Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 77

PETER HITCHENS: The drugs 'report' that proves a sack of spuds is smarter than our MPs

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

Here are some MPs who definitely ought to be chucked out by the voters whenever we get the chance: Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes), Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree), Ben Bradshaw (Exeter), Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East), Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot), Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) and Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South).

Their parties are not important. It is their actions that matter. In all cases, you���d be better off being represented by a sack of potatoes, or a tub of lard.

Even a particularly dim King Edward or Maris Piper would not be ignorant and rash enough to think that the decriminalisation of drugs was a good idea, as these MPs ��� members of the Health and Social Affairs Committee ��� said it was in a ���report��� last week.

Look, our drug possession laws have not been enforced for decades. They cannot be the cause of the problem. And drug abuse is a voluntary crime, not a compulsory disease, as these fools constantly pretend. All its consequences were freely chosen by the abuser. Cancer sufferers would love to be able to give up having cancer. But they cannot.

I have read the document they grandly call a report. I doubt they even know the arguments against the fashionable surrender position which they took and endorsed.

I strongly suspect they do not know that Japan and South Korea, law-governed democracies and among the most advanced societies on earth, successfully reduce and prevent drug use by enforcing their laws against drug possession.

Maybe they were gulled by the racialist argument that these countries have a different ���culture��� from us. In fact they have pretty much the same culture as this country had before the drug lobby got to work here in the late 1960s. 

But, of course, they focus on Portugal, the supposed drug paradise, where the drug laws (though feeble) are on paper significantly tougher than here (drug abusers can have their passports taken away and be banned from pursuing their professions, as well as facing significant fines). 

There they saw what they wanted to see, which did not include a 40 per cent increase in the use of marijuana since decriminalisation in 2001.

I wonder if they were given pause when, on September 30, Rui Moreira, the mayor of Porto, Portugal���s second biggest city, made a startling U-turn on the issue. He called for the reintroduction of criminal penalties for drug use in public spaces.

Did they make any serious effort to find out about any opposition to decriminalisation? Would it have helped if they had?

I rather doubt it. The problem goes deeper than knowledge.

A few years ago I and some allies tried to state the anti-drug, pro-enforcement case to the Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, who at least had the manners and sense to invite witnesses who might not agree with what I am sure they were already planning to say. It was as close as I have ever come to a mystical experience. 

As I spoke to these lawmakers, I was both in the room and not in it. I provided the fruits of years of research on actual drug law enforcement and public policy.

The MPs could plainly hear me. But there was no human contact. For all the impression I was making on their minds, I might as well have been speaking Martian. And their report said what all these reports say: ���Give Up!���

There is hardly a voice to be heard, either in Parliament, or the BBC, or in most major newspapers, against this literally mad policy of permitting the free use of terrible mind-destroying, family-destroying poisons. Yet in the real world of our cities, where the stink of dope is seldom absent and the crazy violence grows and grows, millions know from grim experience that they are wrong.

How can these MPs claim to be our representatives? And what is it that makes them so receptive to the wicked, dangerous and greedy drug legalisation lobby. I���d like to see a report on that.

A story they don't want you to read

Here���s a curious story, that for some reason the BBC and the major international news agencies have not covered, though they definitely know about it.

Did Britain, France and the USA have right on their side when we bombed Syria in April 2018 ��� supposedly in response to a poison gas attack by the Damascus regime? Or was the action rash and lawless?

In fact, we and the other countries did not actually wait for any investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) ��� the recognised international watchdog.

So imagine how awkward it would have been if the OPCW (which receives much support from Paris, London and Washington) had reported that claims of a poison gas attack were untrue, or at least unproven. Our bombing would then have been illegal.

And imagine the relief in those capitals when the OPCW duly reported that it was reasonable to conclude that chlorine gas had been used. It was a pretty weak conclusion (and the original, more serious claim, that sarin had been used, was dismissed).

And imagine the rage and upset in those same capitals when a whistleblower at the OPCW leaked information suggesting that this conclusion may have been wrong, and that gas cylinders supposedly dropped by helicopter could in fact have been placed at the scene by hand. 

Since the only people in the conflict who have helicopters are the Syrian state, this detail is pretty crucial. 

He said this rather important information had been mysteriously left out of the official report. 

Last week, a former boss of the OPCW, Jose Bustani, backed the whistleblower, and publicly accused the organisation of ���irregular behaviour��� during its investigation.

Mr Bustani said he had long held doubts about the alleged attack in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus, saying: ���I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best.���

We have had quite enough wars on false pretences. It costs lives, including those of our soldiers. This stuff is important.

World On Fire makes facts go up in smoke

I am gripped, but entirely in the wrong way, by the BBC drama World On Fire. It is ludicrously bad (with the exception of the waspish, clever performance of Lesley Manville as a rich and therefore bad person).

Every single politically correct button is pressed. People turn up in places where they could not possibly be. 

History and geography are violated. Absolutely no knowledge at all is shown of the events involved. And every cliche is milked to the limit.

Tonight we reach Dunkirk. I am agog to see how they will manage to misunderstand that.

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Next Tuesday (29th October ) in York. The case against Marijuana Legalisation SLB 118 6.30 p.m.

Please see details here 

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/room-slb118/peter-hitchens-the-case-against-cannabis-legalisation/525303638302508/

 

Free tickets available at

 

http://ow.ly/fC0j50wTVqL

 

A Report on the 'Nationalise Eton' debate at Cambridge on Tuesday

Here is a report, from the 'Cambridge Independent' of the debate at the Cambridge Union on 'This House Would Nationalise Eton' .Some readers may be interested: 

 

 

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/interview-peter-hitchens-debates-the-nationalisation-of-eton-at-the-cambridge-union-9087381/

 

 

How were my opinions originally formed? Some Trafalgar Day musings

Trafalgar Day is perhaps a good day for the publication of this essay on the influences that brought me to the opinions I now hold.

 

https://unherd.com/2019/10/the-making-of-a-reactionary/

A Debate on Political Correctness

Here���s an edited version of a recent debate on political correctness at City University in London, featuring @y_alibhai,  Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and @andrewdoyle_com , Andrew Doyle,  the inventor of the spoof woke person Titania McGrath, and me. 

https://www.theknowhowpodcast.com/post/what-s-wrong-with-political-correctness

 

PETER HITCHENS: The battle of Canning Town proves barbarism is never as far away as you think

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

My heart sang when I first watched the film of arrogant, self-righteous Warmists being pulled off the roof of a London Underground train.

I am weary of the way that the Climate Liars have browbeaten the whole Establishment into submission with their wild, fanciful panic about impending doom and their unhinged plans to plunge us into a new, literally dark age. Unlike many other commentators, I am not at all convinced that they have a point or deserve any sympathy.

And I must confess a personal interest. As an infrequent flier, I was uselessly angry a few months ago when their criminal threat to close Heathrow by the use of drones forced me to revise long-cherished travel plans, at a cost of several hundred irrecoverable pounds.

It was also pleasing to see somebody doing to these pains in the neck what our enfeebled, politicised police are so reluctant to do. If you watch the videos from Canning Town Station carefully, you can hear the authorities instantly conceding defeat to the Warmists without a fight, feebly ordering all passengers to leave the station.

 

How typical this is, too. Whenever normal people are the victims of anything, somehow it is impossible for the police or the authorities to do anything about it.

Anti-social behaviour in your street? So sorry. We'll drive by for two minutes and then never come back, and that's if you're lucky.

Your neighbour smokes illegal drugs in his back garden and perfumes the air with marijuana? Not interested. Burgled? Fill in a form. Protesters stopping you from earning a living? Sorry, but we're too busy. But a convoy of politicians through the streets comes with an arrogant and bullying escort, all motorbikes, whistles and 'Stay Back!', as if it were Vladimir Putin going by in his special Kremlin lane. And an offended transgender person on Twitter can summon teams of cybercops to descend ferociously on a critic, while a man who calls on the IRA to murder the Cabinet gets a gentle, kindly letter, promising he is not in trouble.

But once I had stopped gloating for a moment, I watched again. And I saw danger. In October 2019 there is still just enough restraint in a London crowd for the episode not to turn really nasty. The film did not show exactly what happened to the protesters once they were yanked to the ground. I suspect they got quite roughly handled, but they were rescued by cooler heads.

But how long will this restraint last? I'm told the new Joker film portrays a sinister, malevolent world in a modern setting, and I think that's where we are heading if we are not careful ��� blood and flying boots among the skyscrapers. When justice sleeps and authority folds its arms, people eventually decide that there is no further point in obedience or restraint.

Because the thing is that this general exasperation is widespread on all sides. And if justice is not revived, it will explode.

It's a while now since I found myself in the murderous hell of Mogadishu, a nightmare come true. But the worst of it was finding out later that, a few short years before, the blasted, dangerous desolation I saw had been a prosperous, civilised cityscape of well-dressed people, smart cars and white-gloved traffic police. Barbarism is never as far away as you think.

Coming soon: ��40m of God-hating TV

People will watch almost anything on TV nowadays (see the mad, inexplicable drivel of Peaky Blinders), but will they be able to sit through yet another attempt to dramatise Sir Philip Pullman's heavy-handed anti-Christian fables, much loved by God-hating liberal parents who buy them by the ton for their innocent children?

The wholly impartial BBC, in partnership with HBO, have spent a rumoured ��40 million, much of it yours, trying to give the kiss of life to His Dark Materials. It is hard to see why, since a Hollywood version, The Golden Compass, died of boredom in the cinema.

Sir Philip has long sought (in his own words) to undermine the basis of the Christian faith, and he means it. The knighted atheist was so moved a few months ago that he tweeted: 'When I hear the name 'Boris Johnson' for some reason the words 'rope' and 'nearest lamp-post' come to mind.' It took him a while to grasp that this was a mistake and delete it. It is hard to think of the BBC devoting so much time and effort to the works of any non-liberal who tweeted anything like that, however many times he said sorry.

Can the licence fee last much longer if the BBC behaves like this? Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan certainly frightened the Corporation when she mused the other day that it might become a voluntary subscription service, like Netflix. I'd personally be very sorry if this happens, but the licence fee is given in return for a pledge of fairness. And if the BBC won't be fair, it will lose it, possibly sooner than it thinks.

Northern Ireland is on the way out 

Whatever eventually happens between this country and the EU, one thing is permanently clear. Northern Ireland is now a semi-detached part of the UK, and moving rapidly out of it. The DUP cannot stop this, only delay it.

And the reason is that the Union was dealt a fatal blow by the Blair Creature's much-praised surrender to the IRA in 1998. The IRA, and the Dublin government, and the White House, and the EU all grasped at this point that Britain had lost the will to hang on to Northern Ireland. Our final departure is only a matter of time.

The SNP also took careful note of an event that has obvious implications for Scotland.

Only the British people, who could not be told we'd been beaten, needed to be fed the line that we had won a great victory and all would now be peace and happiness. I can see why many still want to believe this hogwash, but now that we have conceded a customs border between us and Belfast, and now that it's clear that we can't stop the prosecutions of British soldiers for alleged crimes during the Troubles, the truth really ought to sink in. This will soon be the first time since 1945 that territory has changed hands in Western Europe as a reward for violent aggression.

 

Pounds, shillings and reminiscence 

When I visited the superb William Blake exhibition at London's Tate Britain (the proper one, not the huge shed full of modern pseudo-art), I was struck by a label that informed me solemnly that in Blake's day (1757-1827) the pound was divided into 20 shillings, each of 12 pence.

In Blake's day! I'm still very glad to say that I too, not dead yet, was lucky enough to live in the era of proper money, when, as George Orwell put it, the coins were heavier and the beer was bitterer. He said there was 'something distinctive and recognisable in English civilisation ��� solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature'. If only.

 

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Tough on Hogwash. Tough on the causes of Hogwash. An appearance on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze to Discuss Crime and Punishment

Some readers may be interested in this edition of BBC Radio 4���s Moral Maze, in which I appear as a ���witness��� at 18 minutes.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009cfc

 

In this appearance, I am tough on hogwash, and tough on the causes of hogwash. I only realised afterwards that one of the panellists ( I think it was Andrew Doyle, who is amusingly connected with ���Spiked Online��� the descendant of the Revolutionary Communist Party) had chosen to remark that I had once been a ���Trotskyite���.  (As if Trotskyists were penal liberals, for goodness���s sake. Hasn���t he heard of Kronstadt? Perhaps not.)

 

Also, after I had left the studio I had to endure Matthew Taylor���s moronic dismissal (at 40 mins) of my position as ���going back to the world  of Dixon of Dock Green and Porridge��� . What a pity there was nobody on the panel who was ready to defend me in my absence against this sort of anti-thinking twaddle. I felt the panel lacked a proper conservative, a lack I feel particularly because many years ago I was vetoed as a ���Moral Maze��� panelist by high BBC authority. I got the impression that Michael Buerk, by a long chalk the best presenter now working for Radio 4, had been the only one in the studio who had actually listened with any care to what I had said.

 

 

 

 

 

Britain is No Longer a Christian Country

Cross and Crown mean little in a Britain which is no longer a Christian country

 

An article for First Things  

 

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/10/human-dignity-redefined

PETER HITCHENS: One day it will be impossible to criticise the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion. Until then, I���ll tell the truth about those irrational zealots

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

It will soon be impossible to criticise the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion. 

In fact, I will not be at all surprised if, in years to come, I and others face prosecution for having dared to doubt them.

Soon we will be sitting in an impoverished, dark country, with a trashed economy, incessant power cuts and dismal standard of living, caused by their dogma. 

Putting people on trial for warning against this will be one way to keep warm and occupied.

So, while I still may, I���ll say that this is one of the nastiest and stupidest outbreaks of intolerant, irrational zealotry since mankind emerged from the Dark Ages. I speak as a former intolerant zealot, who grew out of it. 

I know the fierce joy which comes from despising others, only too well. And I fear it.

Perhaps the most dispiriting version of it is to be seen in the painted, beatific faces of the red-robed mime-artists who are to be found on so many of the demonstrations demanding that this country commits economic suicide.

Who can tell what is going on behind those self-satisfied, ethereal expressions? But they give these marches a strong whiff of the Age of Inquisitions, which I once thought we had escaped.

I won���t try to argue here on the rightness or wrongness of the Warmists��� theory about the causes of climate change. I know from long, multiple experience that they respond to reasonable doubt with fury and defamatory cries of ���denier���.

I spend much of my life in debate, and will take on any rational opponent. But there are some causes you can���t reason with, and this is one of them. They prefer fury to logic. This is always the sign of someone who is not sure of his own case, and hates to hear his inner doubts spoken.

I have yet to get one of them to respond to this simple point. We recently closed and demolished Didcot ���A��� coal-fired power station, an efficient, reasonably modern plant with a generating capacity of about 1.44 gigawatts. Why? Why not at least mothball it? But no such caution is allowed in the great cause of cutting CO2 emissions.

Look at the facts: an enormous 259 gigawatts (180 Didcots) of new coal-fired capacity are under development in China. That���s on top of the 993 gigawatts of coal-burning capacity China already possesses (690 Didcots). 

The UK���s whole electrical generation capacity, in all forms of power, is 85 gigawatts (59 Didcots). If we gave up using electricity entirely, it would make no difference at all to the impact of Chinese coal burning on the atmosphere. 

None. Not any. Zero. If we completely abolish all our fossil-fuel generation, including gas, it would likewise not matter in the slightest ��� except to us, our economy and our standard of living.

China���s planned increase, yes, increase, in coal power is three times the size of our whole electricity-generation industry ��� wind, nuclear gas, and all. India is also increasing coal generation and last March reached a coal capacity of 200 gigawatts (139 Didcots).

I have said it before. I���ll keep saying it. Thanks to the political and media class���s dim acceptance of shouted propaganda, and their rejection of reason, we are already damaging ourselves. 

Wind generation only functions thanks to huge hidden subsidies, paid for by the poor, and is vulnerable to power cuts unless it is backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear generation.

We are like a thirsty man refusing to drink from a tap because of a water shortage, while his local water company leaves hundreds of leaks unrepaired, allowing thousands of gallons to drain away each hour. This is a futile, self-harming gesture. And these demonstrators, ignorant and engorged with self-righteous rage, demand more futility.

Will sane people have to glue themselves to aircraft and bridges to get anyone to listen? And if they do, will they be indulged by our politicised, biased police, as the Warmists are?

So, off we go into the cold and dark, while the red-clad propaganda mummers simper and gesticulate. 

Hate speech is no crime ��� so long as you���re a vicious Lefty

What would you think would happen to a man who posted on Twitter the following words: ���I dearly wish a reactivated IRA would successfully blow up that scumbag Johnson and his evil cabinet���?

Given what happened in Brighton on October 12, 1984, is this not especially revolting? 

Lest we forget, the IRA, by planting a bomb in the Grand Hotel, murdered Sir Anthony Berry, Eric Taylor, Lady (Jeanne) Shattock, Lady (Muriel) Maclean and Roberta Wakeham. Many others were severely injured, including Lord (Norman) Tebbit and his wife Margaret. Not funny.

Surely the police, who relentlessly patrol Twitter for signs of political incorrectness, failures to respect the transgender community and so forth, would react with speed and strength? 

Well, more than a month after the offending tweet was posted on August 20, they did visit the author, a Mr Mark Powell who tweets under the name ���Markhayo���. 

But there was no heavy-footed dawn raid, of the type so often favoured by the modern police. Nor was his house suddenly flooded by officers going through his bedroom, as happened to Field Marshal Lord Bramall after a mad fantasist accused him of child abuse.

No, he got a wimpy letter from a police person saying, with almost unbelievable feebleness, and a clear signal that he was in no danger of prosecution: ���I apologise for the unsolicited nature of this letter, and do not wish to cause you any undue alarm; however, I do need to discuss some sensitive issues that may concern you. I would like to stress that this letter has not been sent as part of any criminal proceedings, nor are you in any trouble whatsoever.��� 

It sought to arrange a ���convenient time to meet���.

Mr Powell displayed this letter on Twitter, saying the police had been ���very civil���. But he hadn���t been. He boasted that he���d sworn at the officers, and refused to withdraw his words. 

He later apologised for the swearing in an email to the officers, but repeated that ���I shouldn���t be sorry to see this Cabinet of traitors blown up by a rejuvenated IRA���. He then posted that email on Twitter.

One of those who had reported the outburst, a Tory councillor from Aylesbury called Gary Powell (emphatically no relation), got in touch with me after getting nowhere with Scotland Yard. 

He���d been told by a ���staff officer��� to Commissioner Cressida Dick that the National Digital Exploitation Service and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office had deemed the tweet to be an offence. 

But because it was a single incident, nothing was done except ���words of advice���. So there you are. You can call for the IRA to blow up the Cabinet, and nothing will happen to you.

Alison Saunders, then Director of Public Prosecutions, announced in August 2017 a tough new policy for people who incited hatred on Twitter. 

Saunders said: ���Left unchallenged, even low-level offending can subsequently fuel the kind of dangerous hostility that has been plastered across our media in recent days. That is why countering it is a priority for the CPS.��� Obviously not in all cases.

Someone should tell Norman Tebbit, who knows in great detail what it is like to be blown up by the IRA. He might have some ���words of advice��� for Dame Cressida.

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Mistaken Sumptions? Lord Sumption's Amazing U-Turn on Prorogation Described

I am, unusually,  grateful to ���Private Eye' magazine which, in its current issue (no 1506, page 8), delivers a powerful slap to the formerly rather marvellous Lord Sumption, whom I recently praised here

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/06/why-you-should-listen-to-the-2019-reith-lectures-.html for his Reith lectures urging judges to stay out of politics.

 

Under the headline ���Lordly Presumptions��� it draws attention to the distinguished judge���s remarkable change of opinion over the case of Al ���Boris��� Johnson and the prorogation.  I have followed, and checked, the quotations which they provided:

 

To begin with, as shown below, he believed the ���Supreme Court��� should stay out of politics, however tempting Mr Johnson���s bad behaviour made it. But for some reason, by the time Lady Hale and her colleagues finally delivered their absurd, unanimous verdict on an issue where unanimity among experienced minds is an absurdity, there was Lord Sumption, endorsing them.

 

This is one of the most extraordinary U-turns in British public life in recent years, not factional or careerist (he is retired) or driven by a huge change in circumstances, just a total, utter change of mind from one side to another in a matter of days, not really explained.

 

Here are the quotations which describe this. I offer no explanation, simply stand back in wonder. I was, I must confess, deeply disappointed by Lord Sumption���s change of mind, not because it didn���t suit me (though of course it didn���t) but because I felt let down, and because I thought the explanation offered was poor and weak. It just goes to prove my normal rule that one admires actions rather than people.  The emphases are mine:

 

 

 

���The Times��� 29th August

 

������However, Lord Sumption, who is also a respected historian, said that while it may be unconventional to prorogue parliament as the Brexit deadline looms, doing so is entirely legal.

"I don't think what the prime minister has said he is going to do is unlawful," he said.

"It might be considered unconstitutional in as much as it might be argued to be contrary to a longstanding convention of the constitution.

"But the question is whether what the prime minister has done is a legal or political disgrace. Is what he has announced the subject of legal rules or of historical convention? "The only objection is that the decision has been taken for questionable political motives. But that is not something the courts should rule on." And as Lord  Sumption wrote for The Times last month: "Judicial review is concerned with acts of public bodies that are said to be unlawful.

Conventions are different. They are rules but not legal rules and breach of them is not necessarily contrary to law.

"Conventions are customary rules of practice, supported by a consensus of opinion, whose force derives from the fact that it would be politically costly to disregard them." Ultimately, said Lord Sumption, "the problem lies in the awkward position of the Queen. She plainly ought not to act inconsistently with either the law or the conventions of the constitution, and presumably she would not wish to. But, in practice, she is likely to follow the advice of her ministers even if it is unconstitutional���.

 

 

 

Then on 10th September he told Prospect Magazine something very similar

 

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/jonathan-sumption-boris-johnson-is-putting-forward-ideas-which-are-essentially-those-of-a-fanatic

 

 ���According to Sumption, there are limits to what can be done by the judiciary. Gina Miller will again fight the government at the Supreme Court. But Sumption said: ���I have my own view, which is that the courts are not entitled to interfere in what is essentially a political issue and not a legal one��� The Supreme Court would really have to turn itself into an arbiter of the political and not just the legal aspects of our constitution.��� Ultimately the crisis is political and the answers must be also. This is in keeping with the thesis of Sumption���s lectures.���

 

 

On ���Newsnight��� on 16th September , (about 15 minutes in https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0008lff/newsnight-16092019)  he still thought the Government's case was the better one, saying that ���if they are wise��� the Hale Court would ���take the same view as the Divisional Court��� (i.e. the English High Court which refused to intervene).

 

He said they might take another view because the government had behaved so badly, but said ��� ���serve you right��� is not a good juridical principle. ���

 

 

The Times 25th September

 

But after the day of judgement the following week, the same Lord Sumption was in ���The Times��� (25th September ) again , saying ���What's revolutionary about the Supreme Court's decision is that it makes the courts the ultimate arbiters of what political reason for doing this are good enough. Yet the judgment should be welcomed even by those who believe, as I do, that politics is not the business of courts of law. The objection to judicial intervention in politics is that it undermines the democratic legitimacy of public decision-making. The court's judgment, however, is concerned not with the political issues of Brexit but with the process by which those issues are to be resolved. Its effect is to reinstate parliament at the heart of that process.���