Britannia Radio

27 January 2011 12:22 PM

Delusions amid the Pyramids

My own experience of Egypt is limited to seeing a demonstration broken up by plainclothes police thugs who later overpowered my photographer colleague Phil Ide and stripped him of thousands of pounds’ worth of equipment (not to mention the fruits of a day's hard work) which he did not recover for many months. Luckily they weren't interested in me at all. These people are above the law and will happily rough up foreigners as well as their 'own' people.

The demonstration, just after Friday prayers in a poor and dusty district of Southern Cairo, was - oddly enough - against the Iraq war. The Egyptian government receives enormous subsidies from the USA (I think around £1,500,000,000 a year, much of it in the form of weapons) in return for maintaining its 'Cold Peace' with Israel, and regards attacks on Washington as attacks on itself.

I spoke to quite a few of the protestors, who were friendly, articulate people of both sexes and all ages, until the state musclemen burst into the cafe where I was and started to arrest them ( again, they weren't interested in me).

So I think I can say I have no special fondness for the Mubarak regime. Like every Arab regime I know of, it relies ultimately upon brute force. That brute force defends a system which is extremely corrupt and inefficient, in which free speech, free assembly and the liberty to organise opposition are more or less forbidden, though a sort of token opposition is permitted to function, and its leaders seem surprisingly resigned to spending long periods in the country's unlovely prisons.

But I am amazed at the way in which Western journalists and politicians now seem to be encouraging street protests against that regime. What do they think will happen? Who do they think will benefit? What do they expect the long-term result to be?

Egypt does not have a western-type civil society waiting to step into the gap left when the Mubarak state falls. The most potent opposition movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, and the most popular cause is enraged hatred of the neighbouring State of Israel. Since Egypt is heavily armed and right next to Israel (and Gaza) would it necessarily be a good idea to encourage events which might install an Islamist government in Cairo?

Those who support dissent in Islamic countries really ought to have learned by now that the will of the people in these places is not necessarily in our favour. Western opinion was largely sympathetic to the 1979 rising against the Shah of Persia, until it realised far too late what would replace it. They're all sorry now. A couple of years ago a great deal of sentimental tosh was talked about a wave of democracy in the Middle East, supposedly comparable to the peaceful overthrow of Soviet-backed regimes in eastern Europe in 1989. This was supposedly inspired by the 'success' of our imposition of a Shia majority government in Iraq, a story which has not yet reached its end and which will not – I here predict - end happily.

Much gush was penned and spoken about a 'Cedar Tree' Revolution' in Lebanon, which was boldly rejecting the sinister presence of Syria on its territory, etc etc. I sighed when I heard this, as I sigh when I hear the current wave of enthusiasm for events in Tunisia and Egypt. And I was right to sigh, for Lebanon is now under the control of a Hizbollah government, closer than ever to Syria (and to Iran) and silly dreams of a new dawn are all dissipated, as they were bound to be.

Otto von Bismarck is supposed to have said that if you enjoyed either sausages or politics you should make sure you never saw either of them being made. The same is true of diplomacy. If you don't like propping up nasty regimes, don't go in for foreign policy. The only genuine and serious conclusion, for those who truly want to make the world a better place, is to pursue a policy of enlightened imperialism. But is this realistic? Ask yourself a few questions? Are you convinced enough of the superiority of our civilisation to feel you have the moral right to impose it on others by force? Think we can afford it? Fancy serving in the enormous armed forces necessary to impose it, or paying the huge taxes needed to finance those forces, or allowing your relatives to be conscripted into those forces? Are you prepared to stay forever?

If the answer to any of these questions is 'no', then please be so kind as to stop pretending to care about the woes of the Third World. You don't mean it. You're trying to make yourself feel good, not to do good.

Meanwhile the best motto for dealing with nasty regimes in the Middle East remains, as it always was, Hilaire Belloc's words: ‘Always keep a hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.’ Literary types will know what happened to poor Jim, who ignored this sensible advice. He was devoured ('slowly eaten, bit by bit, no wonder Jim detested it') by a Lion.

24 January 2011 12:38 PM

General musings

Being profoundly bored by scandal, which is the main feature of the news today, I thought I would write about small matters. I was dragged from sleep at 4.30 on Sunday morning when the TV set in my hotel room suddenly switched itself on. I have no idea why it did this. It had been on when I came into the room (this is often the case these days) and I had immediately switched it off. But this plainly wasn't enough.

Rosamund Pike as Helen in 'An Education'

I fumbled my way across the room and pulled out every plug I could find. The experience increased my feeling that we really are not in control of anything much - like those slightly sinister times when advanced computers start correcting your typing before you have time to do so, or the horrible moment when your phone switches to predictive text (mine does this without my asking it to) and tries to tell you what you want to say.

The actual phone has been known to switch itself on after I have quite definitely switched it off (once doing so in the middle of a Remembrance day service I happened to be attending). Not to mention the fact that the simple, hard-wearing phone I really liked, which did the few things I wanted and nothing else, is now no longer manufactured.

Nor is its charger, which always worked, and which has been replaced by a new model which often mysteriously stops charging if a hamster sneezes in the vicinity, so causing a tiny tremor which shakes the jack loose.

This is one of the many reasons for my doubts about the idea that 'market forces', left to themselves, will make us all free and happy. In fact, 'market forces' often seem to me to be rather like East Germany with a good PR company and more efficient distribution. East German cities used to have uniform high streets in which the same basic goods were available everywhere, or not available, in more or less identical shops. So do we, except that we have an illusion of variety. And before anyone goes on about fresh fruit and vegetables, I have been virtually unable to find a fresh Cox's Orange Pippin apple this season (a pulpy, smooth-skinned impostor which tastes as if it has been in a chiller for ten years and goes soft in a day, is offered under this name, but it is not a proper rough-skinned Cox) and only a very few decent Russets. Foreign varieties, often from the far side of the world, are sold here even during the English apple season.

You will have this. That razor that worked has been improved, and replaced by another one that is far more expensive and actually not as good. The marmalade that you like has been wiped off the stock list of all the (supposedly competitive) supermarket chains, and can now only be obtained by mail order via the United States, though it is made in Manchester.

Now I gather that Pears Soap has been utterly transformed, though it is still sold as if it were the same thing as before. Despite having a large nose, I have failed to notice that it smells quite different. What I have noticed is that it now comes sealed in an unnecessary plastic bag, and is a cloudy, almost milky brown instead of the old dark but translucent colour. And, though this is hard to measure, I don't think it lasts as long as it used to.

Nobody asked me about this. The free market couldn't give a curse about what I think or want but instead spends billions on trying to make me want what it makes. If I stop buying it, will anyone care? Keith Waterhouse used to expostulate, when told that there was 'no call' for some product that he wanted but which had been discontinued 'well, I am calling for it'. And, when some call centre claims that 'nobody's complained about this before', my brother always retorts 'Well, you won’t be able to say that the next time, will you?' Such ripostes make us all feel good, but do they change anything?

I was in a hotel on Sunday night because I was appearing on the Andrew Marr show, to do the newspaper review. There is a story behind this, which I can now tell. A few weeks ago, as some of you noticed, the author Ken Follett appeared on the same programme, also reviewing the papers.

He chose to give an inaccurate account of an article I had written in my MoS column, about Keith Richards. And on the basis of this misrepresentation he continued, unchallenged, about what a generally stupid person I was. Now, if I had written what he'd said I had written, I would indeed have been stupid. But I didn't. Since Mr Follett had the offending article in his hand when he said what he said, viewers would have been entitled to assume he was quoting me correctly. Those who read my column would know he was incorrect. But what about the others?

And when I protested, the BBC offered me the chance to go on the programme to put the matter right. This is another step forward, and another sign that the Corporation is trying harder to be fair.

There was an unexpected bonus out of this. We were invited to breakfast afterwards (nothing specially grand) but I found myself sitting opposite Rosamund Pike, an actress I have long admired - especially for her superlative performance in the film 'An Education' - and who I think will get better and better as the years go by, so that I will be able to boast that I once met her.

And then I had to spend much of Monday morning (beginning before dawn) going through the final stage of the long procedure now needed to renew a US Visa. Now, I have no complaints at all about this in itself. I think all countries should be very careful who they let in. And my August 1969 arrest for being in possession of an offensive weapon (four plastic lavatory ballcocks, since you ask, and no, I didn't do anything with them and it's a long, not specially exciting story whose high point involves me trying to eat a fried egg with a spoon in Cannon Row police station) quite reasonably alarms US law-enforcement bodies. As I get closer and closer to qualifying for a senior citizen's railpass, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a straight face while trying to explain this moment to youthful consular officials. They look at me narrowly, as if I were trying to wind them up.

I just wish that Britain made it as tough for foreign passport-holders to get in here as the US does there. And that the US would do something about the vast illegal immigration (followed by amnesties) which it tolerates from Latin America. I don't at all mind filling in all those forms or even giving the USA my fingerprints, provided everyone else has to do the same.

22 January 2011 9:15 PM

Staffed up like the Chinese army, the Sickness Maintenance Service

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

We have forgotten what the NHS is for. Most of us, I suspect, are wearied by talk of more reforms. We suspect this will mean a lot of new signboards and more bureaucracy.

Various dogma-driven politicians have pushed the health service this way and that for half a century, and I do not think they have done much good.

We mix up sentiment with argument. Of course our hospitals contain plenty of hard-working and competent people. But they are not, mostly, doing their work for nothing.

While we should be glad that they help us when we are injured, ill or afraid, this is what we hire them to do. We don’t condemn the whole NHS because of one bungle (and there are plenty of those).

So we shouldn’t canonise it because of one good experience.

The worst thing is that it has become a cult. This is because it is the one lonely success that socialists can point to.

They have wrecked the state schools, made a colossal mess of housing, given us one of the worst transport systems in the Western world and corrupted a generation with welfare. But at least medical treatment is free to all at the point of use.

And so it is. And, having actually lived in the USA and experienced the alternative, I am glad of that. But I know from conversations with senior doctors that levels of surgical competence in our hospitals are falling fast, partly because of poorer training and partly because of the effects of EU limits on working time.

Most of us, if we are honest, also know that standards of nursing are far lower than
they used to be, because proper nursing relies on virtues of discipline, obedience and conscientiousness that have vir¬tually disappeared from our culture. The people who do the job think that its most necessary tasks are beneath them, a problem in almost every trade and profession these days.

Criticism of this kind never makes any impression. This is partly because of the sacred character of the NHS among the socialist-minded people who rule our culture. But it is also because of its true, unmentionable function in politics.

It exists first of all to employ people, and only after that to tend to the sick. That is why it is now the largest employer in the world after the Chinese army and Indian railways.

But it is not in fact a Health Service. It is a Sickness Maintenance Service. Despite all the billions spent and borrowed, we long ago stopped getting healthier.

Much of the original work of the Forties health service involved treating the victims of dangerous, dirty and unhealthy industries, or of slum conditions, which left men and women broken and sick by the time they were in their 60s.

Now, when those industries and such slums have vanished, we are all unhealthy for completely different reasons. We seek ill health in our daily lives, and duly achieve it.

My nearest hospital has to be reached by passing through two concentric rings. The first is that of the smokers, piously barred from the hospital grounds, who are working hard on becoming patients in the cancer and cardiology wards.

And then there are the acres of car park, filled with thousands of the machines which we use to avoid the exercise that would ward off so many of the ills we suffer.

A real health service would reduce the taxes of those who looked after themselves, rather than waiting for people to fall predictably sick and then cutting them up or cramming them with expensive pills. But even to discuss this is to be accused of sacrilege, so it’s probably not worth bothering.

It’s not a phobia, Baroness – just reasoned debate

Should Muslims adapt to Britain, or should Britain adapt to Muslims?

The answer is obvious to me, but David Cameron’s appointment of Sayeeda Warsi to several high positions suggests he wants Britain to drown its past in multiculturalism.

Baroness Warsi’s weird outburst about dinner parties and Islamophobia came only a few days after she made a great fool of herself by unjustly denouncing her own party’s ‘Right wing’ for not working hard enough in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. It will make it difficult for the Tory leader to sack her (could she have thought of this?) without himself being accused of ‘Islamophobia’ by gullible twits.

We’re all quite entitled to distinguish between extreme and moderate Muslims, and to object to Sharia law, to polygamy, to the third-rate legal position of women in Islam and the merciless treatment of those who convert out of the Muslim faith.

This isn’t a ‘phobia’ but a reasoned disagreement about what kind of country we wish to live in.

But every cloud has a silver lining. Baroness Warsi is an asset to people like me, who carry on getting up each morning largely because they hope the Tory Party will collapse in a politically correct heap, and don’t want to die before this happens.

The ‘soft’ drug myth laid bare

I long for the day when the selfish people who make light of the dangers of cannabis meet justice face to face. They desire that their own greasy pleasure should be licensed, not caring that its ready availability in every school is actively ruining young lives. They are happy to sacrifice other people for their own convenience, a shameful thing.

But I wish even more that some of them would read Patrick and Henry Cockburn’s account in today’s Mail on Sunday’s Section 2 of Henry’s own descent into distressing mental illness. Patrick is one of the finest writers of his generation, a quietly courageous reporter who ventures often into terrifying places and makes no fuss about it.

In honest prose, chilly and clear as spring water, he describes exactly what happens to a family when a clever, happy and engaging child has his reason overthrown. Henry himself bravely gives his own version of events.

I think there is little doubt that cannabis, its easy availability and its false image as a harmless and ‘soft’ substance, are to blame for what happened. It will probably make you cry when you read it. I rather hope it does.

But above all, I hope that it makes a complacent generation think again about this grave menace.


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The simple question the Chilcot Inquiry won’t ask Anthony Blair, but should:
‘Isn’t the truth that you were too scared of Washington’s wrath to pull out of the Iraq invasion, even though you knew it was illegal?’


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As I suspected they would, the Christian hotel owners, Peter and Hazelmary Bull, came off worse in their courtroom struggle against Politically Correct Britain.

The law believes such people have no right to follow their own morals, except in private. The law also now states that homosexual partnerships are equal to heterosexual marriage, which New Labour tried to pretend was not the case.

Perhaps most importantly, the homosexual couple had their action paid for by us. Britain’s embryonic Thought Police, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, provided the money on your behalf and mine, whether we like it or not.

This is not the end of the revolution we are passing through. By the time it is finished, I will not be allowed to write or say this. Don’t believe me? Wait and see.