This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column The Prime Minister is trapped in Downing Street because his own party is so bereft of talent and guts that nobody dares put him out of his misery. The Leader of the Opposition taunts his own supporters and sucks up to the Left-wing Establishment – preening at a film premiere in recycled gym shoes and a funky New Labour outfit, while telling readers of The Guardian that he is like Tony Benn. And, while the economy drains away down an enormous plughole, the political class snatch up every penny that they can while the opportunity lasts. Do they know something we don’t? The fatuous Jacqui Smith shows no sign of realising that it might be wrong for her to claim £116,000 in tax-free housing expenses. Does this utterly undistinguished person, who has never done anything noteworthy except destroy our ancient liberties, have any conception of how her crafty greed strikes the nurses, firemen and bus drivers who pay for it? How would she like it if the surveillance methods she advocates for us were used to track her movements and decide, once and for all, where she really lives? It is hard to know how much to pity this woman, and how much to be disgusted by her behaviour. You might also have noticed that the Tories, so given to lecturing us about the environment and so virtuously politically correct, aren’t interested in pursuing Jacqui Smith’s odd housing arrangements. And we all know why. Because there are plenty on their side who do the same. The country’s sick, and mainly sick at the top. Millions of honest, hardworking citizens do what they can to be good, to stay out of debt and pay their way, but are dumped into bankruptcy by a ruling elite that laughs at these good old notions of right and wrong. Here’s a thought. You’ll have noticed that openly Christian citizens are the ones who increasingly get the rough end of this society. The cultural elite jeers at them, militant atheists denounce religious education as a form of child abuse, people are threatened for doing or saying Christian things. I think there’s a reason for this. The types who run our country and its culture actively hate the idea that there’s an absolute right and wrong because it gets in their way. They think they are so good that they can do what they like. They loathe the thought that there’s a law above them, however high they get. And here, in our post-Christian, post-democratic society, we begin to see what this means in detail. The BBC still hasn’t shown the ‘Falklands Play’ on either of its main channels, presumably because it shows Margaret Thatcher in a good light and the Corporation’s Politburo refuses to allow this. Instead, it has commissioned weird dramas which sort of suggest the Iron Lady was a feminist, and so in some ways more or less all right. The latest – Margaret – is due for an outing on BBC2 on Thursday and stars Lindsay Duncan, who must be worried that her Left-wing friends will shun her for not portraying the former Premier as a screaming, blood-encrusted vampire. So she has explained that playing the Tory leader is a bit like playing a murderer. She declares: ‘I loathed her and everything she stood for.’ She doesn’t explain this opinion, probably because she couldn’t if she tried. Then she adds, with a charming insight into the truly solid bone of the knee-jerk Leftist’s skull: ‘But I’ve played murderers and others whom I couldn’t countenance morally.’ This powerful intellect also reveals that ‘of course’ she ‘did’ drugs, though she apparently didn’t enjoy them much and was glad when she ‘could take up alcohol’. Could? What was stopping her? Perhaps it came back into fashion. Fashion’s plainly important to her, especially fashion in thought. Ms Duncan is a perfect Sixties product. I loathe everything she stands for. By the way, the drama is preposterous, histrionic and too long, but there is a brilliant impersonation of Geoffrey Howe, and the ludicrous myth of John Major as a ‘decent guy’ is neatly exploded. Draft Code for teachers is really just a Daft Code The ludicrous and sinister General Teaching Council will soon doubtless be ensuring that all teachers spout the proper views on ‘Equality and Diversity’ – words that just happen to appear prominently in its PC new ‘Draft Code’ shortly to be imposed after the usual charade of consultation. I suspect that its real purpose is to be the educational branch of the Thought Police. To get the measure of this body, compare and contrast two cases that have come before it. First, look at its treatment of a teacher who admitted using crack cocaine and falling asleep in lessons. William Horseman will be allowed to carry on teaching children – maybe yours – though he will be ‘monitored’. Then recall what happened when an experienced former teacher, Angela Mason, went undercover to record the true extent of disruption and disorder in our classrooms, so doing the country an important service. She was suspended by the GTC for a year. So snorting crack cocaine gets you monitored. Telling the truth about schools gets you suspended. News of a collision between a French and a British nuclear submarine awoke my memories of a weekend spent submerged in a Polaris boat, and those of you interested can read about it on my blog.21 February 2009 9:44 PM
Why invite the Pope to a country that revels in persecuting Christians?
Why did Gordon Brown’s anti-Christian Government ask the Pope here? Is it so that Benedict can give Britain the last rites? The poor country certainly seems to be in the final stages of a sort of national dementia.
Lindsay, the Iron Leftie
If you have ever wondered what the real priorities of our new Establishment are, this should give you a pretty good clue.
*******************
The BBC’s metric obsession doesn’t just involve giving the weights of rugby players in kilograms. As a very early riser, I am often exposed to Radio 4 nature programmes, and monitor them for ridiculous uses of metres, hectares and other foreign measurements, which are frequent. The Corporation denies this is the result of a secret decree, but I wonder.
I don’t think anyone over 40 uses metric measurements naturally. The other day, on
The Living World, presenter Lionel Kelleway (who is in his 60s) spoke about the ‘2,000-metre dramatic cliffs’ on New Island in the Falklands.
Such cliffs would indeed be dramatic, at 6,560ft high. Actually, they’re 600ft high.
This is the problem with the metric system. Being a top-down, inhuman, mechanical thing invented in a laboratory, it won’t stick in the memory. If he’d used feet, he and his editors would have known at once he’d made a mistake.
Posts
