Eleven Million Visits and Other Thoughts

Eleven Million visits, and other thoughts

 

During Sunday night, this site received its eleven millionth visit, which means a million visits since Christmas. I continue to be grateful to all who come here to read (though less grateful to those who come here to write not to read).

 

I’d like to make a few general comments.  One is, once again, to confirm to doubters that I do in fact post as ClarkeMicah on twitter. I often challenge twitter users who have used this site to be rude about me, and their usual reaction to snort that I must be a fake. This is not so.  There are tedious technical problems involved in posting under my own name on Twitter, and I chose Conan Doyle’s character Micah Clarke as my nom de guerre. Why? Partly because ‘Micah Clarke’ is one of the finest of Conan Doyle’s unjustly neglected historical novels (beginning in his beloved Hampshire, it deals with the Monmouth Rebellion which ended at the Battle of Sedgemoor and the Bloody Assize). Partly because Micah Clarke is someone who learns, after many adventures, that good is done in minute particulars,  and that the General Good is the plea of the scoundrel ( as William Blake put it), and also to distrust both established authority and utopian radicals.

 

A few thoughts  on my problems with the Right Honourable Lord Heseltine, Companion of Honour who (as some of you will recall) accused me a few weeks ago of referring to young soldiers as ‘stupid’.

 

See the details here

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/02/michael-heseltine-marlene-dietrich-and-me-life-and-times-of-a-minor-hate-figure.html

When I challenged at the time he stuck to his claim and said, emphatically : ‘You wait till you see the transcript. Well, as those who follow the link above will see, there is now a transcript and it supports my version, not his.  Since then, in private correspondence whose details I will not disclose, I have sought, politely and persistently, to persuade Lord Heseltine to set the record straight. He has declined to do so. I did not take this further when we met before last Friday’s transmission of ‘Any Questions’, as he was accompanied by Lady Heseltine, and I didn’t think it good manners to raise such a subject while she was present.

 

But I did notice that, during the programme, Lord Hesletine sought to get himself out of a debating difficulty by saying that I used to be in what he called the “Socialist Worker Party” . Do you know, it is the third time he has done this? He did it when we were first on the same ‘Question Time’ panel, perhaps four years ago, one evening in Greenwich. And he did it again, during our February clash. Apart from being a strikingly unoriginal line of attack, it is also quite interesting.

 

Lord Heseltine is quite intelligent enough to know that this non-revelation (of a thing I don’t keep secret or deny)  will only have an effect on the less-informed type of Tory loyalist. This is his fan club – a group of people who are not particularly politically conscious, and who have never properly noticed Lord Heseltine’s grown-up (and in my view just as extreme) affiliation with causes such as the Euro and the EU. This was the reason for my riposte to him,  ’And you used to be a conservative’.

 

Actually, like some readers here, I am by no means sure that Lord  Heseltine ever was a conservative. The problem is much more that in his mace-swinging Tarzan days, quite a lot of people, thought he was – and he did little to discourage them in this belief. The Cold War , in which even the soppiest Tory Wet could rally to the flag against the Kremlin menace, he could appear to be a tigerish patriot in face of the Soviet threat,  while simultaneously harbouring desires to hand over our independence to another lot of foreigners,  in Brussels and Frankfurt-am-Main.

 

Anyway, it seemed to me that this behaviour was clear evidence that he intended to do me damage, rather than to argue the issue. That’s quite normal in public debate, and one must expect it, even from experienced, educated and skilled Parliamentarians, immensely more powerful and influential than oneself. Their willingness to be ruthless is what makes them what they are.  In a way, it’s a great compliment when a former Cabinet Minister attacks one in this way. But it must stay within the bounds of truth. And the claim that I called young soldiers stupid is untrue. I am still pondering how to proceed. But I certainly cannot let it rest.

 

Some readers, convinced that my complaints against the BBC are motivated by a ‘thin skin’ and a sense of personal grievance may be interested in this link .

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rw878/Its_Kevin_Episode_4/

 

I believe this programme is supposed to be funny. Anyway, about a minute into the transmission a picture of me (along with studies of a deceased spider, a broken cup, a dropped ice cream and an injured dog) is displayed in response to the alleged comedian’s plea to be shown something ‘sad’, as he has become too happy.

 

Well, I shall not be complaining. It’s quite flattering to have reached the stage where the Hitchens brand needs no introduction. And it is tedious to point out that the BBC’s licence-financed ‘comedy’ output long ago lost any sense of what it means to be impartial. I think that BBC management will rather more quickly realise that most of this stuff is not funny.

 

I would say more, but have just learned of the death of Lady Thatcher,  may she rest in peace, and must write a few words about that.