The unfortunate Diana is in the news again, (how many years since her death?), thanks to the loyal butler, who is also publishing letters from +Prince Philip. The butler did it, no doubt part of his duty, as it was of course the duty of the BBC agent to provoke the resignation of the 'racist' police.
Yes, I'm really delighted that public money has been used to pay for a reporter to pretend to
be a newly-recruited policeman, and to surreptitiously record confidential discussions with
his pseudo-colleagues.
I must say I'm a bit surprised that nobody of note has protested that this is maybe not quite
what is expected of a public service broadcaster. Still, at only 35 pence a day, as they themselves say,
it's amazingly good value - not for us to worry about how they use their compulsorily-collected
billions of pounds of hypothecated tax. Best not to leave this sort of thing to the News Of The World - they might
not be able to afford it.
The forcing out of the Granada TV chief led me to reflect on the hunting issue. He has hosted the Beaufort Hunt at his Cotswold Manor, pictured today in the paper. This picture absolutely contains everything that stirs hunt opponents. No fox of course (they all agree they "don't give a damn for the bloody fox"), but well-dressed, confidently-voiced, mounted people, in the grounds of a marvellous house. And there is worse - ordinary people are also in the picture, cheerfully mixing with the toffs. This cannot be allowed to continue, and the Parliamentary Mob has spoken.
(Must write more regularly, as advised here, to support my loyal and growing readership hem hem). Today we felt bereaved by the absence of the Telegraph - but it had to come, it's no good now Conrad Black getting down on his knees - at least Charles Moore does not have to suffer the blow.
An ominous note sounded with the first clue I solved in the Independent, 17 down: Wire, great help when fixed (9).
+Bruce Anderson writes in the new paper, I remember him abandoning the Spectator for a bit in protest
at their allowing some rotter a platform. Today he writes well but viciously about Mr DS. He recommends
Michael Howard. +Anne Widdecombe won't be pleased if he gets it (remember "Something of the Night"
when she had been his underling).
And we also have -Yasmin AlibhaiBrown, but of course I don't know what she wrote about. They publish
their writer's email addresses, so maybe I'll give her a chance & ask her was it really true that
she once said she despised Enoch Powell. If she didn't, or if she's changed her mind, I might read
her stuff at least once.
And they've published a reader's letter from the unspeakable --Terry Waite.
And they say on the masthead "12 pages of sport", that's out of 32, and not in a separate bit you can throw out. But good that there's no sports items on the front page.
Mr Duncan Smith went in a straightforward and brave manner, which, had he deployed it at the
conference, would have established him. And it seems Mr Howard is to be crowned, with the
quickly-announced cooperation of the other big beasts.
The BBC has found a silly little constituency chairman whom they trot out regularly
to rant cliches ("we're spitting nails" etc.) deploring the lack of 'democracy'.
Howard spoke well, and he's anti-Europe, so all may yet be well. Will Widdecombe get a job?
Good for him if she did, forgiving her fierce attack, and good for the party.
I guess yes she will.
I bought a Telegraph for the train yesterday when I went up to Colindale, very nice, hmm.
Charles Causley, born 1917, has his obituary in the Independent today. He wrote a poem to Betjeman,
born 1906, on his death in 1984. Larkin (1922-85) included them both (and himself) in his Oxford 20th Century
anthology. This was first published in 1973. The 1987 reprint contains Causley's Betjeman 1984
poem; maybe this was Larkin's last revision, there's no clue in the text about additions over the
years, which seems vaguely sort of not right.
Soon (11:45 now) will be Mr Howard's coronation, all assume.
A new very nasty man, --Mark Steel, today has a feature article rubbishing our efforts in the two world wars. Sallie says, and I agree with her, that there is a certain mean-spiritedness about the Independent. Some of the factual articles are very good indeed (for example on the new BP pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean) but that is not enough to save it. So the Telegraph can breathe again.
My Open University course, on Essay Writing, recommends writing for a period of 10 minutes a day, without particular care, mainly to develop a writing voice. So, more regular entries are henceforth promised to the loyal and extensive readership. See Burke, Letters to a Noble Lord, as the paradigm of English irony.
Another correspondent in the Independent (now banished from our home), whose name I've forgotten, is one of those who publishes his email address. He is openly homosexual, and this was the thrust of his article last week. I'd like to debate with him, maybe I can in the fantasy world being spun here, but in fact I resisted the temptation to add to his electrical post box. He is guilty in my view of begging the question. Reader, you probably don't know what begging the question is. It is not the same as 'inviting the question' which is how we see it ignorantly used. What it means is proceeding with an argument as though a certain proposition were true, although that proposition is in fact disputed.
The proposition in his case is that it is wrong to make homosexual activity illegal. I hasten to make my own position clear, which is that I have no wish to punish gay men, just so long as they don't frighten the horses. But the legalisation of homosexual practices (HP, graphically described by one of the objectors to the gay bishop consecration in America) is very recent. For all our history until Wolfenden, HP has been against the law; indeed not so long ago it was punishable by death.
But, hand in hand with this law went a wide tolerance in practice. Men who do HP (and I think it demeaning really to speak of 'a gay man' as though one was somehow sufficiently defined by one's sexual orientation - just as the BSA does not like the term Stammerers, preferring 'People who stammer') were well known and well liked, and the law by custom was never invoked except when horse-frightening took place.
It has been suggested that this position is the best compromise for dealing with harmless deviant behaviour. Its proponents say that we don't want HP to get out of hand, it is an affliction, as the wise threatened bishop said this week, and maybe it can be treated.
Now, this position is not fashionable at present, but it's not obviously unreasonable. A case can be made for it, and needs to be refuted by those who don't hold it.
Last week we had the news of a BA pilot being punished for drinking.
Now, a pilot, like a ship's
captain, is a man on whose judgment we rely for our lives. Is it really all right for a
barely literate
("We have a zero tolerance policy for alleged offences by employees...") functionary to punish
a captain? Is it not better to trust such a man to regulate his own behaviour?
We have a similar problem in hospitals, where the same article of functionary is bossing the
doctors about, talking about his employees, and, God help us, his patients. There are
plenty of doctors and nurses who are keen to help the sick, blocked by the aforesaid grey
functionaries, to whom, as they settle down to their 6-figure salaries, much of the new money
is devoted. It is these very men who devised the wheeze of improving target performance
by offering appointments during known holiday times. I am surprised more was
not made of this despicable practice, whose heartlessness comes from the same
root as the "good day to bury bad news". It is not the fault of the functionaries themselves,
who know no better, but rather in a system that promotes such people far beyond their humble
capacity.
Give the money to the doctors I say, set them free, and let the
administrators bear the same
relationship to the senior medics as civil servants bear to ministers.
Over-promotion is the very essence of 'New Labour', as it was of the
Third Reich. Not that Mr Blair or Mr Brown is planning an 'Enabling Bill' or to abolish elections.
But if they did, it would be for the best - after all, we don't want the Tories back.
There must be some limit to functionary power. Will the Queen be breathalysed before the
State Opening of Parliament? Will the Prime Minister be strip-searched before he goes to meet
President Bush?
Time to roll back the tide, and put our trust in people who can be
trusted.
Things are worse, actually, even than they seem. There is a creeping assumption, still left
unspoken for the very top people, that the power of the State can somehow be exercised to
regulate all behaviour, and that there exists a body which can fairly and competently and
calmly exercise that power.
Reader, there is no such body, and, as we let the assumption creep, so we move towards an
arbitrary tyranny.
Not utterly unrelated to the above points is a remark by +John Profumo in an interview by an admiring Bill Deedes (once entertained by my daughter Polly). Profumo said "If you define wealth in monetary terms, there is no hope for the future". This apparent paradox embodies much wisdom. Profumo has spent his life, since the scandal, running a private charitable institution.
There is a feeling that the needy are best helped by being handed money, and
it is the inadequacy, indeed evil, of this that Profumo is attacking.
We could maybe find trustworthy people and give them public money to spend
without day-to-day oversight, as we do with the --BBC. This would maybe deliver a
human system, with power diffused, far removed from the grim uncaring jobsworths
who hand out cash from behind screens protecting them from the desperate.
Two weeks since my rant on matters including the 'Health' Service, and now we see a comprehensive report exposing many such matters, including failures in nursing that are a particular concern of Sallie's - and, she says, many nurses of her generation. I particularly relished the remark of a dim functionary that he "just could not get consultants to see themselves as employees". But today's rant is my response to Frank Johnson of the Telegraph, who wants to hear from anyone who did not watch the Rugby 'World Cup' final. Here is my letter:
You asked to hear from any Englishman who did not watch the Rugby 'World Cup' final. Here is my reply, one I hope of many thousands. I guess and hope that you will publish the numbers.
As an elderly, once active, chap, I am devastated by what has happened to 'Sport' in recent times. Soccer stars, simple lads ruined by overpayment for astonishing skills, often behave very badly; it is grim to see pictures of thugs setting off in 'England' blazers, supposedly to represent my country.
And now the same thing is happening to the game I loved, and played for many years, Rugby. In the 60s I worked, and played squash, alongside a guy who played scrum-half for England, Bill Redwood. He achieved great honour; Rugby was not however his living - had it been so, then the honour would have been diminished.
Our own newspaper acquiesces in this process of turning sport into mere entertainment. Not only do we pay for a daily supplement (discarded unread), but recently the front page too was taken over by it. I tried a different paper for a bit, but it didn't do, so I just have to cover up the 'sporting' bits. Maybe you could represent to the new Editor the desirability of confining such bits to their own dedicated supplement.
The Spaniards eh? Remember the 1940 headline "France and Belgium out, England and Germany in final"?
"He that hath no stomach for the fight, let him depart".
The Spanish are departing, and if our country has no stomach for it, we too shouldn't waste brave lives, as Mrs T said at Falklands time. For there were plenty then who would have abandoned our people to the Argentinians. And there are plenty now who would rather have left the Iraqis to a lawless gangster regime; as there were some in 1940 who would have similarly abandoned Europe.
In 1940 and 1982 we did persevere; let's hope we now still have the spirit to support the Americans and back our soldiers.
It seems that UK citizens now owe £1,004,290,000,000, and the BBC shows us all sorts
(e.g. 4 million Rolls Royce Phantoms) of things you could buy with it.
More interesting is cui bono, who is benefiting?
Much of it is mortgage, at about 7%, and much is credit card, at 15%, and some is
store card and rogues at about 30%.
Say the average is 10%, so the annual income from interest payments is £100,429,000,000.
This splendid sum is shared out, less expenses of course (like call-centre wages)
by our wealthier citizens. Say it's shared by a million of them (probably
an overestimate), then each receives £100,429 a year; a painless
(hmm, not always) transfer of
wealth from the poor to the rich.