Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 34

PETER HITCHENS: Just like the Reds, Greens think they're too nice to be wrong

This is Peter Hitchens���s Mail on Sunday column

Last week I described a long-ago Christmas in Moscow, in those days the capital city of one of the maddest ideas that ever seized the human mind. It was a crazy place, needlessly dangerous, dirty, corrupt, desperately inefficient.

One fact about it will tell you a lot. We always kept a spare can of petrol in the boot of the car (for petrol could suddenly disappear from the scarce pumps without warning) in case we needed to get to the airport in...

PETER HITCHENS: Just like the Reds, Greens think they're too nice to be wrong but this country will begin to get colder and darker

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

Last week I described a long-ago Christmas in Moscow, in those days the capital city of one of the maddest ideas that ever seized the human mind. It was a crazy place, needlessly dangerous, dirty, corrupt, desperately inefficient.

One fact about it will tell you a lot. We always kept a spare can of petrol in the boot of the car (for petrol could suddenly disappear from the scarce pumps without warning) in case we needed to get to the airport in ...

A question from Mr L'Eplattenier

I thought this exchange in the 'Comments' was worth bringing up a little higher, because of the astonishing ( and psychologically fascinating) refusal of Covid zealots to accept the lessons of Sweden ( A David Mcleod also posted on Cristsmas Day that ���sorry peter but you have got it wrong on sweden,they have less than half our population but 7 times the death rate.���

 

Mr L'Eplattenier then quoted me, with every sign of believing he had got me bang to rights:

 

"PH writes: "And how clever...

Christmas in the Soviet Union, a reflection on a Christmas day 30 years ago , at the very end of the USSR.

Can be read here

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10344377/PETER-HITCHENS-recalls-familys-Christmas-celebrations-Evil-Empire-Soviet-Union.html

PETER HITCHENS: After two years of mass hysteria, are we finally coming to our senses?

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

Is Britain recovering its senses? I am wary of optimism, and this may be like one of those brief thaws they had in Communist Russia, before clamping down again even harder.

Or is it like the moment in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe where the snow begins to melt and the wicked witch starts to lose her power?

Look at all these amazing things. For the first time in 21 months the Cabinet considered the damage to society, the economy and human c...

A conversation with Mark Steyn about the lack of criticism of the vigorous Chinese Empire, as compared with attacks the defunct British one

Can be watched here

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WLEo9DqU2I

 

 

Robert Service and I compare notes on Soviet Christmases, coackroaches and all

You may watch me talk to Lenin's biographer about his Christmas in Leningrad and mine in Moscow, here 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtQQ-hsplH8

Here you may hear me read aloud my account of Christmas in the Evil Empire

Along with several other treats, at about 25 minutes in 

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/lara-prendergast-christopher-howse-lionel-shriver-peter-hitchens-joanna-lumley-and-caroline-moore

PETER HITCHENS: A return for Tony Blair? That really is my nightmare before Christmas

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

A nightmare haunts my dreams, that the Blair Creature will return to rule us again. I very much fear that the country and the Labour Party will soon be ready for this moment. 

I thought that, if I mentioned it here, now, I might somehow make it less likely.

But think about it. Millions of people clearly want to be ruled by some sort of populist strongman who bosses them around for their own good. 

Covid, which seems to have become a permanent ...

In memory of my late brother Christopher, who died ten years ago.

I published this 'In Memoriam' note ten years ago. I here repeat it for those who have forgotten it, or might like to read it again. 

 

I had decided that day that I did not want to talk on radio or TV about his death or his life - even now I am reluctant to get involved in such discussions and, if I weaken, then tend to wish I hadn't. It would be very difficult to say anything about our long,  involuntary entanglement without giving unpleasant people opportunities to misrepresent what I said,...