Why I've been Sleeping Badly, plus Various Responses

I thought it was time for some general comments and responses. First, a small basket of reproaches, perhaps brought on by a near-sleepless night, caused by a BBC experience late on Sunday.

 

Many months ago I offered Damian Thompson the hospitality of this weblog to make out his case that I am guilty of ‘scaremongering’ over the MMR vaccine, a claim he has repeatedly made, notably in his column in the Daily Telegraph. I deny the accusation.  He seemed unwilling to take up the offer, but hinted that he might address it elsewhere. I am still waiting. I think that if he does not make out his case soon, I shall be entitled to believe that he lacks confidence in that case.

 

More recently, I responded to an attack on me by Ms Charlotte Vere, a would-be Tory MP, who claimed (on the basis of my support for full-time mothers) that I favoured making girls leave school at 14. I rebutted (and in my view refuted) this claim. She replied with a largely unresponsive article, which I posted here as promised, and to which I replied. Since then I have heard nothing but silence from her.

 

Talking of silence, can any of my readers give me any instance of any of the notable feminist voices of our age having spoken out against (or even commented upon) the CPS refusal to prosecute doctors who offered to abort baby girls, on the grounds of their sex? I am of course against this horror on absolute Christian grounds, in that I regard it is a form of murder, a prohibited act. But surely the anti-sexist sisterhood have their own solid reasons to object to it. Or do they? 

 

As to the incident that kept me awake, it was the BBC’s choice of my old adversary Mehdi Hasan to present the Radio 4 programme ‘What the Papers say’ .

 

The last time Mr Hasan presented this programme, the BBC apologised on air for the way in which I was treated.

 

New readers can look this up here

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/07/what-the-papers-didnt-say-and-what-they-did.html

 

and here

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/08/what-the-papers-say-says-sorry-up-to-a-point-cows-quotes-the-bbc-and-me.html

 

and here

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/03/what-the-butler-said-my-continuing-struggle-with-the-bbc.html

 

and finally here

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/04/ofcom-to-hitchens-get-lost-.html

 

 

Summed up, the BBC view (upheld by the Trust and not even considered by OFCOM) was that my treatment on the programme (grotesquely caricatured voice, misquotation) was just a ‘mistake’ and had no significance of any sort. So far, my quest for an example of any comparable ‘mistake’ happening to anyone else on WTPS,  ever, has come up empty.

 

 

After the OFCOM brush-off, I wrote to the BBC saying I would now take up the offer, which they made immediately after the ‘mistake’, to allow me to present ‘What the Papers Say’ , the first time I have been asked to present a Radio 4 programme this century.

 

I had felt I could not do so while my complaint was still being investigated. But having exhausted all procedures, I felt free to do so now.

 

I will break a rule here to say that I am at present engaged to present the programme next Sunday evening on BBC Radio 4 at 10.45 pm.

 

But how about this? So far as I know, and I have been paying fairly close attention, Mr Hasan had not presented the programme since the BBC apology, more than a year ago. I have no idea how presenters are chosen, or on what basis they are rotated. No doubt the choice of Mr Hasan to present the programme last night was entirely fortuitous.  But I will leave readers to imagine the thoughts that went through my head when the theme music for the programme was followed by the sound of Mr Hasan announcing himself as presenter.

 

Some responses to comments. Can rational, intelligent contributors here please *not* try to debate with the fantasists who continue to believe ludicrous conspiracy theories about the terror attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th 2001? These people have lost all contact with reality, will not be persuaded and are only encouraged when normal human beings try to contest this piffle. It is a waste of time for the rest of us, and may well cause a shortage of electrons in the long run.

 

I assume this contribution from ‘von Journo’ is satirical, and not to be taken literally : ‘The prehistoric classrooms Mr Hitchens refers to, with their terrifying teachers and violations of the pupils' basic rights, appear by modern standards to have been spectacularly unsuccessful. They might well have helped him, "an Olympic-standard maths duffer" to "an O-level in the subject". But In the modern, enlightened system, any duffer can earn a doctorate. Success in education no longer requires the accident of birth of being born clever. The contemporary educational system is much fairer and produces far more graduates.’

 

Once again the Finnish education system is held up for our delight. Scandinavia (though changing fast thanks to recent mass migration) is often alleged to be a post-Christian, egalitarian paradise by leftist secularists. The reality is slightly different, but there is one very powerful point that needs to be udnerstood here. Finland doesn’t suffer from Britain’s several deep divides, especially our class system, and does not have a legacy of huge, decaying ex-industrial cities where the worst urban conditions are concentrated.   It is precisely because of these divides that selection by ability is such an important issue in Britain, and why it is banned by law by our egalitarian political consensus.

 

Even so, I suspect that measures of educational success in Finland’s schools suffer from the usual problems – the absurd lack of congruence of survey methods in different countries,  the readiness of all education systems to judge themselves by more or less subjective outcomes (inspection reports, notoriously subjective, exam results, more concerned with paper qualification than with actual learning, concealed selection either by catchment area or by the encouragement of early leaving by the non-academic, etc etc etc). I would be very grateful for any impartial person with experience of the Finnish system to write in and tell us about it.

 

 

Perhaps I could ask ‘Nick’ to elaborate on the argument he offers here : ‘Mr Hitchens has an unerring ability to miss the point on every issue he raises.The problem with immigration is really the problem of welfare and the minimum wage. Without those things the indigenous population would be working and there would be no NHS and government schools and council houses etc for the immigrants to clog up. Problem solved. Unless of course you are a Socialist pretending to be a Conservative in which case you will ignore the issue altogether and distract people with elegantly written nonsense.’

 

It just so happens that the parties which have encouraged or failed to halt mass immigration are also keen supporters of the welfare state and the NHS, both of which existed before the mass immigration project was launched, and which coudl nto be abolished without the mother of all political upheavals.

I’m not sure that the minimum wage has made all that much difference, though there is no doubt that mass immigration has helped to keep it low without any difficulty. As opponents of the minimum wage pointed out when it was being introduced, it would either be so high that it damaged employment prospects or so low that it made little difference.

 

The government’s main intervention in wages has been the maze of tax credits, through which it has quietly subsidised low wage employers throughout the country. I have often wondered if this is really permissible under EU competition rules. Or perhaps the EU, like most people, simply haven’t noticed what is going on.