Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 72

PETER HITCHENS: I love what the BBC used to be, but I can't defend it any longer

This is Peter Hitchenss Mail on Sunday column

I don't think I can defend the BBC much longer. For years, I've been one of the few conservative patriots I know who still stand up for the licence fee.

But I'm losing the will to do so. I can't find it in myself to say they deserve it any more.

But I'll still pay it till the day I die. I was brought up partly by the BBC. I recall rapt 1950s moments with Listen With Mother.

If anyone says 'It's a quarter to two',...

'I'd hoped to sacrifice the Tory Party to save the Country. Instead we sacrificed the country to save the Tory Party'. An interview

Some readers may be interested in this interview with Steven Edginton . 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMy86XCm9ls

Can this country ever again have a proper Coronation?

Some readers may like to read this article from the current (February 2020) issue of Standpoint, in which I wonder if the next Coronation can possibly approach the splendour and religious force of the 1953 ceremony. 

 

https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/february-2020/a-crown-of-thorns/

PETER HITCHENS: There IS a way to make our police safer - but it's NOT 50,000-volt Tasers

This is Peter Hitchens Mail on Sunday column

My esteemed colleague Richard Littlejohn (we have known each other since we were industrial reporters in the late 1970s) wrote powerfully last Tuesday in the Daily Mail about the simultaneously shocking and rather inspiring case of PC Stuart Outten. 

This brave officer, thanks to great courage and resolve and the use of his Taser recently survived a terrible machete attack by Muhammad Rodwan.

There is no doubt that PC Outtens Taser saved...

There's Not Much Great Aboiut Britain - debate in which I and Will Self spoke on the same side

Here it is :

 https://intelligencesquared.com/podcasts/

My first contribution is at about 24 minutes. The debate gets general at the end. 

First Thoughts on Leaving the EU

An article for 'First Things:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/goodbye-to-the-european-union

PETER HITCHENS: I love railways and (aged 12) cried tears of rage and sorrow when Dr Beeching ripped them up. But even I can see that HS2 is madness

This is Peter Hitchenss Mail on Sunday column

As a small boy, I actually cried when they tore up the railways. It was fury as much as it was sorrow. I could see it was wrong and stupid, but nobody else could.
Railways were not just beautiful and perfectly suited to our intimate, gentle landscape.

They were plainly far safer and more efficient than horrible cars and grinding, stinking lorries, with their endless scraping, scouring traffic noise that we have had to endure ever since, everywhere...

A Response to Bellingcat from Sources Close to the veteran OPCW Chemical Weapons Inspector Ian Henderson

Sources close to Ian Henderson, the veteran OPCW chemical weapons inspector, who is a qualified chemical engineer, has (very unusually) been rehired by the OPCW because of his experience, and is also a former artilleryman with considerable ballistics experience, have asked me to publish this rebuttal of attacks on Mr Henderson by the organisation 'Bellingcat'.

 

What follows is a response, from sources close to veteran OPCW inspector Ian Henderson, to recent attacks on his...

What governments learned from the Iraq War - to prevent independent media from questioning the pretexts for war.

What governments learned from the Iraq war was not that such wars are stupid and wrong, but that measures must be taken to prevent an independent media from questioning them in future.

Let me explain.

A month and more after I published my first exclusive story about the censoring of official reports into the alleged poison gas atrocity at Douma, Syria, most major news organisations have not followed it. Reuters, to their credit, did confirm that one of the documents on which I relied, an...

What would George Orwell Have Thought of Donald Trump? How Could We Know? Plus another interview

Some readers may be interested in this article about How George Orwell might have viewed President Trump

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/what-would-orwell-have-made-of-trump/

And others might enjoy this interview, conducted so long ago I cant even remember giving it, but only just released

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVHn0oBOEPc&feature=youtu.be