A few responses

A few responses to points from readers:

 

Some readers seem to have misunderstood my plea for fewer, less hideous and less blazing streetlights as a general call for all such lights to be permanently turned off. I suppose such an interpretation is just possible, but I should have thought my use of phrases such as ‘ludicrously excessive’, or ‘turning night into blazing day’   and adjectives such as ‘glaring’, plus my praise for the ‘beautifully-lit’ Kensington Palace Gardens would suggest that what I in fact desire is fewer, better-designed lights which provide a reasonable illumination without driving away the stars.

 

Anyway, that is what I think.  I do not know what has happened to Mrs B’s area. But I should have thought the problem with many modern housing developments is that the absence of police and order means that crimes can be committed there (and are) in broad daylight, and are not much affected by streetlamps.

 

My unavoidable point, that we were safer when lamps were fewer and dimmer, and when police patrolled on foot, remains the same.  Our modern force, absent or whizzing past or above in cars and aircraft, unbacked by courts which hesitate to punish,  is not taken seriously by wrongdoers. If you’re not afraid of being seen or caught at all, the absence of streetlamps won’t influence your behaviour. I note our resident Griffin fan‘s point about a rape and murder near him. But I’d need to know more about this crime before I or anyone else could conclude that the absence of lighting was the cause of the tragedy, or even *a* cause of it.   Perhaps it was. But it is not necessarily so. Crime and disorder, violence and robbery happen regularly in well-lit places.

 

Mr Kenny says he hasn’t read my book on drugs (‘The War We Never Fought’ ) had he done so he would know that I there discuss the different sorts of argument that can be advanced against drug legalisation, and my confession that I know perfectly well that appeals to religious belief will not make much impact on my readers. So, as with the death penalty, I tend to concentrate on the utilitarian case. This is not difficult. It is interesting but (to me) unsurprising that courses of action supported by sound Christian doctrine tend to have beneficial effects in the temporal world.  

 

I’m told that Roman Catholics all mark Holy Innocents’ Day. But RCs of my acquaintance thought the 28th was the Feast of the Holy Family, so I’m not sure that’s correct. I am aware that the RC Church( and the tougher evangelicals) hold out against abortion when everyone else has given in.  But I am by no means sure that the RC Church is going to hold the line on such things for much longer.  All human institutions face immense pressure to conform to the Spirit of the Age.  If many RC clergy and worshippers want to fit in with the modern world  (and I think they do, judging by what one hears of senior RC clergy in this country) how long can the hierarchy resist?

 

Mr Jaremko asks : ‘Will Peter Hitchens condemn those in the Kremlin who openly advocate mass violence against Ukraine or even outright mass genocide against Ukrainians ? ( I have deleted some names from this as I have no means of checking his allegations reliably) .

 

Yes, of course I condemn such calls and those who make them.  Why wouldn’t I?