Britannia Radio

13 November 2010 6:24 PM

Poor old IDS...a decent man who’s been conned by the Fake Conservatives

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

For many years, most British Governments have followed a policy best called Fake Conservatism. This involves loudly pretending to do what the public wants. But while the country is distracted by these stunts and spectaculars, the Cabinet gets on with its real task of turning Britain into a multi-culti socialist Euro-Province.

That is why the most painful example of this policy is the vainglorious and often damaging use by Anthony Blair of our once-superb Armed Forces, in places where Britain has no national interest.

Meanwhile, he compelled those same Armed Forces to surrender to the criminal gang called the IRA, the only recent war in which our soldiers were used for proper national ends. He also crippled them with cuts.

Then there was Blunkettism. This began with a pretence that we were going to ‘sack bad teachers’, ‘raise school standards’ and so on, though of course continuing to ban selection by ability, the only thing that would do any good.

All that in fact happened was a great deal of testing, whose results were promptly rigged to suggest success. The outcome was that illiteracy, classroom disorder and low standards continued exactly as before, if not worse.

But before this was obvious, David Blunkett had moved on to the area of crime. Here too he was highly successful in improving the statistics, without improving the conditions.

Then there was terrorism, a perfect area for distraction. The Government could pretend to protect us against Osama Bin Laden, or some other sinister, hooded, bearded person crouched in a cave in Yemen, while failing to protect our homes against burglars – and so look decisive and ‘tough’.

We reached the stage long ago when most thinking people could spot that this stuff was false coinage. Any sensible adult, hearing the word ‘crackdown’, instantly suspects that he is being gulled. But most of the media, being happy to act as the spokesmen and spokeswomen of power, duly report this bilge as if it were true.

Well, now we have the same thing happening with welfare. Mr Blair’s New Labour Government is ably headed by his understudy David Cameron – while Mr Blair is on leave of absence addressing conventions of lavatory-paper makers. And among its many mini-Blunketts is poor old Iain Duncan Smith, a decent man fallen among liberals. IDS has indeed thought a lot about welfare.

But his colleagues forbade him to think about the real problem. This is that, since the catastrophic Labour Government of 1964-1970, the welfare state has deliberately encouraged parasitism, as well as flooding the country with professional social workers.

Nor can he actually do anything about the suicidal subsidy to single-mother families, which has helped destroy fatherhood and wreck our society.

So the IDS scheme will not work, and is certainly not the ‘historic’ document the servile BBC makes it out to be. But for a while it will stave off demands for a real reform. And when we wake up to the truth, we will be another dozen irrecoverable steps down the dark and crumbling stairway that leads to national extinction.

Sorry about that. I did warn you what would happen if you voted Tory.

Finally, a ‘family’ that Hollywood approves of

So that you don’t have to, I have been to see the cosy lesbian film The Kids Are All Right, currently top of the cinema charts among our fashionable elite. I can’t really recommend it, mainly because of the needless amount of four-letter language and the equally needless bedroom scenes, during which I checked my (silent) mobile phone for text messages and missed calls.

But it does contain some interesting things. It portrays a stable, two-parent family sympathetically, and assumes it is a good thing and deserves to survive. Hollywood doesn’t do this for heterosexual marriage, preferring to defame the respectable suburbs in such rubbish as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road. It hints humorously at the possibility that even a lesbian couple aren’t all that wild about one of their children turning out to be homosexual. It notices the cool, grown-up contempt many of today’s young feel for their babyish, spoiled, Sixties-generation parents. And it is remarkably just and condemnatory about the cruel selfishness of men who don’t take fatherhood seriously.

The superficially charming sperm-donor character, who reappears in his offspring’s lives, is eventually dismissed by one of them with the quietly devastating words: ‘I wish you’d been better.’

I think today’s young are entitled to say that about my entire generation.

Did the Milibands really wear it with pride?

Edward Miliband and his Unwife are pictured with their new baby in posed shots. Father and mother are both, weirdly, wearing Remembrance Poppies on their indoor clothes (in her case, possibly her nightie).

Some questions arise. Why isn’t the baby wearing one? And are we supposed to believe that these people – one the atheist scion of one of Britain’s most glacially Marxist families, the other a pointedly unmarried London trendy – are wearing poppies because of their conservative pro-military patriotism? Or because the British Left have decided that this is a good way to try to fool people that they are really normal?

Personally I prefer the honest position taken by Channel 4 News’s Jon Snow, who says he will wear his poppy in church but not on TV.

In these days when parliamentary whips hand out poppies to MPs, and the BBC hands them out to guests, they are no longer a sign that you have given to the British Legion. So not wearing one (and this year I started to do so only on Thursday)

is not a sign that you haven’t given.

Don’t swallow the riot baloney

Speaking as a former student rioter, who has repented of his ways, I would advise the Government to pay absolutely no attention to such people – let alone to accept the baloney that such events, mostly involving sons of the suburbs, are a sign of real discontent. Riots in free countries are not deep expressions of woe or oppression. They are a bit of fun for those taking part.

Every time I read about the so-called Poll-Tax Riots, reverently described as some sort of turning point, I grind my teeth. There may have been problems with the Poll Tax (though after 20 years of the deeply unfair Council Tax, maybe it deserves another look). And it may have played badly in the focus groups. But if anyone in Government was – or is now – influenced by the irruption of a load of violent, destructive yahoos into Central London, they should be ashamed of themselves.

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How the Chinese dictatorship must chortle at the idea that Britain is in a position to lecture Peking about its persecution of dissenters. Having chased us out of Hong Kong by merely frowning, China knows that our pretence of being a major world player is just that. If Mr Cameron is really concerned with liberty, there is much work to be done at home. In any case, giving a man moral advice while asking him for business is never a good idea.

November 13, 2010

12 November 2010 4:47 PM

More Impartiality and More Debate on the BBC

Those who read the previous posting may want to know about the remarkable sequel. The BBC Radio 4 programme 'Feedback', on Friday 5th November, broadcast a pre-recorded item which was severely critical of my intervention in the 'Today' programme four days before. You may listen here. The item begins at about two minutes 50 seconds into the programme and continues for about six minutes.

I objected strenuously to the fact that no attempt had been made to contact me about this, or to give me an opportunity to answer my critics (listeners will hear that such an opportunity was offered to Stephen Fry, who was criticised in the same programme - though he chose not to take it).

As a result of my complaints, and those of some others, the 12th November edition of the programme, to which you can listen here, offered me the opportunity to respond. The item is trailed at the very beginning, and commences a few minutes into the transmission.

I will say no more about this at present, but hope it may stimulate a rather more interesting debate about the nature of BBC bias, if it exists, than has been had here before. On Monday I intend to post a transcript of the key section of the 5th November programme.

10 November 2010 5:00 PM

Impartiality and Debate on the BBC

Some days ago, on Monday November 1, I was invited on to the BBC Radio 4 'Today' programme to discuss a report published by (among others) Professor David Nutt. Professor Nutt has been discussed here before and is known for his radical approach to the current laws on drugs. His report rather eye-catchingly suggested that alcohol is the most damaging drug available in Britain.

I would have posted the link to this broadcast long ago, but it has been broken since the programme was transmitted and was only fixed today, after I made e-mail and telephone pleas for this to be done. It has now been fixed (my thanks to Andy Walker at Radio 4, who took great trouble to see that this was done) so it can be found here.

From the chair, could I stress that I am not interested in rehearsing the arguments on this subject which have been held here more times than I care to remember. They are a dialogue of the deaf because the pro-drug advocates are making a moral case - for a society willing to pay the large penalties of unrestricted hedonism, widespread intoxication and undeserved pleasure, because that is what it likes.

But they will not admit this, and instead make their case under the cover of legalistic arguments, attempts to blur existing moral boundaries with obfuscation, and debatable versions of history (and indeed of present events). They also tend to pretend that they have no interest in the outcome of the debate, which I find incredible given their passion for their side of it.

What I wish to debate here (and I will respond only to postings on this subject) is the way in which the BBC handled the matter.

I have no idea what Professor Nutt seeks or wants. But I am in no doubt that reports such as his serve the purposes of the lobby I describe above. And it is my view that the BBC and much of the media accord them far greater status than they deserve.

Alas, the news bulletins of that day are not available on the web, so far as I know. If they were, it would be possible to show that the BBC gave the report great prominence and treated it as a serious contribution to science. They also made no substantial mention of Professor Nutt's controversial past, and accepted at face value the standing of the self-styled 'Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs'. Independent of whom or what?

Well, which of the hard experimental, predictive sciences is it based on? Certainly not Physics, Chemistry or Biology, or any of their subdivisions. It looks more like Sociology, that abstract and subjective discipline, to me. And even I have an 'A' level in that. It somehow manages to combine stomach ulcers, needles littering the streets, deforestation, road traffic accidents, absenteeism, domestic violence, blood-borne viruses, the decline in social cohesion, child neglect and many other disparate factors in its judgement. It claims to have devised a formula under which all these things are given their correct weighting in determining the danger of a particular drug.

How? Well, I quote from the section headed ‘Scoring of the drugs on the criteria’, which describes part of the process thus:

‘Consistency checking is an important part of proper scoring, since it helps to minimise bias in the scores and encourages realism in the scoring. Even more important is the discussion of the group, since scores are often changed from those originally suggested as participants share their different experiences and revise their views.’

Is this objective experimental science? Are all of the categories studied even susceptible to objective measurement in the first place, let alone meaningfully combined with others (even if they are more readily measurable) which are wholly different?

I could not see, when I read the material, how this could possibly be given the weight accorded to a paper which recounted scientific experiments and their results conducted under laboratory conditions. In which case, why does it qualify for such uncritical reverence?

In his introduction to the item, Justin Webb said: ‘We are being told today that alcohol is a more dangerous drug than heroin or crack cocaine, not of course to an individual user but to society generally. The message comes from Professor David Nutt, the former chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs who with colleagues on the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs has produced a very serious scientifically-argued attack on current drugs legislation or at least the way we view it.’

Note that description. ‘Very serious, scientifically-argued.’

Please listen to the whole item. Note that when I say there is no ‘war on drugs’ Mr Webb interjects: ‘Of course there is.’

And note that Professor Nutt also avers at the end: ‘They (the Government) need to accept the fact that the Misuse of Drugs Act is way past its sell by date. We need to completely review the way in which we deal with all drugs, not just illegal drugs because that's an arbitrary and non-scientific division. We need to review the whole way in which society regulates, controls, reduces the harms of drugs.’

09 November 2010 10:05 AM

Work and Welfare, War and Remembrance

I'm distracted at the moment by various efforts to defend myself against misrepresentation, unfair attack and attempts at censorship. So I'll just offer a few brief comments on major topics of the moment.

I am unconvinced by plans to compel welfare recipients to go out and do such jobs as clearing up the mess in parks. This seems to me to fail on several counts. I'd be interested to see convicted vandals put to such work, specifically to scrubbing away the wall-paintings grandly known as 'graffiti', though I don't think it could be achieved without prison discipline. My knowledge of 'community service' projects suggests that it is very hard to get offenders to do a good diligent job, and that supervision of such things is often half-hearted, as the supervisors often don't believe very strongly in what they are doing, and have no real sanction if they do.

The other is that surely local authorities should be tackling such tasks themselves. Park-keepers, street-sweepers and other such people are vital to making a place look loved, a key part of maintaining order and civilisation. It is absurd that they should have been allowed to sack such staff in recent years, while keeping so many overpaid bureaucrats and politically correct timeservers on the public payroll. If these jobs are now to be done only by long-term claimants (or offenders) it will be very hard to get anyone to feel pride in doing them for a living wage, as should be the case.

In fact one of the main difficulties at the heart of Iain Duncan Smith's schemes is its reliance on a belief that somehow jobs will become available in this country in the private sector, and that the welfare state can be used to cure itself, without any fundamental attack on its central pillar. That central pillar is the welfare state's attempt to replace the married family, and especially the male breadwinner, with state subsidies. This has been combined with a general effort to feminise the workforce, and to compel young mothers to go out to work, whether single or married, as if this was definitely a good thing.

Together with that, as previously discussed, has come the effort to cover up national economic decline, and the inability to pay tolerable wages at the bottom end of the scale, which results from it, by encouraging mass immigration and allowing many such immigrants to do the low-wage jobs while living in squalid overcrowded circumstances which are largely uninvestigated. Meanwhile, people born here who could in theory do these jobs while still living at home are so badly educated, and so discouraged from work by the welfare culture, that there is little point in them working.

And in the meantime many households - especially those with one female parent alone - are essentially dependent on state handouts simply to survive. Making them work, and dump their children in dubious baby farms and day-orphanages, means that from at least having one parent at home, their poor innocent children now have none.

Unless these fundamental wrongs are put right, by serious restraints on mass immigration, a true reform of schools, and a serious attempt to end the persecution of the married family by the state and the courts, and the deliberate subsidising of rival forms of household, IDS's scheme will, in my view, amount to little. It is treating some of the symptoms without in any way trying to cure the basic disease. But there is a great wave of justifiable discontent among those in work against the huge taxes they have to pay, often to support neighbours who are plainly and visibly parasites. So apparently 'tough' measures of these may well be popular, even if they do not work. This is what conservatism is reduced to by the TV culture and mass democracy.

I find myself surprisingly sympathetic to Jon Snow, the Channel Four News presenter who is resisting clamour to make him wear a Remembrance Poppy on the TV. Mr Snow says rightly that we fought for the freedom to have any views we like, and not to be told to wear things. And the absurd early poppy-wearing by TV presenters and politicians this year has put me off wearing one myself - though I'll probably don one on Thursday, the actual Remembrance Day, and again on Sunday, when it is more thoroughly commemorated.

This is despite the fact that Mr Snow once called me a 'Hitlerite' at Keflavik Airport, because I didn't share his views on the failure of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik (I was delighted it had flopped, not being convinced at the time that Mr Gorbachev's intentions were genuine, and also fearing that President Reagan was perhaps a little naive).

Gosh, how long ago all that seems, that ridiculous gathering where the Soviet Zils were too big for the USSR's tiny embassy garage in Reykjavik, and I swam across a volcanically heated swimming pool to test claims that Raisa Gorbachev spoke English (she didn't), and the Icelandic police, keeping us away from the summit site with jolly good humour in a furious gale, shouting: 'You see, this place shouldn't be called Iceland - it should be called 'Windland'. They were right. The hotels were so crowded that I stayed instead as a paying guest with a delightful Icelandic family, who told incessant jokes about their rather wonderful small country.

But I digress. Readers of my book 'The Rage Against God', will find in there a description of the Remembrance Days of my childhood which had a power and poignancy they lack today. This was partly because at that time most adults had direct experience of war, and the grief was still raw and unhealed. And partly because we, and our cities, looked more sombre and dark, and the red of the poppies was more evocative and startling against the sooty buildings and universally dark clothes. I still find the moment when the great guns are fired off and the silence begins almost unbearable. But I don't think it an excuse for political humbug.