This is Peter Hitchens' Mail On Sunday blog David Cameron does not want to be a Conservative Prime Minister. The idea fills him with disgust. He much prefers a Coalition with the ultra-Leftist, anti-British Liberal Party. Why? Because he is much more like them than he is like the silly sheep who voted Tory in the deluded hope of getting a patriotic, respon sible and just government. I warned everyone against Mr Cameron when there was still time to stop him. And he repeatedly helped me by confirming that what I said was true. He made it plain, when he shamelessly broke his pledge on an EU referendum, that he was not to be trusted on the Brussels issue – as we now see. He refused to reply when I asked him, during the Election, if he was closer to Nick Clegg or Norman Tebbit. He gave his answer days later, after the sheep had voted, as he formed a Coalition with Mr Clegg. But conventional wisdom – which is always wrong – has since then claimed that Mr Clegg is in some way the prisoner of the wicked Tories. He is portrayed as Mr Cameron’s fag at school, or as his helpless underling, by politically illiterate cartoonists. On the contrary, Mr Cameron is the willing prisoner of Mr Clegg. He loves to have a permanent excuse to tell the shivering, lonesome clumps of real conservatives in his party that he cannot do what they want him to do. In fact, he loves it so much that he really wants a merger between the two parties – in all but name. Hence the most fascinating – and so the least discussed – political revelation of the week. My colleague Simon Walters reported last Sunday that Francis Maude, one of Mr Cameron’s closest and most astute lieutenants, had told a private gath ering that the Coalition is a ‘bloody good thing’, adding that there was very little difference between the Tory and Liberal parties and that many Tories want the pact to continue far beyond five years. ‘Even if the Conservatives win a majority at the next Election, there will be a desire to continue with the Coalition among parts of the Conser vative Party,’ he said. Those parts will be the ones concentrated in the smart area of West London where Mr Cameron and his allies dwell. They are Liberals. They will govern as Liberals. Vote Blue. Get Yellow. If that isn’t what you want, stop giving them support, time, money and votes. When Mr Richards tumbled out of a tree and hurt himself some years ago, he received a get-well card from none other than Anthony Blair, Her Majesty’s First Lord of the Treasury and Keeper of the Nuclear Button. Mr Blair, gushing like a teen groupie, informed Mr Richards that he had always been one of his heroes. Mr Richards’s response does him credit. He said: ‘England’s in the hands of someone I’m a hero of? It’s frightening.’ And it was. More frightening than he knew. Mr Blair, like far too many of his generation, still suffers from the terrible arrested development that causes grown fathers of families to strum guitars, listen to interminable self-pitying songs and wear trousers that are far, far too tight for them. This also makes them prone to accept simple-minded solutions to the world’s problems, like bombing other countries and looking the other way as their inhabitants are tortured and murdered. And saying they did it for a good cause. But where does this leave the enthusiasts – usually panic- mongers on the subject of Iran – who claim that our soldiers must continue to be blown to pieces to prop up Mr Karzai? And more importantly, where does it leave our soldiers? Whatever are they still doing in Helmand and Kandahar? Mr Cameron has had plenty of time to come up with a coherent explanation for his support of this war, and hasn’t done so, so we can only assume it’s part of the price he pays for the saliva-stained support he gets from the Murdoch press. Bring them home now. Each new death and injury is intolerable and unforgivable. Who'd have thought that the planned merger of the French Navy and the Royal Navy into an EU Fleet – the end of centuries of independent British seapower – should have been announced with so little clamour, just days after Trafalgar Day? Far more important, I should have thought, than a grounded submarine. Try venison stew, not daft sentimentality This beast may look very nice. But if he hasn’t been shot, he’ll die horribly from a broken leg, or contract TB. And in the meantime he is getting up to things with his younger female relatives that have no place in a family paper. I’m hoping for a nice venison stew for supper. Most of it is a waste of time. Worse, I suspect it is done for propaganda reasons – to spread the irrational fear of terrorism, so doing the terrorists’ work for them. I think it is also meant to make us more willing to accept grotesque laws such as the Terrorism Act, shown last week to be a crazy increase in state powers for no gain at all. Friday’s strange new scare on cargo jets doesn’t change the argument in any way. I think it’s my Cornish roots, but I have to make a huge, almost physical, effort to suppress a rebellious rage every time I am compelled to undergo nonsensical airport checks. I submit only because I know that if I protest, or even mock, I won’t be allowed to fly. And I need to fly to do my job. When will anyone in Parliament be prepared to stand up against the totalitarian propaganda of the ‘security experts’, incessantly used to make us less free while leaving us just as unsafe as we were before? If I hadn't been travelling last week I would have marked Trafalgar Day, which fell on 21st October, on this site. As it was, I toasted the immortal memory of Horatio, Viscount Nelson, victor of Trafalgar, Copenhagen and the Nile, in fizzy beer in a foreign bar, with a select group of companions. But having missed Trafalgar, let's recall instead another great English anniversary, now fading into obscurity and myth, that of Agincourt - as portrayed by Shakespeare in 'Henry V' - and particularly King Harry's great speech before battle - Laurence Olivier's 1944 rendering of this can be found on YouTube. This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column What cuts? My favourite two facts about British public spending are these. Housing benefit, probably the single most fraud ulent and wasteful state handout ever invented, costs more each year than the Army and the Royal Navy combined. And while Labour spent £600 billion (roughly £10,000 for every human being in this country) in their last year in office, the supposedly vicious cutter George Osborne plans to spend £692.7 billion (£11,500 per head) in 2014-15, after his alleged chainsaw massacre. Britain remains bankrupt in most important ways. We spend more than we earn. We pay huge numbers of people to do silly jobs, or to do nothing at all while pretending to be ill. Our public services, about which we are all supposed to be so sentimental, are often dreadful. And where this is so, it is usually not because of a shortage of money. A good, well trained and dedicated doctor cannot be bought with cash, any more than a conscientious nurse or a clean hospital ward can be obtained by spending more. A smart new hospital building can be hosting MRSA within months of opening. Its nurses – now armed with costly and useless so-called degrees, but often lacking the dutiful discipline of their forebears – can still leave the old to die of dehydration or to fester in their own filth. Comprehensive education is designed to be inferior to selective schooling, but is supposed to make us more equal, the fundamental purpose of our more- or-less communist state machine. Which is why politicians impose it on other people and use every wile and trick to avoid it for their own children. Local government is an out-of-control disgrace, employing thousands of people on salaries they could never command in the real world, doing (or not doing) things that nobody wants, but shrieking predict ably that the ‘cuts’ will force them to shut libraries and leave parks neglec ted while the condom outreach workers multiply, the twinning trips continue and swollen ‘Chief Executives’ pay themselves the sort of salaries most of us cannot even dream of. But above all, like drug dealers ensuring a continuous clientele, we get people used to the idea that the State will provide – starting with the much-abused Educational Maintenance Allowance. Given that our frightful state schools cannot train most of their pupils in the basic skills of work, this creates a huge pool of people who are permanently unemployed and unemployable – quite needlessly. For there is work – as the hard-working migrants from Eastern Europe who do so much of it daily prove. It is just not paid at the fantasy wages we seem to think we are entitled to. This cannot continue for ever. My own guess is that it will be swept away some time soon by a wave of terrible inflation, which will destroy the provident and the prudent as well as the parasites, and which finally will reduce this country to the Third World status it seems so anxious to attain. The idea that the present Government is somehow facing the truth and acting boldly is ridiculous flattery, and we should stop encouraging it.
30 October 2010 11:29 PM
We’re sheep shuffling towards a permanently yellow Britain
Wizened Keith was right about this simpering groupie
After my attack on Keith Richards last week, a grudging word of praise for the wizened old geezer.
Yet another nail in an unforgivable war...
It is very funny that Afghanistan’s President Karzai cheerfully admits to being given (and accepting) large bags of banknotes (euros, as it happens) as a gift from the Iranian government.
Anyone would think that stags, if not shot by hunters, look forward to a contented old age being wheeled about in bath chairs in Eastbourne. The sentimental fuss about the alleged shooting of the ‘Emperor of Exmoor’ is Britain at its daftest.
At last, a senior figure in the airline business tells the truth about the moronic ‘security’ that makes air travel a humiliating misery for us all. British Airways chairman Martin Broughton deserves our thanks.The Death of Principle
Mr Christopher Charles writes, rather patronisingly that I am 'Don Quixote with an intellect'. He then says: ‘This marriage stuff is from another age. That battle has been lost. [Understand, I'm not approving, but accepting].’
But that's the whole point of having proper principles, based on eternal truths. You don't have to change your mind about fundamentals, just because fashion is running against you. On the contrary, if you have principles , you can't do so. I'm amused by the growing trend among English women to take the Islamic veil (I suspect many of these would never dream of entering a Christian church, precisely because it is the religion of their parents and grandparents) because I see in it a sign of a strong unanswered yearning in our society for moral certainty and discipline. In the 18th century, the Wesleys found a similar yearning in a morally chaotic England, and we still feel the benefits of their re-evangelisation of Britain, which reached their peak a century ago and are now in severe decline.
This time round, I fear that it will be Islam, with its simple message, that will fill the gap. Both Mr Charles and I would, I think, be greatly surprised if we could be teleported into the London of 2110. But I suspect Mr Charles would be much more surprised than I would be.
Mr Potter writes: ‘His (Henry VIII) actions contributed significantly to what I consider the Church of England's indifferent attitude towards the sanctity of marriage, or at least its relaxed attitude to ending one's marriage.’
What is Mr Potter talking about? The Church of England did not in any way sanction or countenance divorce for the first three hundred years of its existence. Read the relevant chapter in my 'Abolition of Britain', for a discussion of the changing attitudes of the Bishops, who collapsed on this issue (as did almost everyone else) in the 1960s. There were many causes for this, and I suppose you could argue that the C of E's independence of Rome *permitted* it to commit this treachery against the teaching of Our Lord. But you could hardly say it impelled it. It is perfectly possible that, under different circumstances (particularly had there been no First World War and no invention of the Contraceptive Pill, also discussed at length in 'Abolition of Britain') the C of E would still be standing fast on divorce. Blaming Henry is absurd.
‘Claire H’ writes: ‘The way Hitchens writes suggests it is almost certain that anti-depressants do cause suicides or violent behaviour- when in reality only a fraction of people taking them have such side-effects.’ I am not sure what she means about 'the way I write'. I pointed out that two recent suicides were both recorded as having been on prescribed drugs which ought - if they do what it says on the packet - to have made them less rather than more likely to take this tragic path.
How big a fraction would be enough for Ms 'H' to be concerned? I personally do not know, which is why I seek an inquiry. What I point out is that a growing number of reports suggest a cause for concern. I don't call for the pills to be banned. I do not say they invariably lead to such outcomes. What I say is that there are worrying indications. I also cast doubt on the validity of the science which lies behind these prescriptions. The answer to my criticisms is not to attack me for raising questions, but to answer those questions, scientifically and calmly, in such a way that I and others are reassured. It is, in my view, never wrong to raise concerns - and often an urgent duty to raise concerns which are unpopular or unfashionable.
I still don't understand why what I am paid has anything to do with my right to comment on the size and nature of the welfare state. In many ways, on the contrary. The more I'm paid, the more tax I pay and the more I finance that welfare state, so these critics should want me to be paid more. Of course I'm conscious of my good fortune in doing the job I do and getting the pay I do. But I'm also conscious that nobody would gain anything if I ceased to do so, except the person who took my job.
Mr Harold Stone makes a ridiculous comment in his curiously spiteful posting, with its weird remarks about my difficulties with publishers and booksellers. Am I not allowed to raise any subject without being accused of it being my main preoccupation? He says: ‘Eastern Europeans work willingly and more cheaply than our own in order to send money home, not because they have a better attitude necessarily. The comparatively low cost of living in Poland, Estonia and the like makes this an economically viable proposition. There is nothing new of course in the claim that immigrants “do the jobs natives refuse to.” This has been trotted out repeatedly by our politicians since the 1940’s, after the Windrush docked, a time of austerity when immigration was the last thing we needed, and by which time Attlee (a communist who used to add “workers of the world unite” as a footnote to personal correspondence) was anxious to justify selling out his own people with the British Nationality Act of 1948.’
I think the statement that Clement Attlee was a communist is more than a little absurd. If distinctions have any meaning at all, then it simply isn't true. But more importantly, Mr Stone seems to think that we are the same country we were in 1948. Of course there is something new in the allegation that migrants do the jobs natives refuse to do. It may not have been true in the past. It is demonstrably true now. He seems not to have heard of the collapse of British education, or of the devastating family breakdown that has accompanied it, which makes so many British-raised young people unemployable by anyone who values his business. Nor does he seem aware of the grotesque welfare system, which acts as a disincentive to low-paid work.
Whereas Poles, for the most part raised in Christian homes and benefiting from the rigorous education system of that country, are a much better bargain for anyone who wants to get work done. I add, yet again, that I am against the immigration solution to our problems. But it is absurd to pretend that the superior work ethic of the Poles, and the poor quality, as employees, of many British-raised young men and women (through no fault of their own) has nothing to do with it.27 October 2010 12:47 PM
The Great Depression, and the King's Great Matter
The abuse quotient is high whenever I discuss 'antidepressants'. This is an almost invariable sign that I am on to something. People only get angry with criticisms (and those who voice them) when they suspect that those criticisms are right, and are suppressing their own doubts on the subject. Only grown-ups, genuinely capable of changing their minds, are unafraid of the truth and willing to go where it leads them. They alone can argue properly. And there are very few of them, as we see here all the time.
Let's take some examples. Greg Smith (who seems to think the reference to King David's Biblical faking of madness was made by me - it wasn't, I merely quoted it from someone else's comment ), adopts a lofty and sneering tone. Is he entitled to do so by any special knowledge or logical skill?
Let us see.
First, there's this: ‘Never mind what doctors at the World Health Organisation, Royal College of Psychiatrists and National Health Service have dedicated their lives to - Peter Hitchens (despite no medical training whatsoever) luckily knows more about it.’
On the contrary, I have never claimed to know more about it, or implied that I do. I have simply questioned conventional wisdom, as an informed layman with no vested interest and a platform which I feel obliged to use to raise such concerns when they trouble me.
Far from being dogmatic, I have instead called for an expert inquiry into the matter. But I would add that it is a common fallacy that 'experts' are invariably right, because they are experts. Professional bodies can also form pressure groups, can seek to protect their 'mystery' against attack (I'm not sure how psychiatry has managed to pretend to be scientific for so long, when it appears to me to have no claim to objective scientific foundations at all, but it certainly couldn't have done so without Royal Colleges and professorial chairs). Such groups often end up having self-protection as a primary purpose, and can collectively resist inconvenient discoveries, as history repeatedly shows. We should also not underestimate the lobbying power of the drug manufacturers, and their influence on practitioners and on institutions such as the NHS, which are major customers. These drug companies are really big concerns, and form a huge part of our economy.
Real new discoveries, or inconvenient discoveries, are often resisted and ignored by those who should most welcome them. Thus conventional wisdom changes, rather too slowly. The medical profession once lauded pre-frontal lobotomy, and still employs the grotesque barbarity of ECT, which I am sure will be condemned in future centuries. In my childhood the treatment for burns was to put grease on them, an act now known to be the height of stupidity. But for years nobody dared say so.
I am always amused by the huge variations in conventional wisdom about blood donation which have taken place since I first started doing it 40 years ago, and the grim-jawed certainty with which each different fallacy (or it may not be a fallacy this time, who knows?) is enforced.
I was told I absolutely had to take iron tablets for a week after donation, plus a large breakfast - followed a few years later by 'Iron tablets? What do you mean? Completely useless. What makes you think you need those?' - without any hint on the part of the nurse that they had once insisted on them. These days they make you drink a pint of water instead. They have abolished the once-strict upper age limit and allow much more frequent donation. And you are no longer banned from donating for months after you have returned from Israel, as I once was. Just as long as they don't abolish the tea and biscuits.
Then there's the 'experts are right and beyond criticism' fallacy, which we get here quite a lot when conventional medical wisdom and conventional psychiatric wisdom are questioned. I doubt whether the same people object when lay critics condemn, say, homeopathy. And nor, as it happens, do I. Lay critics can often cast light on such things.
Science qualifies people in specific scientific matters. A scientist must be listened to when his own field of knowledge is under discussion. But one of the problems with 'antidepressants' is that there is so little objective science about them. There is no objective definition of 'depression', for a start (see below). As has been discussed here before, doctors have no real idea how these pills work on the human brain or state of mind, and placebos have been shown to have more or less the same effect. In effect, the mass prescription of these pills is a vast research project. In which case, if the cases which I report are true (and I do not see their truth disputed) qualified persons should be looking into their implications - as a matter of urgency. That is my argument. How this makes me unscientific, I do not know. Nor do I understand in what way.
Then Mr Smith inserts the following: ‘Re side effects - look at cancer/cardiology drugs and note their side effects before highlighting antidepressants. Having a look at the NICE/NCCMH websites (responsible for picking drugs) to see evidence.’ He may well be right. I know nothing about this. But it is wholly irrelevant to the subject under discussion, and has no place in this debate. So why is it there? Because Mr Smith is keen on seeking the truth? Or because he wants to kick dust in our faces?
Finally, we are told by Mr Smith: ‘Lastly – “if it is true that no doctor can prove a patient is not depressed, isn't the corollary that no doctor can prove that a patient *is* depressed?” Yes, it would be. Sadly for your argument this predication is grossly incorrect (surprise surprise). In the same way that a Cardiologist can confidently say that you're not having a heart attack after you've been running up some stairs to increase your heart rate, a Psychiatrist can tell you're not depressed if you just wear some pants on your head and say so.’
This is simply, straightforwardly false. When, three years ago, I had chest pains after the long flight back from North Korea, I went to the NHS hospital in Blackpool and was there wired up to a machine for detailed checks on my heart-rate. I also underwent two detailed blood analyses, 12 hours apart. After these elaborate tests, the doctors told me there was nothing wrong with me. Cardiologists know a thousand times more about the heart and the cardio-vascular system than any psychiatrist knows about the brain (psychiatrists don't even, I think, need to be neurologists) or the mind. And I mean *know*. They know how the heart functions, they known the symptoms of heart failure and of blocked arteries.
There is absolutely no comparison between these objective, genuinely scientific tests and the subjective, pseudo-scientific procedures of psychiatry. And anybody who thinks there is, is displaying not the lofty knowledge implied by Mr Smith's dismissive attitude, but a profound ignorance of scientific method.
We end (from Mr Smith anyway) with this: ‘As far as objective bodily symptoms go by the way - nice straw man argument. Seen many objective tests for insomnia or hey, love? No? Eek, maybe it's a bit more complicated than that. Heaven forfend facts might get in the way of a good rant though.’
I am genuinely not sure what this unwisely patronising passage is intended to convey. 'Insomnia' is a fancy name for 'not being able to get to sleep'. Its 'symptoms' are 'lying awake'. I should have thought the objective test was about as simple as you could get. Who has the facts here? And who is ranting?
A quick digression to deal with Mr Dodd, who says: ‘ “What's the point?” asks Mr Hitchens, referring to my remark on repetition on this blog. Well, comments are invited, apparently, and mine was intended to suggest to Mr Hitchens that he might reflect on who his target audience is; the terminally obtuse, who will not “get it” if he repeats himself a thousand times, the passing butterfly who drops by and moves on, never to be heard from again, or his regular readers who have bought his books and thought about what he has to say.’
I wouldn't refer to my readers in those terms, but has it occurred to Mr Dodd that the answer is ‘all of them, and more besides’. I'm afraid I can't offer him a personal private controversy service.
Back to 'depression', and I'm grateful to those readers who have recounted their own unhappy experiences with this dubious medical fad. Friends and colleagues of mine have also had such experiences. I don't have their permission to recount them, but it was these episodes - one particularly grievous - which ignited my doubts on this score. Until then I too had believed the conventional wisdom about 'depression'.
I need also to deal with the posting by 'Claire H', as follows: ‘The comments Peter Hitchens repeatedly makes about anti-depressants are ignorant, ill-informed and offensive. In focusing on the few cases where people taking the medication commit suicide or violence against others he ignores the millions of people who have taken them to positive effect-hardly a “poison”.’
I would be interested to know what objective evidence there is of this 'good effect'. Is it as objective as the interesting numbers of suicides who turn out to have been taking anti-depressants? Or the remarkable proportion of rampage killers who have been? How can it be shown? Who does the measuring?
‘Has the possibility that such individuals would have hurt themselves or others with or without the medication escaped him?’
No, it has not escaped him. But the fact is that they have taken their lives while ingesting chemicals supposedly designed to raise their spirits. I also think it is recognised by doctors and pharmaceutical companies that some of these drugs can promote suicidal tendencies, particularly in the young. If this is so *at all* shouldn't it give cause for caution in prescription, and trigger an inquiry?
She adds: ‘He and most posters on newspaper articles also suggest that depression doesn't exist, it's just unhappy people thinking they have a right to happiness or going through a period of grief.’
I don't say anything as crude as that. Though my critics, as usual, would rather I did. I personally suspect that there are objective physical influences on the nervous system. I suspect that the lack of exercise, the constant over-stimulation by TV and computer games etc, and the poor diet common in advanced societies bring it about. I also suspect that the use of mind-altering drugs in youth (by stimulating undeserved euphoria) can in some way deplete the body's stock of mental well-being. I know from the experience of colleagues that doctors are all too ready to prescribe mind-altering drugs to deal with objective and reasonable grief and even fear.
She continues: ‘I suffer from depression and believe me it's nothing like ordinary unhappiness, or a normal reaction to adverse circumstances, but a total hell of misery, fear and inability to function. It's worse than any kind of grief because there is no reason for it (although there may be a trigger) and you feel totally powerless against it.’
Perhaps so. It’s not for me to question this, though, knowing nothing about her, I cannot begin to wonder what might have brought it about. How does she propose this complaint can be measured or detected objectively? Does its existence (see above) lead inevitably to the prescription of drugs whose operation is unknown?
She continues ‘It seems a common misconception than doctors hand out anti-depressants left right and centre to anyone who asks but this isn't the case. I waited almost a year after seeing my doctor before taking anti-depressants, during which time I didn't get better, despite my efforts. I've taken three different anti-depressants at different times as until I took the third one they didn't help much. I now take a mood stabiliser too. I can say from experience they all made me feel very different: they're not a placebo. The only thing worse than suffering a depressive illness is dealing with people's reaction to it which is all too often discriminatory and dismissive.’
That is her experiences. Other experiences recounted here (and others known to me) suggest that doctors do prescribe these drugs rather freely. I might also point out that if these things are so carefully prescribed and so tailored to the problem, it is interesting that her first two prescriptions didn't help.
On Henry VIII, I'm amazed that some people wish to state as absolute incontrovertible fact things (like the Pope's attitude towards the annulment) which can only ever remain a matter of opinion. My opinion is that the Pope under different circumstances might well have granted Henry what he sought. I cannot prove this with certainty, but I do slightly object to being told that this cannot possibly be the case - since the person who says this cannot prove his contention either.
But annulment is certainly not the same as divorce, the original point. And Henry's behaviour, whatever you think of it, was motivated by dynastic politics, not promiscuity. He was promiscuous, but he could have been so without seeking to get rid of a wife who could not bear him a male heir. The sad story of the Stuart kings suggests he may have been right to be worried.25 October 2010 4:04 PM
And another thing
A few other points. Mr D. Potter blames Henry VIII for the divorce culture. I am baffled that this basic mistake is made so often, even in history books. Henry was not seeking a divorce from Catherine of Aragon (such things did not exist in his time, and were not permitted by the Church of England then or until very recently). He sought an annulment, which most Popes would have granted him. But the Pope of the moment was locked up by Catherine's own nephew, and so was reluctant to act.
In the end, Thomas Cranmer granted Henry the annulment, as head of the newly independent (but by no means Protestant) Church of England. But Henry, greedy brutal, corrupt, lascivious etc, regarded himself even so as a true son of the Church. The C of E did not become a Protestant church until the reign of Edward VI. And it did not countenance divorce or remarriage until the past few years. (And then only by stealth. Its gold standard marriage service, still in legal force, requires the parties to swear to stay together 'as long as ye both shall live'.)
Whatever you think of the RC Church's view of annulments, they are not the same as divorces. For instance, one effect of the annulment of Henry and Catherine's marriage was that their daughter Mary became retrospectively illegitimate, a particularly nasty and heavy blow.
In reply to S. Brown, who questions the idea that cars have obsolescence built-in, I always thought the MoT test (and its US equivalent state inspections) were a deal between motor manufacturers and the state to ensure that old cars became too costly to keep on the road, thus encouraging sales of new ones. Sure, you can keep a car going for a long time, if you really, really try. But will it last as long as it would have done 30 years ago? Can ordinary people tackle the maintenance of increasingly computerised engines? I agree I have as little experience of cars as I can possibly arrange, and have more or less given up driving them now, but the percentage of old cars on the road seems to me to be much lower than it was when I was younger.
Tony Dodd asks: ‘So, to sum up: The Tories are useless, rock stars are depraved scum, marriage is important, antidepressants are dangerous. Where have I heard all this before?’
What is the point of this comment, except to draw attention to Mr Dodd, who hasn't been getting much such attention lately? Of course I repeat some themes here, on the much-discussed Mandelson principle that it is only when you are sick to death of saying something that most people have begun to grasp what you are driving at. I also find that there are invariably readers , probably new to this column, who think I am a Thatcherite, or support the Iraq war, or whatever it is. But the point is that I repeat them by focusing in new and different instances of then problems. In the case of 'anti-depressants', I have made a conscious decision to highlight every case where it seems to me the argument is made for an inquiry into the prescribing of these things. I also think this is flat ungenerous and inaccurate. The main piece (and by the way, where are the people who keep moaning that I never write about economic policy?) says little about the Tories and a lot about the gullibility of media and public.
Someone calling himself 'Big Al' says: ‘Much as though I enjoy Peter Hitchens's column each week, once again he confuses what he does for a living with work. I have no idea of Mr Hitchens's salary but I'm willing to bet a tenner that he will get more for spending a morning banging out 1200 words than someone working for 40 hours for the minimum wage. If someone works for 40 hours or more a week they deserve to have a living wage.’
I have no idea what words of mine this is supposed to refer to. Can he tell me? And while my ivory tower is indeed very comfortable, I did not ‘berate people who are only three or four wage packets away from the breadline.’ I might add that I do regard what I do for a living as work, though I am daily thankful that I am able to do this sort of work, rather than some of the other types I have sampled (or avoided) in a longish life.
Likewise Mr Simon Fay, who says: ‘For there is work – as the hard-working migrants from Eastern Europe who do so much of it daily prove. It is just not paid at the fantasy wages we seem to think we are entitled to.
‘A glib dismissal of what faces many Brits by someone who doesn't have to compete with anything like as large (and ever-growing) a pool, and someone likely rather better paid than any of those greedy wannabes on the minimum wage. Those most anxious to make Britain part of the Third World are from your echelon, Peter.’
It would be hard to find a more complete misunderstanding of my position. I'm opposed, as I repeatedly say (NB Mr Dodds, now do you see why I need to repeat points?) to mass immigration and do not believe that Poles and other holders of EU passports should be able to travel here to work. I have been known to point out that these migrants would not be so popular with our ruling elite if they were taking the jobs of journalists and politicians. But it is undoubtedly true that these migrants are prepared to do work which British subjects will not do, or are not qualified to do (talk to employers, some time, about why they hire reliable, conscientious Poles, who can read, write and count, even though they are struggling with English, in preference to the products of our comprehensive schools. Cheapness is by no means the only factor). And that is why they are here.
This is an entirely different point from the issue of wage competition. Actually I believe there is very little of this as so many British young people do not wish to work for the wages that Poles accept, and are ill-prepared, by their atrocious schooling, for disciplined hard work anyway. This may not be their fault, but that doesn't make it any less of a fact. Most wage competition takes place when jobs are shifted from this country (and recently Ireland) to Eastern Europe, or China, when established and older workers lose their employment. I am against all this, but it doesn't alter the fact that our society is not producing a new generation of productive workers.
Stephen Hayes writes: ‘On antidepressants and depression, please put yourself in the shoes of a typical British GP. The most common reason for consulting a GP, certainly in the council estate practice where I used to work, was “depression” or some variant of it.
A typical presentation might be “it’s doin' my 'ed in, I can't 'andle it, you've got to give me something!” Telling the patient that there are lots of people worse off than them, to snap out of it, get a hobby or perhaps try church would lead to a complaint. The doctor is hemmed in and has almost no choice but to prescribe fluoxetine (Prozac) or equivalent. Psychological therapies are unaffordable, unavailable, unreliable, and lack the immediacy most patients demand.
‘I am talking about 2 or 3 patients every day coming to see each family doctor complaining - very often in tears - of being unable to cope with life and demanding, expecting and feeling entitled to some medical intervention from the doctor to resolve their emotional pain.
'Obviously, the symptoms of mental ill health (however we define that as, and setting aside the massive question of whether it is normal, even appropriate, to feel depressed in certain circumstances) can be faked deliberately to gain benefit. We read in the Bible that King David feigned madness to escape captivity, so it’s an old trick. A few sobs, pills and a sick note.
'No doctor can prove a patient is not depressed, and to insinuate that they are faking would lead to a complaint. This is a big, big issue - but it’s not just about antidepressants, it’s about our whole modern materialistic and broken way of life.'
I largely agree with him that the issue is fundamentally about our soulless, atomised society, the absence of productive work, family life, genuine networks of friendship and kinship. But the immediate issue is that these worrying pills not only do not deal with these questions, but may have alarming unexplored side-effects.
I think there should be a proper inquiry into this as soon as possible.
In the meantime it is quite wrong for these things to be prescribed.
But he raises another crucial point. If people are unhappy for objective reasons, ie that their lives are unsatisfactory or miserable, it is totalitarian (in a soft, Brave New World way, rather than a hard 1984 way) to dose them into docility and chemical contentment. And therefore it is wrong.
If it is true that no doctor can prove a patient is not depressed, isn't the corollary that no doctor can prove that a patient *is* depressed? Half the problem with this pseudo-science is that the dispensers of these drugs turn out, on examination, to have no real understanding of what they do. And so they give objective physical or chemical doses to people who have no objective bodily symptoms (or had none until they began to take the pills, anyway). The wrongs of society cannot be cured by drugging the individuals who suffer those wrongs. This is not a proper activity for medical doctors.Happy St Crispian's Day, and a few retorts and comments
‘This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian”. Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say “These wounds I had on Crispin's day...”
‘...This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’
Let's prove King Harry right, by remembering it today.
As we forget these things, we forget who we are and cease to be what we used to be. In my view, this makes us worse, not better, than we were before.
Now, to your comments. There is alas a vast backlog, some not even here but in other places on the web which I have found during late night sessions in wonky internet cafes, far, far away.
Alleged Cruelty to, and Intolerance of, Unwed Mothers
Going back two weeks, I recall the sad misunderstanding by some ultra-feminists - who think themselves so righteous that they do not need to consider their positions at all - of my suggestion that we should give nine months' notice of a cessation of benefits for unmarried mothers. Somehow or other, this far from anti-female position is classified as being such, and so dismissed without thought.
Few seemed to get the significance of the nine months. So I will explain it. It's my view that the current state subsidies for unwed motherhood - especially the housing - are an incentive for unmarried pregnancy. Given the current state of British manhood, and the fairly wretched standard of living available to the unskilled worker trying to support a family, it is perfectly reasonable for a young woman to get herself with child and, in effect, become a bride of the state.
The state won't come home drunk and beat her up. The state won't abandon her when her pregnancy first starts to show. The state won't two-time her and dump her. The state will come up with regular, if fairly basic, payments and will provide a roof over her head more or less indefinitely.
So, far from condemning these young women, I am saying that their actions are rational under the laws and conditions created by the state. The female instinct for motherhood is powerful, strong and good. It is the state which has, by destroying the marriage pact and substituting the current arrangements, created a way of life which is, by all statistical measures, likely to be worse for the children who are born into and raised in one-parent households.
If the benefits were withdrawn, and if society once again began to disapprove of women embarking on motherhood without a husband, I believe most (obviously not all) of these young women would not take this course. Those who did would have to take responsibility for themselves, or get their families to do so, or get married. And the long struggle to re-establish marriage, that great cornerstone of liberty and civilisation, could begin.
This raises plenty of other questions. For a start, would I approve if they continued to be promiscuous, and aborted the resulting children? No. I am against abortion, regarding it as the murder of an innocent person, and cannot myself think of any circumstances where adoption would not be better. I am open to argument about cases where the mother's life is threatened by the pregnancy, but I believe such instances are in fact extremely rare in the days of modern medicine (we also get into complex moral questions about intention here, which simply do not arise in the case of the great majority of abortions. In general, the issue is raised to throw dust in the eyes of the gullible).
Apart from my general moral objection, I am also against readily-available abortion because of its propaganda effect. I think its widespread acceptance as backstop contraception (as pioneered in the USSR, where abortions came to outnumber live births), along with the general encouragement of reliance on contraceptives, actually encourages promiscuity. Certainly its availability in recent years has not led to its becoming 'safe, legal and rare', the goal its proponents claim to seek. Rather, it is possibly safe (I think there are doubts about its long-term effects), legal and increasingly common, and in many cases is resorted to many times by the same person.
What about rape victims? Contrary to various lies and misrepresentations spread about me by people who prefer smear to truth, I believe that rapists should be severely punished (though only after fair and unprejudiced jury trials with an effective presumption of innocence). But I do not see why a child conceived in such an act should be condemned to death for an act in which he or she had no possible part.
Yes, I genuinely, truly believe that sexual intercourse should take place only within lifelong marriage. But no, I don't imagine for a moment that a society which enforces this moral view through disapproval of other relationships, and by refusing to subsidise those who breach this code, will be entirely chaste. Of course it won't. Chastity in one's past life is not a requirement for marriage, though a lot of anti-religious people seem to think it is. What is required is fidelity after marriage ('forsaking all other', as the 1662 book requires).
But people will, if they choose another course, have to live with the consequences of their actions and certainly won't get the active encouragement by the state, using other people's money extorted by that state under threat of jail, as they can now. Will such a society be cruel? In some ways, undoubtedly, though generally the cruelty will not in my view be the fault of the laws or the morality, but it will be the fault of those who acted selfishly and in defiance of the moral rule that children should be raised within stable marriages, and that fidelity, constancy and mutual support are superior to promiscuity, serial relationships and the casual abandonment of children.
But it would be nothing like as cruel as what we have now, where the desires and pleasures of adults always trump the needs of children - that great voiceless multitude of victims who suffer from the divorce and promiscuity culture more than anyone, and who revenge themselves on our callous society when they reach adulthood, and are in many cases unable to perform the duties of a civilised human being.
A blogger called 'JDA', in an interesting and largely generous comment on my chapter on this issue in 'The Abolition of Britain', still manages to accuse me of 'intolerance' towards unwed mothers, because I conclude that the stigma against this style of life is necessary. I disagree. My chapter is thoroughly sympathetic to the charities which used to seek better treatment for unmarried mothers and especially for their innocent children. It says that it is quite unfair that illegitimacy should be seen as a fault in the child who is illegitimate. What control did he or she have in this? But there has to be some responsibility somewhere, and surely it lies with the parents of the illegitimate child. And I mean both parents. Parishes used to pursue the fathers of such children quite hotly until we urbanised in the 19th century. DNA now enables us to do the same, if we wish. I believe the great majority of pregnancies are the result of conscious, rational decision. I think it wrong to decide deliberately to raise a child without a father. All studies and statistics show that - in general - children in such households will have poorer life chances than those raised in stable marriages. Heroic individual efforts may overcome this, just as married couples may through negligence or other wickedness destroy the futures of their children. But the dice are heavily loaded against a good outcome in a fatherless home (especially for boys) and it seems plain wrong to me to risk this deliberately.
I am not sure how it adds up to 'intolerance' to be ready to state this publicly. I am not proposing criminal penalties, or the sort of persecution now often visited (for instance) on the disabled by cruel mobs. I am just saying that society must distinguish, if it is to survive, and that is bound to mean that those who choose to raise children outside wedlock suffer some disadvantages in law and status. The fact that I am prepared to say this does not help my case, and I know it. But I think anyone involved in social policy must be ready to accept all the consequences of what he proposes. It is precisely because the Left refuse to do this that they are so blind to the damage that they do. Intolerance is, as far as I know, an unwillingness to tolerate things you do not like. I recognise that in a society based upon lifelong marriage there will be people who will not or cannot conform. I think they should be tolerated and where necessary protected from those who would do them harm. But I do not think they should be encouraged or subsidised, or that children should be taught that these distinctions do not matter. They do.
Defenders of easy divorce often fail to think about what they are saying. Here's an example. Christopher Charles posted: ‘Peter Hitchens's desire to keep everyone married forever is just odd.
‘I was married for 24 years. Towards the end of that time we grew apart, separated and divorced. I don't look back at that as a failure. [Fact is, in an earlier age, one of shorter life expectancy, chances are one of us would have died by then and the marriage would indeed have been 'life long'.] For the most part it was a success.
‘We separated without too much rancour. Within a shortish time we forgave one another and now have cordial relations. Rule number one was never to use the kids [who were both under the age of ten when we separated] as pawns and we haven't. They've grown up healthy, emotionally intelligent and well adjusted. Quite what purpose would have been served by forcing their mother and me to stay together completely baffles me. Perhaps Mr Hitchens could explain?’
Well, here's an attempt. As another contributor has pointed out, Mr Charles is not necessarily typical in having 'never used the kids as pawns'. In fact he is highly untypical. And, though I know nothing of his circumstances and wouldn't dream of commenting upon them, I'd make a couple of cautionary comments. It would presumably be in his interests to believe that his children have grown up 'healthy, emotionally-intelligent and well-adjusted' despite their parents' split. But would everyone else involved agree? Is Mr Charles capable of objectivity on the matter? Or Mrs Charles? And how would the outcome have differed had there been no divorce?
As for 'forcing him and his wife to stay together', lifelong marriage cannot actually do that, and does not. What it does is alter the rules under which people live, promoting unselfishness and strengthening the family and private life at the expense of the state and of greedy commerce.
Even in the days before divorce existed, the Church permitted separation, and so should the state. Anyone can leave if they want to. What was not permitted was remarriage. You made your marriage work, as promised, or you didn't. But there was no remarriage of divorced persons with a living spouse (this is still the official doctrine of the C of E, though it is widely breached). In a society where marriage, and marriage alone, has legal and moral privileges, this matters quite a lot. In our current sexual anarchy, it doesn't really matter at all. Which is why men increasingly avoid marriage as a potential booby-trap in which they can lose everything in return for nothing much, and why women (knowing that men will not commit themselves to lifelong relationships any more) increasingly fear old age, and seek through such things as Botox and cosmetic surgery to hide or postpone it, as their value on the market falls.
If marriage is once and for life, people think harder before getting married. They think harder before getting pregnant. They don't reach for a divorce lawyer as soon as they encounter a bumpy patch, or when they get tired of each other. And women have a huge power over men, which they lose in a promiscuous society. Where sex outside marriage is frowned on and hard to find, men can only get what they want by giving something substantial in return. A serious feminist, concerned with the well-being of women rather than with a revolutionary campaign against the Christian ethic, would see this.
By the way, life expectancy hasn't altered all that much, as any study of old gravestones will tell you. Many people have lived into their 80s for centuries, and stayed married while doing so. Two of my grandparents lived to be nearly 100 years old. I suspect that the current young generation - especially the young women who smoke and drink far more than their grandmothers would ever have thought of doing - will die younger than my lot. The huge reduction in infant mortality thanks to better housing conditions, clean water and medical advances has, however, greatly increased the average lifespan. I am amazed that this silly suggestion, that our forebears didn't live very long, is repeated so often.
I don't expect most of my critics to pay any attention to any of this, except to mine it for quotes which they can misunderstand and misrepresent in ways that suit them. But I felt it necessary to state it anyway.A chainsaw massacre... where the cost cutters end up spending £92bn MORE
Sunday, 31 October 2010
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