Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 73

PETER HITCHENS: Boris Johnson is shoving retired British soldiers back into the firing line for crimes allegedly committed during the Troubles

This is Peter Hitchenss Mail on Sunday column

Lets see if Al Johnson can get out of this one. The Tories have said many times that they will put a stop to the pursuit of long-retired British soldiers through the courts, for crimes allegedly committed during the Northern Irish Troubles.

But they have also just agreed to do exactly the opposite. A key part of the resurrection of power-sharing in Northern Ireland is a pledge to revive a rather nasty deal called the Stormont House Agreement,...

I'm a monarchist who doesn't much like the Royal family. What should I do?

Some readers may be interested in this article in 'First Things'

 

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-strain-on-the-british-monarchy

PETER HITCHENS: Forget pinko Boris, maybe Blue Labour can save us!

This is Peter Hitchens Mail on Sunday column

Many people will now be thinking that the Labour Party might as well be dumped in the nearest wheelie bin and driven away to be buried in landfill.

Given how much harm Labour has done in the past 60 years, it is a tempting idea. And the pitiful line-up of contestants to succeed Jeremy Corbyn is dispiritingly bad.

Who are these people? Wearisome egalitarians who have learned nothing from the wasteland they have made of our schools. Eurofanatics...

My latest (but unpublished) letter to 'Private Eye'

Private Eye has told it me will not be publishing the letter below . I wrote this epistle because the magazine mocked as 'Barmy' my tweet pointing out that 'we had Marxists in No10from 1997to 2010, and what did the Tories do? They copied them.'  Interestingly, the same magazine, in its new issue (10th Jan , No 1513) produces fascinating evidence that yet another major new Labour figure has Trotskyist antecedents of which we previously knew nothing. But, being prejudiced...

A reply to D. Brooks

I here reproduce my replies interleaved with questions from D.Brooks, in case the original question has now slipped so far down the timeline that they go unnoticed:

 

Mr Brooks: By drawing a moral equivalence between the killing of Qasem Soleimani - a man who was undoubtedly responsible for the wanton killings of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people, including British army personnel ...***PH asks, May I inquire how Mr Brooks knows this to be true? Can he also give details of...

It was State Murder. How can anyone be so bloody stupid?

Did World War Three begin last Thursday night? I fear it may have done. Forgive my language, but on this occasion I think it justified. How can anyone possibly have been so bloody stupid? We know from history that assassinations can have limitless effects. And when the President of the United States orders the state murder (for this, alas, is what it was) of an Iranian general, it is hard to see a good end.

 

There will be retaliation. Other countries will be drawn in. Our own ability...

Q & A on the Death Penalty

Faced yet again with this issue, (I am very weary of it and cannot foresee the return of proper juries and the re-invigoration of a strong free press without which I could not support the death penalty) I here provide a basic Q&A first posted here in 2008 as part of another debate, which may be of some use - if only in bypassing the emotional, factually mistaken rubbish so often peddled by both sides on the subject. 

 

For those of you faced with arguments at work or in the...

Choosing the Wrong Future Again and Again and Again

It's not nostalgia, but regret for the wrong futures we repeatedly chose. A New Year meditation on the folly of optimism

 

https://unherd.com/2019/12/the-world-we-lost-will-never-return/

My Complaint to the BBC about the portrayal of marijuana use in the 'Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special'

Here is the formal complaint I have today sub,iytted to the BBC agianst the 'Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special'. 

In the 'Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special' which began before the watershed at 8.30 p.m. on Christmas Day 2019, a lengthy scene first mocks the fears of one character about marijuana, then features two respectable characters declaring that they have often used illegal drugs in the past , and finally shows these characters all sharing a lit marijuana joint,...

PETER HITCHENS: When police foot patrols stop, stabbings rise - it's that simple

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

How quickly we get used to evil. Stabbings in the streets, once incredibly rare in this country, are now common in big cities and become more so every year. It is unwise to get involved if you see anyone behaving strangely in a public place, or on a train or a bus.

There are so many cases which show that even a polite attempt to call for calm can end with a knife in the guts that my intervening days are definitely over.

I have my own ideas...