most of the reporters there have wanted to push the issue very hard. It might even be risky to do so, amid a crowd in times of tension. But during my only visit to Egypt (as mentioned in an earlier post) I found that, among all the highly-liberal, westernised and English speaking people I met - and very charming and pleasant they were too - there was an unremitting, bitter hostility to the State of Israel.

I found this out because I was interested, and because I had discovered the same heated view among similar people I had met in Jordan a few months before. And when I mildly questioned it, I found myself met with something very close indeed to fury. It was clearly something I was not really permitted to discuss, immune to facts or reason.

Now, if this is so among travelled, educated and wealthy intellectuals, how much more intense might we expect it to be among the Egyptian masses, exposed for decades to virulent anti-Israel propaganda, in most Muslim countries the only outlet for the incoherent anger that exists in the midst of the poverty and corruption?

I have only once in the past few days seen a picture of a portrait of Hosni Mubarak defaced by demonstrators with a Star of David, to suggest that he is a Zionist puppet. But I wonder how many more there are which reporters or picture editors sympathetic to the protests (who might not have wanted to draw attention to this aspect of popular feeling) have decided not to mention or publish?

This can happen. When I was in Gaza late last summer I came across - smack in the middle of the city where no visitor could miss it - a professionally executed and prominent wall-painting depicting an Israeli soldier as a hook-nosed child-killer in the style of Julius Streicher. Other journalists must have seen it, and been able to photograph or film it. But I had never seen it reproduced.

The Arab and 'Palestinian' causes tend to be supported by the liberal left in Britain, and I am sure that most such people loathe anti-Semitism and regard themselves as anything but anti-Semitic. (Pedants' corner. Yes, I know that Arabs are Semitic as well, but you know what I mean.) So when they find irrational Judophobia among their Arab friends, they pretend it is not there.

Now that is not to say that the current Egyptian regime is free of Judophobia. The armistice between Israel and Egypt is famously known as 'The Cold Peace', because of the way in which Egypt meticulously observes its letter, while not observing its spirit. One example: Israeli tourists go to Egypt. Egyptian tourists hardly ever go to Israel, and it is said they can run into trouble back home if they do so. There is no friendliness in the relationship, just a sullen acceptance of its political convenience. But the Egyptian regime overcome their dislike for reasons of state, reasons which a new government might not acknowledge (and by the way, how sure is everyone that the replacement government, whose nature is a complete mystery, would in fact be incorrupt and tolerant of criticism?).

My worries about this are not in fact dependent on my support for Israel, though I've no doubt that my knowledge of this conflict makes me more aware of what is at stake. Even if you don't like Israel I doubt very much if you want a new Middle East War. And the current Egyptian regime has prevented war in a highly sensitive part of the world for three decades. And Egypt, though less pivotal than it used to be, is a decisive voice in the Arab world. If it abandoned its peace with Israel, and aligned itself with Hamas in Gaza, I think many of us would find out very quickly how important Egypt's future was to our stability and prosperity.

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An Interesting Contrast

A person courageously posting under the very rare name 'John' has placed (weirdly, on the 'Thucy did' thread with which it has nothing whatever to do) the following acid comment:

'What a shame he [me] lacks his brother's intelligence, and humanity. He is happy for a country of 80 million souls to live under tyranny so long as we can be absolutely sure that it will not affect our lifestyle and that we might have to contend with another economic block where the people of the Middle East might have something to say about what happens to them, the money that the region accrues in oil wealth, or about what operations are performed on their daughters.

'Despotism is by definition destabilising, democracy, even in Eastern Europe has given us a more stable future. His philosophy is one of ultranationalism, a sort of strange form of democratic fascism. "As long as the good people of Britain are all right, I am more or less immune to the suffering of others." Charming, and how very unBritish. Did I mention, un-Christian...'

I address the moral aspects of this elsewhere, but will touch on them again in this specific case. As for being 'unBritish', I should have thought that my opinions were entirely in the British tradition of placing our own national interests first. The Christian question is more complex. Are those who rejoice at the 'liberation' of Cairo certain that their cause will help their neighbours, here or there?

Much of the hostility to what I say rests on the view that universal suffrage democracy is itself so virtuous that any society blessed with it will be preferable to one not so blessed. Humph.

Can he tell me why he is so sure that the Cairo revolution will lead to a situation in which 'the people of the Middle East might have something to say about what happens to them, the money that the region accrues in oil wealth, or about what operations are performed on their daughters.' As for the reference to female genital mutilation, does he have any information on the attitudes to that of the 80 million Egyptian people themselves, their current government and (for example) the Muslim Brotherhood?

I am by no means sure that 'democracy' will greatly (or at all) improve the lives of those 80 million Egyptians, or that the gathering in Tahrir Square represents anything much beyond itself. Beyond the immediate removal of Hosni Mubarak himself (and what is so bad about waiting till September for this?) , it appears to have no united objective. (People should read Aesop's fables, not least the one about King Log and King Stork.)

Democracy was certainly no blessing in post-Communist Russia, where the word is now almost invariably pronounced as a sarcastic curse. It may be in Egypt, but I have no way of knowing for certain, and plenty of reasons for doubting it. Even if it does, then the strong feeling against Israel which is very powerful among Egyptians (I discuss this on an earlier posting) must play a part in it.

Nor do I have any clear idea of what this movement desires, or can achieve domestically or abroad. I do know that the existing Egyptian government (has 'John' been an active campaigner against it during the past 30 years at all? Or did he recently discover his concern?) reluctantly but effectively enforces one of the most important Peace Treaties in the world.

And I know that, were a new conflict (either overt or, more likely, informal and through the proxy of Hamas) to break out between Egypt and the State of Israel, the consequences would be severe for the entire developed world, not least because of the effects on the price of oil at a time of economic trouble. Egypt itself is not an oil power. But its continued stability protects other Arab powers (which do have oil) from instability, and offers a counterbalance to the increasing power in the region of Iran, not to mention the Suez canal which (however you pronounce it) remains important to the world economy even in the age of supertankers.

I do not quite know how 'John' has measured or proposes to measure my intelligence, or on what basis he claims I don't have any, or enough. I suspect my principal defect is that I don't agree with the views of 'John'. He may be the kind of person who assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is axiomatically stupid. I should suggest gently to him that this is not necessarily so.

As for my brother's humanity, I don't doubt it. But hold on a second. He longs for a better world, as do I, but in a significantly different way. The dilemma is rather well-stated here. Christopher's position, the idealist and utopian opposite to mine, led him to support (which he still does) the invasion of Iraq. This has indisputably led to a great deal of death and destruction, and to the creation of a far from universally beloved government in Baghdad, amid much economic and political disorder and decay and much bitter, homicidal sectarianism. This, obviously, wasn't what he and his allies set out to achieve. But that is exactly my point. Utopia can only ever be approached across a sea of blood (and in my view is never reached).

By contrast, we know what we have, and much as we dislike it, we also know that any attempt to replace it is at best uncertain.

Actually I think Washington had more of an idea of what would replace Saddam Hussein than we now have of what might replace Hosni Mubarak.

Does 'John' regularly dive headfirst into swimming pools in the dark, without checking that they contain water? This is the equivalent, in daily life, of the policy of urging revolutionary change in a country with no civil society, with an incoherent and largely unknown opposition. If you wouldn't do it in real life, my advice is not to do with other people's countries.

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Egypt, People Power ...and the truth we dare not speak

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

I have been an unheroic witness to several episodes of alleged People Power. I hid under the bed as tracer whizzed past my Bucharest hotel window, during the mysterious overthrow of the Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu.

I lay down in the dirty snow to save my skin, as the KGB Alpha Group stormed the Vilnius TV tower in the Kremlin's last failed attempt to keep control of the Baltic states. I felt my bowels shrivel with dread when, in Moscow in 1991, I heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots finding their human targets.

More enjoyably, and more safely, I stood amid ecstatic crowds in Prague as they jeered their communist rulers into oblivion, marched alongside Hungarian democrats in Budapest and rejoiced to see the sunny Russian morning when every litter-bin in the capital was full of burning Communist Party membership cards.

It was intoxicating and exhilarating even when it was also terrifying. I am the sort of reporter who only goes to war zones because he hasn't been properly briefed (I once touched down in Somalia in a blue suit and polished shoes).

But these days, whenever I see a huge crowd on TV, surging through some central square in some wretched despotism, my heart sinks. I don't want to be there, among the nice, gullible people whose absurd hopes are bound to be disappointed.

I know what will come next – a let-down.

We have already pretty much forgotten Tunisia, whose crowds our electronic media lauded and encouraged only weeks ago. Anyone know what is going on there now? Or care much? Thought not.

The liberation of Romania was followed by an era of renewed corruption and political squalor that has not come to an end and is not likely to. No doubt it was preferable to the former regime, but it cannot possibly measure up to the semi-religious hopes raised back in 1989 by overwrought commentators, including me.

I have seen it argued – credibly – that the joyous return of freedom to Prague was orchestrated by the KGB. And look at what followed.

Post-communist Russia is not the beautiful, rich and civilised land it could be and ought to be, but a crime family posing as a nation. For many people there, the choice between the old regime and the new one is not an easy one.

Poor old Prague is now just the capital of a subjugated province in the new German Empire that we politely call the European Union. The same goes for the Baltic republics and Romania. And, more importantly to me, for us here in Britain.

It is much nicer for them to be ruled from Berlin and Brussels than to be ruled from Moscow, though nothing like as nice as they might once have hoped.

But it is not nicer for us to be ruled from Berlin and Brussels rather than ruling ourselves, as we more or less did before 1989, when the Cold War kept Germany down, the Americans in and the Russians out.

Would I, knowing what I know now, have been so keen on the liberation of Eastern Europe 20 years ago? No. I would in the end have sacrificed their freedom in return for ours.

And if I am ruthlessly honest – as I ought to be – I would sacrifice the freedom of the people of Egypt for my prosperity and stability, if that is the bargain on offer. And I think it is. There, I've said it.


We're moral beings, not lab rats

By treating human beings as if they were laboratory rats, we have tried for decades to coax and corral them into sensible behaviour. This idea is called 'harm reduction' and lies behind the stupid, failed policies that have led to epidemic drug-taking and promiscuity.

It assumes people will do bad and stupid things, and that they should be helped to do them as safely as possible. I regard it as immoral and repulsive. But who cares what I think? Even so, perhaps they should begin to wonder if we moral dinosaurs have a point.

A keystone of the harm-reduction policy has been the free, easy issue of the 'morning-after pill'. Abortion on demand had somehow failed to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

How about issuing to human females a drug originally designed for female pedigree dogs, to rid them of the unwanted consequences of street encounters with mongrel males?

Earlier research has already suggested that, as the scientists delicately put it, 'the increase in pregnancy rates from, for example, greater sexual activity may cancel out reductions in pregnancy rates from greater use of Emergency Birth Control'.

Or, as I would put it, the knowledge that a one-night stand need have no consequences will increase the number of one-night stands.

But now Professors Sourafel Girma and David Paton, from Nottingham University, have gone a stage further. Schemes to make morning-after pills more readily available have, they say, been followed by more diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections.

The meaning of this is clear. More pills mean more promiscuity.

'Harm reduction', as usual, has increased harm. We are not laboratory rats, or dogs, but human beings with the ability to make moral choices. And the last people to grasp this will be those who govern this country.


The sound of ignorance

Amazing how almost nobody in broadcasting knows anything about the past. Numerous BBC announcers last week pronounced the name of the Egyptian city 'Soo-ez', as if they'd never heard the word before.

Quite possibly they hadn't. Which means they know nothing about one of the most significant events in our history, the Suez disaster (always pronounced 'Soo-iz') of 1956.


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Special ambulances are to be bought to transport fat, ill people about the country. And a new branch of medicine, bariatrics, has arisen to treat people too fat for their own good. I wonder how many of these fat, ill people are also officially poor.


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A grandiose judge, Sir Nicholas Wall, thinks unmarried people should get the legal rights that married people have. You might as well make people judges without requiring them to pass law exams and gain experience in the courts. And Sir Nicholas might as well have said 'Let's abolish marriage'.

Marriage is a solemn contract, in which binding promises are made, mainly for the benefit of children and the old and ill.

The law gave it special privileges in return because, in our old free society, the Government recognised that such stable unions were good for everyone.

Without those privileges, marriage will die, because it is difficult, and needs to be supported through the bad times that besiege every couple. And a privilege stops being a privilege if it is given to everyone, as privileged Sir Nicholas really ought to know.

But the modern state (which is startlingly bad at looking after children, the sick and the old) hates marriage. It is private, beyond its control.

It raises individual humans rather than conformist consumers. It keeps women out of wage-slavery and children out of day-orphanages, and resists the politically correct propaganda that pours out of the media and the schools.

Thucy Did, or Thucy Didn't He?

I must persist. The contributor who posts under the pretentious Greek pseudonym recently commented on a posting of mine about the European Union's Landfill Directive and its effect on rubbish collections in Britain. He said that part of what I had said was 'not true'. His exact words were: '[first quoting me)] "as a country, we [Britain] had no serious difficulties with landfill". That's just not true.'

On the evening of the same day (Tuesday 1st February) I challenged him in a contribution of my own to that thread. I asked him politely to substantiate. This challenge was posted at around 10.00 am on Wednesday 2nd February.

There has as yet been, so far as I know, no response to this request. Yet the person involved did post, on another topic, a comment timed at 8.01 pm on Wednesday 2nd February. Thus we know he was not absent from the site, or prevented by travel or other obligations from seeing my challenge, and that it is at least possible, and in fact likely that he knew of my challenge. Following my post of Thursday 3rd February at 11.29 am, which directly addresses his behaviour, it is even more likely that he knows of it.

I am, as it happens, quite prepared to concede this point if this person produces evidence that Britain had, before the 1999 Landfill Directive, an acknowledged problem with landfill in this country, of a kind which was properly dealt with by the provisions of that Directive. I do not think this was so, but I am of course ready to concede my mistake if I am wrong. This is the only point at issue - though this particular question is part of a much wider one about the reason for the rapid decay of rubbish collecting services in this country.

But my critic has yet to respond at the time of writing (Friday lunchtime). I must request him once more to do so. It is he, not I, who has raised the stakes so high. He did not (as he might have done) ask me for details to back up what I had said. He did not say that I was 'mistaken' or 'incorrect' or even 'inaccurate'. He instead chose to use the words 'not true'.

This conveys two unequivocal meanings, one damaging to me and one placing an obligation on him. One is that I had invented the information or misrepresented the facts. The other is that he himself possessed information, at the time he made this statement, which showed that my posting was untrue.

He should therefore have found it easy to provide a swift substantiation. It would also have been good debating manners to do so.

Yet the hours and the days pass, and still we hear nothing.

As I have said in a reply to Mr 'Demetriou', some contributors here might be allowed to get away with this sort of thing, being so dense and untutored that they are not aware of the implications of saying that something is 'not true'.

But this person, whose pseudonym, and style, are saturated with self-regard and accompanied by a lofty manner, cannot really be excused on the grounds that he knows not what he does.

Let's have it, please.

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Pretentious Greeks, Other People's Quarrels, avoiding Stalingrad etc

So far as I can see, 'Bert', who uses the pretentious Greek name, has so far failed to respond to my request (published on Wednesday morning) to substantiate his bald unqualified assertion that I was wrong to state that 'as a country, we [Britain] had no serious difficulties with landfill'. 'Bert' declared. 'That's just not true.' He has commented since then on another wholly separate subject on this thread, so I think we can assume he is aware of my request.

I must persist. The statement 'that's just not true' is unequivocal. Its implications are plain. Will he please substantiate it?

I am asked to get involved in a quarrel between Johann Hari and Melanie Phillips about homosexuality. I decline. Firstly, Melanie is quite capable of looking after herself and those who wish to debate this know where they can go to do so, though I doubt that anything new will be said.

I seek, as far as possible, to avoid the subject of homosexuality unless it is absolutely necessary. The recent case of the hotel owners seemed to me to be significant in that public funds had been used to support one side in a contentious case, and because the judge sought to state that Civil Partnerships and Marriage were entirely equal in law, two new developments.

But generally the homosexual issue is the Stalingrad of social conservatism.

By this I mean that it is a battle into which people on 'my' side of the argument are tempted because of its symbolic importance, becoming trapped as a result on a tiny, churned-up piece of ground on which they will eventually be defeated, and as a result of which they ignore (and also lose) the much larger and more important war.

No doubt various people will suggest that by using this military parallel I am subconsciously aligning myself with the German National Socialists, etc etc. Let them if they wish to be so childish. But it is of course untrue, and not the point, so I shall dismiss that in advance.

A few months ago (for instance) I turned down a slot on a major TV discussion programme, supposedly focusing on moral and religious issues, when the producers proposed that the opening item be about the persecution of homosexuals in an African country. I said there could be no contention about this - nobody could reasonably defend such persecution, and in any case it was taking place in a foreign country over which we had no control and in which, under other circumstances, nobody was interested at all.

I thought - and think - that broadcasters often semi-consciously pick this subject because they believe, like a dim contributor to this site the other day - that opponents of political correctness wish to return to the pre-1967 days when homosexual acts between consenting adults were illegal in this country. And that by discussing this issue, yet again, they will highlight this gap between moral conservatives and right (or left) thinking people.
It doesn't matter how many times I say that I supported then and support now Leo Abse's sensible 1967 Bill, legalising homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. I am repeatedly confronted by people who think that I believe the opposite.

They believe that I think this because they need to. The modern ideology requires me to be a hate-filled persecutor of vulnerable minorities. So even if I'm not one, I must be portrayed as one, and misunderstood in such a way that I can be slandered as one.

It genuinely doesn't matter what I actually say, write or think (see 'The Cameron Delusion'). In front of leftist middle class audiences (Oxford's are the worst in the country), I have often heard a sort of baying begin when I attempt to set out a reasoned position on the subject (similar baying begins if I dissent from the consensus about man-made global warming). It is the sound of unreason, dispiriting and rather frightening. It fills the room like a sort of gas, suffocating logic and rendering those present inaccessible to facts.

Combative as I am, I used to try to take it on. Then, bit by bit, I realised that this was exactly what my opponents wish me to do. So I resolved to stop. The issue is marriage and the death of marriage, and even more specifically, of the rapid and tragic abolition of the very concept of fatherhood. That is what matters, and that is where moral conservatives must fight - in society, and in the Church. The homosexual question affects a tiny number of people and is, more or less, a provocation to get us to charge off in the wrong direction and make fools of ourselves. The destruction of marriage and the end of fatherhood is changing the western world for the worse and must urgently be addressed.

I shall return to that next week when I plan to discuss the film of Kazuo Ishiguro's disturbing book 'Never Let me Go', which is released in cinemas in Britain next week.

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Now what? Some retorts and replies

In no particular order. Bert, with the pretentious and grandiose Greek pseudonym (well, at least it wasn't 'Pericles'), shows twice in one post that he is not reading what I say with any care. Persons with pretensions should be specially wary of this. First, he remarks: 'Thought Police? Nonsense. Gray and Keys were sacked by Sky, for goodness' sake, from the same stable as Fox News, not some PC-gorn-mad local council.'

Now, what did I say? Here it is: 'Many of those who sang in this sanctimonious chorus are the sort who often complain in pubs about "political correctness gone mad". But when it comes to it, they cravenly take part in the madness.' This is a large part of my point. Those who rely on the supposedly 'anti-PC' sections of society will find that they are a broken reed in any serious frenzy of this kind. And the effectiveness of PC depends almost entirely on its rules being adopted way beyond the GLC and the London boroughs where it was originally adopted in this country 30 years ago. It is amusing to go and read the cuttings in the newspapers on those times, and find most of the papers involved now fully signed up to, or mortally afraid of about 80% of the policies of Ken Livingstone. Those who mistake the noisy neo-conservatism of the Murdoch Empire for real conservatism surely haven't been reading this weblog or my column with any attention, either.

The crucial thing about the Thought Police is that we recognise them for what they are when they appear. Does 'Bert' imagine that they will always arrive in blue uniforms, with 'Thought Police' in big black letters on their high-viz jackets? No, what they want is for there to be agents of thought policing in every workplace, every school and broadcasting studio, and ultimately in every home. Mr Charrington and his colleagues are reserved for the hard cases.

Now here comes the Greek genius again, with this smug piece of half-informed loftiness: 'The EU is not responsible for fortnightly bin collections. I know this because I am currently living outside Britain but still in the EU and my bins are collected every week. The EU – including the UK – has indeed issued directives aimed at increasing recycling. Is that so bad?'

What did I say? This: 'Tory promises of a return to proper bin collections have turned out to be garbage, as I knew they would. Why? Because the EU's landfill directive forces councils into recycling projects which mean fortnightly collections'.

The 'UK' has not issued any directives because the British government does not govern by directive. It still pretends to be a Parliamentary democracy and so it has to enact these directives, as Acts or Statutory Instruments, pretending that they are the will of Parliament. What our grandiose Greek friend does not grasp is that these directives have different effects in different countries, which is one of the reasons why they are pernicious, and why sovereign independent countries are better in all ways than supranational units such as the EU. Britain is more heavily dependent on landfill for the disposal of its rubbish than other EU countries, which is why this particular Directive was adopted without difficulty in Brussels, where our voice is weak and getting weaker.

As a country, we had no serious difficulties with landfill and could happily have continued disposing of our rubbish in this way were we independent. But this option is now closed to us because we are subject to EU power. The Landfill Directive, devised to suit the needs of the Low Countries, imposes huge and growing fines on countries which continue to use landfill, regardless of local conditions or desires. Thus councils in this country are under immense and growing financial pressure to dispose of their rubbish in other ways, and have resorted to recycling (and the fortnightly collections which this requires) to try to stay solvent.

About five minutes of research would have revealed these details to the man who uses the name of a great Classical historian to give himself airs. But, perhaps inflated by his own pseudonym, he reckoned he didn't need to trouble with such a thing as research. He just knew I was wrong, and couldn't even be bothered to read carefully what I had written The person whose name he so ridiculously borrows would not, I think, have behaved in this fashion. I suggest he now lays down this appellation non-controlee and adopts the more modest soubriquet of 'Bert' which I long ago awarded him.

On the question of boundary changes, my thanks to the thoughtful contributors on this subject. But please keep thinking. It is a large step from acknowledging that existing boundaries are unfair (they always are, and in 1951 this worked very much in the Tory interest, never let it be forgotten), to accepting that the proposed cure is the best way to deal with it. I am not sure that the plan for strictly equal constituencies will actually benefit the Tories much. Some recent studies have suggested that the main effect of the change will be to deprive the Liberal Democrats of many long-held seats based mainly on strong local organisation, which will be irrevocably broken up by new boundaries.

What I dislike about the plan is its almost Cromwellian nature - there is no proper appeal against the newly allocated boundaries. The old rule that there should be an effort to match a constituency with a recognisable or historically-existing community will be abandoned (and then there are the blatant and wholly inconsistent exceptions given to two Liberal Democrat seats, and actually, amazingly written into the Bill). But above all I dislike the fact that it has barely been debated by the very chamber that is most affected by it - to the extent that I don't think most Tory MPs really understand that every single one of them will face a reselection battle, as every existing seat will disappear. The Lords are simply insisting that it be given proper consideration, not crammed through in an evening by the whips, and repented at leisure by the country.

James E. Shaw comments: 'The important thing about The King's Speech is that it remains true to the spirit of what happened, Peter.'
Thanks, Mr Shaw, I know what my name is, even today. Matron is not yet needed to let me know. But as for 'remaining true to the spirit of what happened', does it?

Absolutely not. In fact, I thank Mr Shaw for helping me to clarify this point. The suggestion is strongly made that it was Logue's jaunty Aussie irreverence that cracked the Royal carapace of repression and excessive dignity, and cured the monarchical stammer. This is egalitarian wish-fulfilment. And it appears to be wholly untrue. Far from being true to events, it imposes the prejudices of our own age on a past which we prefer to misunderstand than to study (this is the reason why it tramples on the far more interesting truth about Winston Churchill's role in the Abdication).

Mr Shaw adds: 'Yes it takes liberties with the truth, as do most works of historical fiction. Shakespeare's Richard III being a classic example.'

Yes, quite, and I once again recommend Josephine Tey's wonderful detective story 'The Daughter of Time' to any breathing person as a necessary corrective to Shakespeare's fine old pack of lies which has helped to twist English history for centuries. Shakespeare's denigration of Richard is Tudor propaganda, crammed with falsehood. It is better to know this before seeing the play, than not to know it.

I am told that 'objectivity is crucial 'in a football commentator's job. Really? I thought one of the glories of sports journalism was that all pretence of objectivity could be chucked aside.

I thought the comment from John Dunn deeply instructive. He accuses me of: 'A complete misunderstanding (I hope it's not just blind ignorance) of Equality and Diversity' He then reveals that he is himself a 'qualified Equality and Diversity Advisor in the RAF'.

This is hugely interesting. Mr Dunn plainly genuinely does not grasp that there are actually people who do not agree with the 'Equality and Diversity' programme. He thinks the question settled beyond doubt. And he works for the Royal Air Force. I promise him that I am by no means ignorant of it. He more bizarrely does not grasp that I am one of those (more than he thinks, I hope) who doesn't agree with it, indeed that it is one of the main things that I do, disagreeing with it. He might also check the index under 'Political Correctness' and 'May, Theresa.'

I do also very much recommend him to read my book 'The Cameron Delusion', in which I seek to explain that the categories he uses (in which all forms of 'discrimination' are considered identical and equally reprehensible) is factually and logically untenable. He will at least then be introduced to the idea that his beliefs are not universally held (believe me, I know that mine aren't) and shown why this is so.

As for his self-description as a 'qualified Equality and Diversity Advisor in the RAF', I think that (provided he is not winding us all up) the existence of this post goes to confirm my often-made point that 'Equality and Diversity' is now the official state dogma of this country, reaching even into its formerly most conservative areas, and that political correctness is a not a passing joke but a project to change the world. He isn't in the slightest bit embarrassed to be such a thing, and doesn't (I suspect) realise how funny and/or absurd the combination will seem to many readers here. We should learn from this that the day is far spent, and it is far later than we believed.

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The Feminine Mystique and the Unattainable Dream of Sex Equality, plus some more controversial matters

Even if I were not against the great Cultural Revolution that now roars and tramples through our streets, I think I would at least be interested in it. I hope I would not hide from myself just what a huge and ambitious project it is.
It is hard to think of any period in human history in which we have tried so hard to alter the rules of life. And this has been a conscious and deliberate course of action, pursued by highly intelligent people. I am currently researching the career of Barbara Wootton, who will be one of the anti-heroines in my forthcoming book 'The War We Never Fought', about the non-existent 'war on drugs'.

Baroness Wootton, as she became, was a front-line fighter in almost every socially radical cause you can think of, and some that wouldn't occur to you. The daughter of a Cambridge academic, and widowed with horrifying swiftness in the First World War, she became a doughty and (this must be conceded) courageous and hardworking advocate of moral and cultural reform.

In one thing above all, her persistence still directly affects our society in profound and dangerous ways. I believe her 1969 report on Cannabis signalled the end of any serious resistance to that drug by our Criminal Justice System, and urge those who claim otherwise to look into the history of this interesting controversy. It is interesting that she viewed this cause as being as one with the other assaults on the Christian moral system which she from time to time launched or supported.

She should, in my view, have qualified for a far longer obituary than the meagre one provided for her by 'The Times' when she died in 1988. But it contained this very telling quotation from her autobiography:

'Again and again I have had the satisfaction of seeing the laughable idealism of one generation evolve into the accepted commonplace of the next.'

I bet she did. I have two responses to this. The first is that, again and again, I have seen the settled wisdom of one generation cast aside and subjected to the scornful mockery of the next; the second is that I hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the derided warnings that I issue here heeded in times to come.

That is why I think some of the responses to what I wrote seem to me to miss the point so completely.

The difficulty for conservatives (and I explore this in my book 'The Cameron Delusion' and my criticism of the strange concept of 'sexism' being equivalent to racialism, which any sentient being can quickly see it isn't) is in deciding what to defend, and what to concede. It is precisely because of their thoughtless and baseless opposition to (for instance) female suffrage and the opening of Oxbridge colleges to women, that conservatives are not listened to when they warn against changes which are wholly different in nature, effects and significance - such as the attempts to impose absolute equality between the sexes in the workplace, the school and the home. Not to mention the attempts to discriminate in favour of women in certain areas, though it can never be called this because that would give the game away - that equality is not in fact the issue, but cultural revolution.

I mention this broader subject because it's an essential background to much of the discussion about Mr Gray and Mr Keys.

Under the old dispensation, I think the old (hierarchical, non-egalitarian) codes of good manners and courtesy would have made the microphone/trousers episode unthinkable. I suspect it would also have made Messrs Gray and Keys unemployable as TV presenters. People brought up in this age simply don't grasp the power of old-fashioned manners when they still existed. They catch a faint ghost of it when they use the f-word to force laughter out of an otherwise unresponsive audience. But they don't see that they are getting this (ultimately nervous and shocked) reflex out of people who still - after 30 years of reconditioning - realise that something outrageous has been done and said.

That's part of the problem with the sexual revolution. It comes as part of a package, in which all other hierarchies and orders are thrown aside. Those of us men brought up to open doors for women, to give up their seats for women etc, etc were initially surprised when the feminists crossly rejected these courtesies. Why would anyone reject politeness and kindness? Then we grasped that they regarded them as patronising, implying weakness etc etc, which is one of the reasons why I persist in them despite getting a lot of refusals.

In fact they were part of a whole 'internalised' (as the sociologists say) system of behaviour, arising out of our complex class system, and out of marriage. They were objectionable to the feminists because they hated that whole hierarchy and imagined they could create a society without any hierarchies.

What they did not foresee was that one of the main effects would be a huge increase in the powers of the state and the extent of the law, to regulate relationships which were no longer controlled by custom and manners.

The alternative appeals more to me because I am a Burkeian, that is to say (in this case) someone who thinks that a free society can only exist when its members voluntarily control themselves.

This is encapsulated for me in the opening words of the beautiful Second Collect, for Peace, in the Church of England's service of Morning Prayer (1662 Book of Common Prayer):

'O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom...'

The freedom offered here is the freedom of the man or woman who, accepting that the universe is governed by good laws, lives his or her life in seeking to discover as clearly as possible what those laws are, and in attempting to obey them. As opposed to the 'freedom' of the man or woman who judges his or her acts only by their immediate or visible consequences and has no conception of a universal and unchanging law.

(NB: Those who wish to argue about the religious aspect of this are urged not to do so here but to migrate to the thread 'Still Not Getting it' which, amusingly enough, continues to thrive weeks after it was posted).

I dislike the word 'internalised' (used above) not only because it is ugly, but because it fails to understand that these rules were part of our emotions and feelings, an actual part of us, not even known rules obeyed for reward or in fear of punishment, or out of imposed habit, but actions we undertook because we were self-respecting Englishmen who believed that we could not behave otherwise and be what we were, and so that is what we did.

Political Correctness, as I sometimes point out, appeals to many people precisely because it is an attempt to enforce some sort of good manners in a world in which they have largely shrivelled away. And its opponents, such as I, must concede that it is quite right when it prevents the use of the nasty expressions which coarse and foolish people use when referring to those whose skins are of a different colour, or whose sexual tastes are different from their own. As long as the opponents of PC can be shown to be the friends of bad manners, they will lose the argument. But my attack on the sacking of Mr Gray and Mr Keys was not a defence of their coarseness, which I despise and dislike. If coarseness were invariably a reason for dismissal, then I would have little to say. But we all know it is not.

It was an attack on the inconsistent mob frenzy which led to their dismissal, and an attack on the principle, now apparently in operation, that a British subject can be deprived of his livelihood because of his private remarks.

I'll reply to several comments in a separate post.

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Shylock didn't ask for 454g of flesh...and no one wants to drink a litre of wine

To forget is to betray. That is how I feel when I ponder that it is ten years since poor, brave Steve Thoburn was ordered before an English court for an action that could not possibly be a crime.

A market trader who cared nothing for politics, he had sold bananas to a customer in pounds and ounces, rather than in kilograms. And he had grown angry when official busybodies had sought to interfere with this honest private transaction.

He had sniffed the sour scent of totalitarianism, and he had been right. Before I met him, I too was angered by efforts to force metric measures on me, but I did not know why. Since then, I have understood. It is all about liberty.

Best of the bunch: Trader Steve Thoburn, who cared nothing for politics, had sold bananas to a customer in pounds and ounces, rather than in kilograms Steve  -  who died in 2004, perhaps partly because of the strain of this case  -  was made to stand like a transgressor in the dock of Sunderland Magistrates' Court.

He was in the end found guilty of an offence against the law of England. I greatly admired him and honour his memory.

Yet he fought, as far as I can see, completely in vain. Those who should have rallied to his cause, of the free man against the great grey lump of arbitrary authority, let the chance go by and gave in.

Since then, thousands of other equally honest men and women, including those from whom I buy meat, fish, fruit, vegetables and coffee beans in the lovely old Oxford Covered Market near my home, have been frightened by insolent functionaries into speaking a language that is foreign to them and to most of their customers.

I am shocked when I hear people of my generation, raised to speak English and the direct inheritors of 20 generations of free men and women, thoughtlessly giving measurements in totalitarian metres and litres. Recipe books and celebrity chefs likewise drivel about grams of butter and flour.

The fanatically metric BBC is dedicated to giving rainfall and snowfall in centimetres and millimetres, and the heights of hills in metres, and its more dedicated reporters and presenters even manage to slip in kilometres (a word they cannot pronounce) even though they are not in official use in this country.

Supposedly conservative newspapers spatter their reports with metric measures, sometimes putting in the feet and inches in brackets, as a patronising concession to those irritating old people who refuse to die. Though it is always noticeable that the weights of newborn babies are invariably given in pounds and ounces.

As Steve Thoburn's friend Neil Herron remarked, if babies' weights were given in kilos, most people would not know if the child involved was the size of a baby elephant or a small tomato.

Would it really be so difficult for those of us who still feel British to say: 'No, thank you, please measure that in pounds and ounces,' to the trader who offers us kilos, and to complain when the national broadcaster uses foreign expressions to replace perfectly good English ones.

Perhaps when your culture is taken from you piece by piece, you don't care until it is too late. Perhaps it is only those who have their heritage snatched from them all in one go who truly understand what they are losing. The great Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz said: 'Your country is like your health. You only value it when you have lost it.' But in this world of subtlety and bureaucracy, this is how nations are lost.

Kilos, metres and litres sound  -  and always will sound  -  cold, ugly, alien and oppressive to me. Is this mere nostalgia, a fogeyish insistence on the old from someone who cannot adapt to the new? Actually, no.

I have lived in the Soviet Union, an enthusiastically metric country on the surface, and have no difficulty in using these lumpish, crude, inhuman and inconvenient measurements when I must.

I knew, for instance, that the corrupt traffic policeman was trying it on when he pulled me in for doing 90 kilometres per hour in second gear  -  but only after I had done the rapid mental arithmetic which converted this into just over 55 miles per hour.

No wonder the metric system appeals to communists and similar fanatics. It satisfies their craving for neatness and regularity, a common disease in utopians who are always seeking to straighten out the lives of others while remaining crooked themselves.

I will think, and imagine, and speak, and cook and buy and eat and drink in proper English measures till I die.

Even so, they cannot always succeed. In the unregulated peasant markets of Moscow, meat was never sold by the kilo, but rather by a mysterious measure known as the 'polkilo' or 'half-kilo' which was remarkably similar to a pound. I'll come back to that.

And I can testify from personal experience that it is not true that Burma still uses customary measures, a claim that metric fanatics regularly make to try to associate feet and inches with backwardness and repression.

In truth, the only properly non-metric nation on the planet is America, the most technologically advanced, economically successful country in human history  -  and the most free.

As a result, next-door Canada has had to abandon its efforts to force litres and metres down its people's throats. Steaks in French-speaking Montreal are weighed in 'onzes' (ounces) and the heights of bridges given in 'pieds' (feet) and 'pouces' (inches). Mind you, in France I have bought butter from farmers by the 'livre' (pound) and eggs by the 'douzaine' (dozen), two centuries after revolutionary law abolished such things.

I benefited from an education that taught me both metric and customary systems. I can convert with ease. In the days of calculators, I don't even have to struggle with mental arithmetic, which means my mental muscles have grown flabby.

I cannot imagine a kilogram, let alone a gram, or a metre or a litre or a hectare. I work out what they mean by converting them into the proper measures that have their roots and origins in the land, as I do  -  an acre is a day's work at the plough, a fathom the width of a man's outstretched arms.

So I will think, and imagine, and speak, and cook and buy and eat and drink in proper English measures till I die, and hope for 6ft of English earth when that day comes.

Why? Because our customary measures are a sign that we  -  almost uniquely among the nations  -  still run our own lives. These measures are rooted in daily life, are human, and honest, because they are polished in use, sound like what they are (can't you hear a gallon sloshing in its bucket?) and because you can use them in poetry.

There are miles, inches and fathoms in the Bible and Shakespeare, and if you converted them it would sound ludicrous. Imagine Hamlet jeering as he holds Yorick's skull: 'Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint 2.5 centimetres thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.'

And how about Shylock demanding his half-kilogram (or 454 grams, given his precise inflexibility) of flesh? Or let us see what the BBC would make of Robert Frost's beautiful poem Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.

'The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep

And kilometres to go before I sleep.'

These grotesque made-up words are out of place in an English sentence, like an office block in the midst of the New Forest. Or, come to that, like a wind farm on a Welsh hillside.

Oh, it doesn't matter, say those who urge us not to care. A metre's more or less a yard. What's the difference? Well, try playing cricket on a 22-metre pitch, then. And note this. All the great wine-making countries of the world suffer under the metric system. But no decent wine is ever sold in litre bottles, only rotgut.

Outside the oompah-band and leather-shorts regions of Germany, you will not see anyone drinking beer in litres either. This is because a litre is a measure made up in an office, whereas the old-English 'bottle' (equivalent to about 72 centilitres) and the old-French 'bouteille' (the same) were enough for two people to share over a meal.

It has now been rationalised into 75 centilitres, three-quarters of a litre, but no further. And that is itself a significant departure from the metric system, which is based on counting our toes and doesn't like quarters because ten can't be divided by four (or three, for that matter).

The same problem keeps on arising. Metric measures clash with life, convenience and human wishes. As Warwick Cairns points out in his entertaining book on the subject, About The Size Of It, a pound is 'the weight of a comfortable handful of apples', whereas a kilogram is 'the amount of apples which, if you try to hold them all, you start dropping them all over the floor, even if you use both hands'.

The metric system officially doesn't have such a thing as a foot. It scorns this useful measure, going straight from the metre down to the centimetre. But here's a funny thing. School rulers in metric countries are not one metre long, but 30 centimetres, which is almost exactly a foot. Timber and building materials are often sold, in metric countries, in 30cm units. Just don't call them feet.

For that would be to admit the truth about this system  -  that it is a utopian fantasy, devised by those who want to docket and number and interfere with the infuriating quirky thing that is human life.

Whenever it comes up against real life it has to be adapted or abandoned. Metric time, with its ten-hour days, ten-day weeks and ten-month years, was swiftly rejected in France as horrible and impractical.

It is almost invariably forced on people and nations by dictators, revolutions or invasion. It may have its uses in international commerce and science, though Man went to the Moon in feet and inches. But nobody ever wanted it in private dealings.

It does not belong here and I am ashamed of my country for so feebly giving into it and for forgetting Steve Thoburn.

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Think it was right to sack Andy Gray? See how you feel when the Thought Police come for you

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

I hate professional football and everything about it. I would leave a railway carriage if Andy Gray or Richard Keys got into it, rather than listen to their crude, uninteresting conversation about this extraordinarily dull game, with its bad acting, pointless spite, tribal rage, drunken violence, sticky sentimentality and incessant unapologetic cheating. What's more I don't understand the offside rule and I don't care.

No doubt Mr Gray would regard me as little better than a girl. I have changed nappies and been present at the births of my children. I have even endured the breathing exercises beforehand. I have (sometimes) even laughed at Miranda Hart.

But Mr Gray and Mr Keys should not have been sacked, or disciplined in any way. And those who joined in the stampede of rage against them are dangerous, intolerant totalitarians, helping the growth of the Thought Police in our midst. Many of those who sang in this sanctimonious chorus are the sort who often complain in pubs about 'political correctness gone mad'. But when it comes to it, they cravenly take part in the madness.

Remember this. The things they said were not intended for broadcast and they were not transmitted. They were private conversations. I don't care that those conver¬sations were leaked. Any remotely public figure has to assume this will happen nowadays. But if Mr Gray and Mr Keys didn't intend their remarks to be broadcast, they shouldn't be judged professionally as if they had intended it.

It is quite simply unjust to condemn a man for having his private conversation trans¬mitted to the world by someone else.

But that's not all. Had these remarks been intentionally broadcast, would it really have been so bad? Are these opinions and attitudes so wicked that people should be deprived of their jobs for holding them? Are female football officials such feeble things that they have never heard men claim they can't understand the game, and need smelling salts when it is said?

Surely, if the sexes are equal, this sort of blushing, swooning, maiden-aunt stuff is as obsolete as denying votes to women. If we are so set against coarseness, then most fashionable comedians should be sacked too. They rely almost entirely on the f-word, on shocking the gentle and on sexual grossness. But they all carry on unsacked, presumably because they mix their crudity with a dollop of political correctness and anti-Thatcherism.

So that's not good enough as an argument.

Women are allowed to be crudely dismissive of men, so explicit banter of this kind isn't the problem either.

As for Charlotte Jackson and the microphone 'joke', are we really expected to believe that a physically tough, professional modern woman who used to pose for 'Lads' Magazines' will be seriously upset by this pathetic, dirty-old-man humour?

Subject the episode to any sort of cool analysis, and it's just part of our national comedy, an entertaining but unimportant moment. Or it would have been, except that two men lost their jobs over it. And if they can lose their jobs because of private remarks, then so can anyone else. Did you want that? Is any society free where such things happen?


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Garbled message of The King's Speech

Does it matter that the film The King's Speech is full of what I shall politely call inaccuracies? Yes it does, because in an era where few know much history, film versions of historical events are widely believed and become accepted as the 'everyone knows that' version. And such things influence our actions today.

The film invents a needless scene in which King George VI swears in the hearing of two schoolboys. It pretends that his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, was irreverent and poor, when all the evidence shows that he was deferential and rich. It invents a scene in which Logue, a patriotic monarchist Australian, dismisses one of the most solemn parts of the Coronation Oath as 'rubbish'. Why?

It completely misrepresents Winston Churchill's role in the Abdication. The future war leader nearly wrecked his political hopes forever by siding with Edward VIII. And the final scene, in which crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace as the King proclaims the start of the Second World War, is entirely false. I have checked the newspaper cuttings. It didn't happen. And that's only the beginning of the list of faults. An equally good film could have been made without any of them.

This country has yet to look the pre-war era fully in the face. The ignorant myths which are widely believed about it helped to propel Britain and the USA into the disastrous Iraq War and may yet be used to drag us into an even stupider war on Iran. This twisting of history will only help to encourage such silly illusions on both sides of the Atlantic. If you go to see it, remember that it is fiction.

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Finally, the great university con is exposed

One in five university graduates is unemployed. I suspect it's actually rather worse than this. Promises that expanding higher education would provide better lives for those who won degrees were cynical and false. The Government hoped that – by raising the school leaving age to 23 – it could conceal the serious youth unemployment that was already becoming a problem in John Major's day. And by introducing student loans it persuaded the young to pay their own dole by borrowing it.
Now it's clear that many of these courses are worthless; many of the new universities gateways to nowhere. The only good thing about rising fees is that young men and women will think carefully before wasting three years piling up debts. University expansion was a disreputable episode that is unravelling by the day. Its opponents were reviled. But will those responsible be punished?

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Well done to the Labour members of the House of Lords who have been doing their jobs over the past two weeks – scrutinising and opposing legislation which the feeble, emasculated Commons nodded through.

Few yet understand the true meaning of the boundary changes David Cameron wants to impose at top speed – precisely because they haven't been properly debated. When they
take effect, millions will wonder what happened and why they weren't warned. Well, this is the warning. And the Lords have used what's left of their independence to provide it.

Once we have an elected Senate, controlled by party machines, then it will be a nice, quiet rubber-stamp chamber. Will that be a good thing?

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Tory promises of a return to proper bin collections have turned out to be garbage, as I knew they would. Why? Because the EU's landfill directive forces councils into recycling projects which mean fortnightly collections. EU directives are likewise responsible for the collapse of the Royal Mail and for the equality legislation that forces political correctness on us all. Want a better Britain? Secede.

A Little Light Banter

Though not all of it that light. I was angered and repelled by the people (were they resentful that a voice should be raised against cannabis from a quarter where such voices are not often heard?) who wrote in to say that Patrick Cockburn should blame himself for his son Henry's troubles, because of his chosen trade as a foreign correspondent. Apparently Patrick's long absences in foreign parts were the real reason for Henry's difficulties, either directly or indirectly.

May I first of all say what extraordinary, ungracious bad manners this sort of thing is? Patrick (and Henry) have written a rather gruelling account of a very distressing episode, largely in the hope that others may learn from it. Those who imagine that this will shower them with Hollywood-style riches are mistaken. Books rarely make large sums of money for their authors.

Those who attack Patrick as a parent know nothing of him, and have no real evidence on which to base this. As it happens, much of his time as a foreign correspondent has brought him closer to his family than many get, as reporters based in (for example) Moscow (as I can myself attest) generally work from home for much of the time.

There's also a suggestion that there's something frivolous about what Patrick does. On the contrary, he makes a serious contribution to our free society, providing beautifully-written, deeply-informed accounts (his books about the Iraq war and its aftermath are essential reading, his profound understanding of the Afghan war has been many times displayed in his newspaper and on the BBC) of what is really taking place in locations where our soldiers are fighting and dying and where our government has decided to be intimately involved on our behalf. I would agree that there are some self-glamourising, bandolier-draped war junkies in the Western media, but Patrick (who, by the way, suffered severely from Polio as a child and walks with a stick, and whose superb memoir of this experience 'A Broken Boy' should be on all reading lists) is not one of them.

Is there supposed to be a rule that nobody who has children can be a foreign correspondent? Who made it? What other jobs does it affect? In any case, doesn't parenthood give men and women valuable insights that the childless don't have? I should have thought so myself.

Don't attack him personally, especially if you don't know him.

If you disagree with him, say so. But say why.

I'd apply the same rule to some of my attackers on the free market discussion. Several marketist fanatics, oozing intellectual superiority and chilly Ayn Randist intolerance, posted to the effect that what I had said was 'stupid' etc. They felt this was so self-evident that they didn't explain why. But it plainly wasn't self-evident, as several others wrote to sympathise with what I had said.

Still others offered me gratuitous and useless advice. Yes, I do actually understand that some hotels use the TV set as an alarm. But oughtn't they, in that case, to allow the person sleeping in the room to decide the time that it goes off? And make sure that the previous resident's setting isn't imposed, willy nilly, on the next one? I suspect the author of this earnest advice has not actually been woken from profound slumber at 4.30 in the morning. Anyway, it was a sort of metaphor for the way in which the modern world doesn't give a tinker's curse about us.

And yes, I also know that by seeking out second-hand goods one can avoid the tyranny of manufacturers who insist on 'improving' devices in unwanted ways (why on earth would I want to take pictures with a telephone? I'd as soon connect with the internet via my refrigerator or use my bicycle to dry my socks). But this isn't what the manufacturers want me to do, and eventually it becomes more or less impossible as supplies dry up.

As for Mr Pooter, yes, I've always sympathised with him quite a lot. I'm amazed that everyone who reads this rather two-edged book imagines himself immune from, and superior to, Pooterish failures and misconceptions. I know perfectly well that when I laugh at Pooter I am to some extent laughing at myself. Maybe there are people who are never, ever Pooters. How tremendously superior they must be to the rest of us. But then, we knew that.

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