It was the Home Office, on Page 14 of Sex Offending Against Children: Understanding The Risk, published by the Policing and Reducing Crime Unit in 1998. I have a copy. For saying roughly the same thing, Dr Hans-Christian Raabe has just been sacked – by the Home Office – from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). That’s right. He has been sacked from a body to do with drugs, for having unfashionable views about sex, views that the Home Office has itself espoused. A pathetic creature called James Brokenshire has allowed his name to be put to the letter that formally dismisses Dr Raabe. This is the first known instance of anyone being fired from a Government post under the provisions of Harriet Harman’s Equality Act 2010, Section 149, though I don’t think it will be the last. Mr Broken Reed did not actually sign the wretched epistle, as a smudged rubber stamp indicates. I don’t blame him. It is a cowardly document and so sloppily prepared it even manages to misspell Dr Raabe’s address. Dr Raabe is accused of having expressed ‘controversial’ views on homosexuality and of having ‘failed to declare them’, though they are traceable in seconds on the internet and he had no good reason to think they had anything to do with his appointment. It has come to something when a man is required to guess which past words of his may be regarded as ‘controversial’ when seeking a state appointment, and be dismissed for getting such a riddle wrong. I have spent several days trying to discover exactly what the Home Office means by ‘controversial’ in this case, or who defines this word. No reply. I think we should also wonder why it is a sacking offence, in a free society, to be controversial. When I asked them if their own publication’s words on the subject were ‘controversial’, they wouldn’t say. They’re hiding something. And what they are hiding is this. That when the Prime Minister defined himself the other day as a ‘muscular liberal’, he meant exactly what he said. The official ideology of Britain, from Downing Street downwards, is a militant and highly intolerant political correctness, originating in Marxist thought and forced on us by EU directives (so much for ‘Euroscepticism’). Interestingly, this miserable dogma is all he has to offer in response to the growing challenge of Islam in our streets and in our culture. Not centuries of Christian tradition, and the heritage of Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, but ‘equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality’. The affair of Dr Raabe is one of the most fascinating episodes of modern times. The doctor, who is German-born and so at least can’t be accused of ‘xenophobia’, works in a poor district of Manchester and observes every day in damaged lives the dismal effects of the law’s feeble attitude to supposedly illegal drugs. He can see for himself that the official policy of ‘harm reduction’ is actively doing harm. His appointment to the ACMD (to a seat reserved specifically for a GP) was a great moment for every mother and father who wants the State to stop complacently accepting mass drug abuse as an unalterable fact, and instead to help keep their children safe from the little packets of madness on sale at the school gates. It was a great blow to the selfish, irresponsible people who have for years spread the false idea that drugs can be taken safely, and denied the growing evidence from the mental hospitals that many young cannabis-users go irreversibly, horribly mad. His dismissal is a great loss to those who care about the lives and minds of the young. I will reserve for another time an examination of the fascinating role of a senior figure in the supposedly impartial BBC in what happened next. He deserves a lot of time to himself, and I shall get round to that. But let us say that a campaign to remove Dr Raabe, boosted by anonymous misty threats of resignations from the ACMD, roared rapidly into action. And that, preferring political correctness to an honest, decent doctor worth dozens of any of them, this Government swiftly bowed to that campaign. And that the person directly responsible for this grovelling hawked himself to the people of Old Bexley and Sidcup as a ‘Conservative’. And they believed him. It would be funny if it were not so disgusting. The tune is that of an old English 18th Century boozing song, supposed to be accompanied by the loud banging of mugs on tables. The grandiose lyrics describe a Royal Navy assault on Baltimore in the days when we still admitted we were rivals, before they invented the ‘Special Relationship’. My mind was on other things, so it took me a while to work out why I found the sight so jarring. Then it came to me. Men don’t wear hats in church (except for bishops, and policemen usually aren’t bishops). Had they been searching a mosque, they would doubtless have been briefed on cultural sensitivities and carefully taken off their shoes. Since it was one of the great sites of English Christianity, nobody bothered to wonder. Multiculturalism means our national religion being treated worse than those of ethnic minorities. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click here and scroll down.
13 February 2011 12:05 AM
Why, Mr Broken Reed, is being controversial a sacking offence?
Share this article:
10 February 2011 4:10 PM
Justice for 'Bert'! Mr Everett's campaign to Free the Peloponnesian One
Share this article:
An Old Lie Resurfaces
Share this article:
09 February 2011 3:57 PM
Never Let Me Go
Share this article:
Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!
Share this article:
07 February 2011 2:36 PM
An Interesting Contrast
Share this article:
Multiculturalism, Stalingrad Revisited, Death on the Nile, the Peloponnesian War, the Measure of Moral Worth and Other Minor Issues
Share this article:
Diddums, Dididides and Landfill
Sunday, 13 February 2011
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column
Who said these words? ‘Approximately 20 to 33 per cent of child sexual abuse is homosexual in nature.’ I will tell you.
Never mind, Christina... it’s only an old boozing song
I’m not surprised that poor Christina Aguilera messed up the American national anthem. It’s actually rather hard to sing. This dubious anti-British hymn is beset with many problems.
There seems to be a rule that the most troubled countries have the best anthems. Germany vies with Russia for the most moving. While God Save The Queen (thank heaven) is as dumpy and uncharismatic as the monarchs it celebrates.
Bobbies with no respect
Slipping into York Minster at daybreak on Sunday, I was surprised to see police officers in baseball caps roaming purposefully around the mighty building. They were conducting a search before a military service of some kind later in the day.
But most striking of all was the response of North Yorkshire Police, who said it was all about health and safety: ‘The headwear that you refer to is actually a reinforced ‘‘bump cap’’ which provides protection for specialist search officers. As these officers operate in confined spaces as they go about their duty to ensure public safety, it is a requirement to wear the caps to prevent head injuries.’
Oxbridge goes comp
Oxford and Cambridge are not going to be forced to take more poor students in return for raising their fees. They are going to be forced to lower their standards. This was bound to happen. Once the Tory Party voted to make new grammar schools illegal, the universities were doomed to go comprehensive too.
*********************
The huge amounts of anti-social behaviour revealed by the new police website, and previously unknown, solve the mystery of why official crime figures have been going down. What we call crime, they call ‘anti-social behaviour’.
In response to the pettifogging of Mr Everett:
He complains that the affair of 'Bert' is 'not well-referenced'. True, it's a pity there is no index entry for 'Landfill'. That's because there's a limit on the number of subjects in the index and I have reached it.
But without it, I found the following, with ease:
1. The dispute defined (high in the entry 'Thucy Did...')
His (Bert's) exact words were: '[first quoting me)] "as a country, we [Britain] had no serious difficulties with landfill". That’s just not true.'
NB, the words were not: 'He is mistaken' Or, 'I believe he may be mistaken' or 'the words are inaccurate'. They are the bald assertion 'That's just not true'. This form of words first of all accuses me of uttering an untruth, that is to say of telling a lie. Secondly it suggests that 'Bert' at the time of his declaration, possessed information on which he could make and substantiate this serious charge. All he has ever come up with is some stuff about having heard somewhere unspecified about an unquantified shortage of landfill at one location (West Cornwall, I seem to recall).
2. My rebuttal of the assertion by 'Bert':
‘The blogger “Raedwald” (who together with Richard North has been assisting me on the landfill matter) has been in touch with me to provide updated figures, and sources.
The main source for his figures on extraction (he has recently posted an update) is British Geological Survey, UK Minerals Yearbook 2009.
The latest figures for extraction (coming from this source) are:
242 million tons per year , equalling 150 million cubic yards of new space created.
He concludes (and I recommend a visit to his blog [Raedwald.Blogspot.com] dated Saturday 5th February for a full analysis and detailed references):
“1.The UK has some 819 million cubic metres [1078 million cubic yards] of licensed landfill capacity, sufficient for over 11 years of waste at current levels
2. The UK's potential landfill capacity is increasing at the rate of 114 million cubic metres [150 million cubic yards] a year, a surplus of some 42 million cubic metres [55 million cubic yards] a year over and above our annual landfill waste disposal needs
3. There is no shortage of landfill in the UK.” ’
Posted on the 'Thucy Did…’ thread by me on 5th February at 12.14 pm
It took me all of ten minutes to locate this material.
Now, after I and others made it clear that the only problems with landfill in this country (as a means of disposal) were caused by European Union directives, I could have let matters lie if 'Bert' had simply fallen silent. But given his superior manner in general, and his calling my words 'not true', I much preferred an acknowledgement of error. So I posted the 'Diddums, Didides...' item to see if I could obtain this. Far from it. 'Bert' responded by saying 'You clearly have a different interpretation of "established beyond question" than me' and writing of my 'imagined victory'.
He did not bother (this is typical of him) to accompany his claim of having a superior interpretation of 'established beyond question'. He did not offer any reason why the fact was not established beyond question. He wrote (as he so often does) as if his espousal of any point of view axiomatically means it is correct without the need for factual or logical support. And he asserted that my victory in this matter was 'imagined'. Once again, he made no effort to explain why this was so.
This might be tolerable in one of the unlettered boobies who sometimes post here, who plainly don't understand the rules of debate and can't tell a fact from an opinion. But 'Bert' approaches this weblog from an Olympian height, condescending to deal with the rest of us. He must therefore be judged more harshly.
Mr Everett says: ‘It sounds a bit like bullying to me. Thucky may have disagreed with you on some subjects previously so - being a thorn in your side - you begin to dislike him. Then he makes one minor technical error (perhaps?) - and you therefore insist on a cringing 'public submission' with the threat of making him 'not welcome' if he doesn't. It all sounds a bit excessive to me - but then I've never run a weblog and had people queueing (?) up to have a daily dig at me - so what do I know. But this banning theme does seem to be creeping in more regularly for various (somewhat minor?) misdemeanours.’
Well, if I sought to ban every contributor I dislike, then there'd be a lot more bans. But this wasn't a 'minor technical error'. It was an imputation of deliberate untruth, accompanied by an implication of superior omniscience. 'Bert' has been unable to justify either the false accusation, the rudeness or the superiority. And far from being in any way chastened by having been shown to be wrong, he writes a bumptious response suggesting that he is in fact justified by the facts and logic (while adducing neither).
Mr Everett is right to say that I find 'Bert' irritating. It is worse than that. I think he fights dirty, while posing as a saintly and elevated figure, like the soccer player who trips up his opponent and then adopts a blameless 'who, me?' expression. And he reminds me of what I think was Disraeli's old complaint against Gladstone that he didn't mind the old man always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve. What he objected to was the way he also tried to suggest that the Almighty had put it there. That's most provoking. And I've often said so, while trying to persuade this person to abandon his pretentious pseudonym, as a start in correcting his ways. But I had never contemplated withdrawing his welcome until he accused me of deliberate untruth, and then, having been shown to be in the wrong, persisted.
Mr Everett is meanwhile asked to support with facts his assertion that 'this banning theme does seem to be creeping in more regularly for various (somewhat minor?) misdemeanours.'
Really? When was the last time? How minor was the misdemeanour? And when was the time before that? What does he mean by 'regular' in this case? And what is his alternative?
He will not be asked to leave if he fails to reply adequately, as I suspect he will fail to do. But I think assertions of this kind illustrate the difficulty that I have.
When I published my first book 'The Abolition of Britain', the falsehood was spread ( in an attempt to make me out to be some sort of hopeless, fogeyish technophobe, living in the past) that the book contained an attack on central heating. This was just part of the stupid treatment accorded to anyone who tries to say anything conservative in this country. It was surprisingly effective. Many people who have never read the book come up to me and reveal this fact by telling me with a supercilious smirk: 'Oh, that was the book that attacked central heating'. Many, as a result, have a wholly false idea of what this book is about, and would be astonished were they actually to read it.
I had assumed that anyone who actually read it would see that it wasn't so. However, on the 'Never let me Go' thread, a person posting under the made-up name 'Hephaestion' actually quotes the relevant passage, and attempts to use it as justification for an attack on me for seeking to stand in the way of technology.
I have posted a reply to him on that thread, but thought I would also post it here (in a slightly longer version), partly to rebut, once again, this stupid falsehood, secondly to illustrate that, if you believe something to be true, you will continue to believe it even while actually studying the evidence that it isn't, in front of your nose.
'Hephaestion' posts: 'Instead of attacking the development of divorce, why doesn't he instead tackle things which actually are of use?
'Peter Hitchens ends up defending the indefensible, as evidenced by this quotation from The Abolition of Britain:
"The spread of central heating and double glazing has allowed even close-knit families to avoid each other's company in well-warmed houses, rather than huddling round a single hearth forced into unwanted companionship, and so compelled to adapt to each other's foibles and become more social, less selfish beings."
This is absurd,'
To which I reply: 'What is absurd? It is a statement of undoubted fact, not of opinion. I defy him to find any statement of opinion in it. I am amazed by the way in which this statement - which I am pretty certain originates in the works of one of the left-wing sociologists whose books I studied for 'A' level - has been characterised by silly people, determined to find fault with me, as an 'attack on central heating'. How is that so?
'Hephaistion' continues: 'You can't help the development of technology and neither can you help the development of divorce. What business has the state in forcing people to remain legally entangled with one another?'
Actually people often make efforts to help and/or limit the development of technology. Some are more effective than others. The gun laws which 'Hephaistion' almost certainly supports are an example of this, and I don't imagine that the Internet or the mobile phone network would function long without legal rules, contracts, licensing etc. The introduction of the Plimsoll Line on ships is another that comes instantly to mind, and the air traffic control system.
As for divorce, this is not, so far as I can see, comparable logically with technology. Legislation can make it easier or harder, and by doing so can make it a more or less attractive choice. If a society thinks its consequences are undesirable, it is surely entitled to make it harder. Divorced people seem to me to remain legally entangled with one another all their lives. But the real issue is in any case remarriage. Anyone may leave a marriage, and the state cannot prevent him or her from doing so. But if he is then, having promised to engage in a lifelong relationship, allowed to engage in another one (and quite possibly another one after that) then the words 'lifelong relationship' become devalued to the point of meaninglessness.
He should actually read the chapter on the subject in 'The Abolition of Britain', rather than just picking out little bits that he thinks he disagrees with.
As for divorce, does he actually understand what it entails for a party in a marriage who doesn't wish that marriage to end? Or for the children involved? What business has the state in tearing people apart who want to remain together?
Tick Tock
'Bert', who posts under another grandiose Greek name, is reminded that time is running out for him to withdraw and apologise for his unjustified and demonstrably wrong allegation that I had written words which were untrue.
Plot spoiler...
I saw this film in a Washington suburban cinema last year, at a loose end one evening and unable to find anything else I wanted to watch. I chose it more because of what it wasn't than because of what it was. And there wasn't much on that week, despite the many multiplexes in the Maryland suburbs. I hadn't then read the book, and wasn't much of an enthusiast for Kazuo Ishiguro. I thought, and still think, that 'The Remains of the Day' simply doesn't justify the enthusiasm ladled over it by the fashionable world of books, and the film of 'Remains' (I don't think this is in the book) contains an unutterably stupid and unhistorical scene involving Neville Chamberlain. That film, in general, was plain silly, saved only by its stellar cast. Perhaps someone will one day explain to me what its point was.
So I really had no idea what to expect from 'Never Let Me Go'. Perhaps this was a good thing. It took me a little while to grasp that the characters were all clones, destined to have their organs fatally harvested - and I was immediately reminded of a 2005 film called 'The Island', one of many not-very-successful movies I have seen on an aeroplane, in which the same is true, though in that film each clone is a direct copy of a human, who will benefit from the clone's death. And the truth about their fate is concealed from the clones. I suspect 'The Island' was too dispiriting to be big box-office, despite the presence of Scarlett Johansson among the clones.
I now wish I had read the book first. Without having done so, I suspect anyone who watches it will simply fail to grasp large chunks of what is going on until it is a bit late to appreciate them. So I suppose I shall now have to go and see it again.
The plot is in fact quite absurd. The world portrayed here is a sort of 1980s Britain, in which cloned children are bred, raised and then gradually plundered for their organs, so that they live more or less as humans until their twenties and are then slowly killed off, operation by operation. This procedure is surrounded by euphemisms. Somehow or other, these clones are persuaded to accept their fate, and not to destroy their valuable bits and pieces by smoking or drinking (promiscuous sex is apparently OK, because they are all sterile, though I should have thought there were risks here too). This would surely be almost impossible. Why on earth wouldn't they, knowing they were doomed, indulge themselves as much as possible unless they were actually kept locked away from temptation (as they are, more believably in 'The Island')? Why wouldn't they run away, and form rebel colonies?
Also, why bother maintaining a sort of idyllic rural boarding school for a small number of these clones, so that they can be educated to a high standard and socialised as if they were going to be normal citizens, when they all know this is not to be? The conceit is barmy.
And how could normal society carry on functioning with this horror taking place in its midst? Even the dimmest and most anti-religious person, knowing that humans were being farmed nearby for their organs, and then robbed of these organs until they died, would surely raise an objection?
It's true that we marginalise the old in horrible care homes, and massacre unborn babies in abortion clinics. But these victims don't generally wander round our city streets, or drive cars. They are easily kept out of sight because they are immobile and weak. But these clones roam around the country, where they are supposed to evoke a sort of pitying disgust or horror, but one that doesn't focus into action of any kind.
So, as dystopias go, this is one of the least believable I've ever come across.
If it works at all, it works as a metaphor for a generation of children largely abandoned by their career-obsessed, divorced parents, a generation who don't really know what a parent is, or a home, or brothers and sisters, or ever expect to become parents themselves. The awful bleakness at the end of the book (the film, again, doesn't do it so well) might be seen as the awful bleakness of such a world.
If that is what it is (and for a suggestion that it might be, you'll have to read the book for Cathy's explanation of her heartbreaking misunderstanding of the song 'Never Let Me Go', never properly dealt with in the film, as I recall) then it's quite powerful.
So now Meryl Streep is to play the Iron Lady, and the planned drama sounds as if it comes from Muscular Liberal Central. She is said to be portrayed (in the script) as filled with regret about various actions. Perhaps this is true. The former politician must have many unpleasant hours in which to reflect on errors and omissions. Actions which appeared at the time to be triumphs often crumble, over the decades, into minor events or even change their character altogether. Who'd envy an ex-Prime Minister? Only a superhuman could endure those years of powerlessness without some melancholy, after the zingy exhilaration of high office.
Personally, I should like to see a serious re-examination of Mrs Thatcher from an intelligently conservative point of view, unclouded by excessive admiration. John Campbell's superb and beautifully-written two-volume biography (which I commend to anyone interested) seems to me to come more from the Left, though Mr Campbell strives very hard to be fair. His preoccupations are not the same as mine.
I would like a conservative answer to these questions. Did the economic strategy work, as is now claimed, or was she rescued by circumstances? Did she actually defeat trade union militancy, or merely destroy all the industries where such militancy was possible? Did she simply forget the great issues of state schools, marriage, drugs, crime and justice? Or was she in fact in favour of much of the social revolution we went through during her allegedly conservative government? Remember, Alderman Roberts, her revered father, was a Liberal alderman, not a Tory one. And she married a divorced man.
Was she vital to 'victory' in the Cold War, or is that Anglocentric hyperbole? In any case, was it such a great thing that we won it at all? Did it take her too long to see the threat from the European Union? Was the Falklands War in fact largely her fault, because of the unwise naval cuts she approved - and which, if they had taken effect by 1982, would have rendered us incapable of retaking the Islands (as we are now, thanks to a new round of Muscular Liberal cuts).
Was she really brought down by the Poll Tax, the myth generally propagated by the BBC and much of the Tory establishment? Or was it her late but fiery realisation of the dangers of Brussels that led to her fall? How on earth was she so utterly fooled by John Major?
I want to know. I am lucky enough to have met her more than once, though not on equal terms. I lived through the whole era and was never exactly an enthusiast, though I have always felt it necessary to defend her against her stupider detractors. I am sure, for instance, that she is a personally kind human being - as is so often the case with politicians derided for their 'right-wing' and 'callous' views. And I do not doubt her intelligence or her willingness to learn (not all Prime Ministers have either).
I continue to find her very interesting as a person and her life in many ways rather touching.
Like C.P. Snow's underrated 'Strangers and Brothers' novels, which portray a lost England in which a man truly could strive his way from a lowly state school to the House of Lords, hers is a powerfully moving story of an ascent from provincial quietness by a person of great determination and a huge capacity for hard work, made even more admirable by the snobbish and narrow-minded prejudices against her sex and class which were always waiting to trip her up (and which lay behind much of the personalised hostility towards her).
I suspect that Ms Streep (whose portrayal of the cook Julia Child in 'Julie and Julia' was by contrast quite brilliant, and made me laugh helplessly) will not be helping me with any of these questions.
A person courageously posting under the very rare name 'John' has placed (weirdly, on the 'Thucy did' thread with which it has nothing whatever to do) the following acid comment:
'What a shame he [me] lacks his brother's intelligence, and humanity. He is happy for a country of 80 million souls to live under tyranny so long as we can be absolutely sure that it will not affect our lifestyle and that we might have to contend with another economic block where the people of the Middle East might have something to say about what happens to them, the money that the region accrues in oil wealth, or about what operations are performed on their daughters.
'Despotism is by definition destabilising, democracy, even in Eastern Europe has given us a more stable future. His philosophy is one of ultranationalism, a sort of strange form of democratic fascism. "As long as the good people of Britain are all right, I am more or less immune to the suffering of others.” Charming, and how very unBritish. Did I mention, un-Christian...’
I address the moral aspects of this elsewhere, but will touch on them again in this specific case. As for being 'unBritish', I should have thought that my opinions were entirely in the British tradition of placing our own national interests first. The Christian question is more complex. Are those who rejoice at the 'liberation' of Cairo certain that their cause will help their neighbours, here or there?
Much of the hostility to what I say rests on the view that universal suffrage democracy is itself so virtuous that any society blessed with it will be preferable to one not so blessed. Humph.
Can he tell me why he is so sure that the Cairo revolution will lead to a situation in which 'the people of the Middle East might have something to say about what happens to them, the money that the region accrues in oil wealth, or about what operations are performed on their daughters.' As for the reference to female genital mutilation, does he have any information on the attitudes to that of the 80 million Egyptian people themselves, their current government and (for example) the Muslim Brotherhood?
I am by no means sure that 'democracy' will greatly (or at all) improve the lives of those 80 million Egyptians, or that the gathering in Tahrir Square represents anything much beyond itself. Beyond the immediate removal of Hosni Mubarak himself (and what is so bad about waiting till September for this?) , it appears to have no united objective. (People should read Aesop's fables, not least the one about King Log and King Stork.)
Democracy was certainly no blessing in post-Communist Russia, where the word is now almost invariably pronounced as a sarcastic curse. It may be in Egypt, but I have no way of knowing for certain, and plenty of reasons for doubting it. Even if it does, then the strong feeling against Israel which is very powerful among Egyptians (I discuss this on an earlier posting) must play a part in it.
Nor do I have any clear idea of what this movement desires, or can achieve domestically or abroad. I do know that the existing Egyptian government (has 'John' been an active campaigner against it during the past 30 years at all? Or did he recently discover his concern?) reluctantly but effectively enforces one of the most important Peace Treaties in the world.
And I know that, were a new conflict (either overt or, more likely, informal and through the proxy of Hamas) to break out between Egypt and the State of Israel, the consequences would be severe for the entire developed world, not least because of the effects on the price of oil at a time of economic trouble. Egypt itself is not an oil power. But its continued stability protects other Arab powers (which do have oil) from instability, and offers a counterbalance to the increasing power in the region of Iran, not to mention the Suez canal which (however you pronounce it) remains important to the world economy even in the age of supertankers.
I do not quite know how 'John' has measured or proposes to measure my intelligence, or on what basis he claims I don't have any, or enough. I suspect my principal defect is that I don't agree with the views of 'John'. He may be the kind of person who assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is axiomatically stupid. I should suggest gently to him that this is not necessarily so.
As for my brother's humanity, I don't doubt it. But hold on a second. He longs for a better world, as do I, but in a significantly different way. The dilemma is rather well-stated here. Christopher's position, the idealist and utopian opposite to mine, led him to support (which he still does) the invasion of Iraq. This has indisputably led to a great deal of death and destruction, and to the creation of a far from universally beloved government in Baghdad, amid much economic and political disorder and decay and much bitter, homicidal sectarianism. This, obviously, wasn't what he and his allies set out to achieve. But that is exactly my point. Utopia can only ever be approached across a sea of blood (and in my view is never reached).
By contrast, we know what we have, and much as we dislike it, we also know that any attempt to replace it is at best uncertain.
Actually I think Washington had more of an idea of what would replace Saddam Hussein than we now have of what might replace Hosni Mubarak.
Does 'John' regularly dive headfirst into swimming pools in the dark, without checking that they contain water? This is the equivalent, in daily life, of the policy of urging revolutionary change in a country with no civil society, with an incoherent and largely unknown opposition. If you wouldn't do it in real life, my advice is not to do with other people's countries.
Far too much to write about this week. For some discussion on David Cameron’s alleged attack on multiculturalism, look at the earlier section of Sunday’s BBC1 TV programme, ‘The Big Questions’, still available on BBC iplayer. I hold to the view that Mr Cameron’s ‘muscular liberalism’ is a contradiction in terms, - like rigid jelly, an angry whelk or a ferocious hamster. And that the principles of ‘equality’ which he recommends are a) for the most part not British and b) designed to enforce the very ‘State Multiculturalism’ which Mr Cameron says he is against. For instance, if all religions are equal, then Christianity ceases to be recognised as the dominant faith in the country, and what could be more multiculti than that?
Those who have been fooled into thinking that Mr Cameron is somehow being ‘tough’ should bear this in mind: The real Fleet Street, in which one met journalists on rival newspapers every day, long ago ceased to exist. But a tiny corner of this lost paradise has been recreated. The Associated Newspapers building now hosts the offices of the ‘Independent’ and the ‘Independent on Sunday’ and I occasionally bump into John Rentoul, one of the few remaining Blair disciples and a distinguished IoS columnist. We generally tease each other, with him trying to annoy me by claiming to agree with things that I have written and me encouraging him to support the Cameroons. On Saturday we were both reading Mr Cameron’s speech when I bumped into him in the atrium. He pointed out to me that Mr Blair had made more or less precisely the same speech three times.
I shall return later in the week to the removal of Dr Hans-Christian Raabe from the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs. It appears (hence my reference to Stalingrad) that it is Dr Raabe’s (he is a medical doctor) statements on homosexuality which are supposed to have led to his abrupt removal from a position to which he had only just been appointed. Stories have appeared saying that he ‘failed to disclose’ a 2005 study in which he wrote the (factual) summary. The ACMD has nothing whatever to do with homosexuality.
He is said by unnamed sources to have been specifically asked to disclose anything about his past which might cause embarrassment to the government or the committee. I am interested as to what the official definition of ‘embarrassment’ is, or whether Dr Raabe could reasonably have been expected to view what follows as potentially embarrassing to the Home Office or the Advisory Committee.
The study concluded that there was a ‘disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles’.
I have no information on this matter myself. Perhaps one of my well-informed contributors can tell me if it is factually accurate? If so, then why is it controversial?
The words used were: ‘While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there is a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles and an overlap between the gay movement and the movement to make paedophilia acceptable.’
Once again, I am not expert in this area, and would welcome any accurate information which anyone has, in support or refutation.
The report also stated: ‘Despite the impression given by the media, the actual number of homosexuals is quite small. Essentially all surveys show the number of homosexuals to be only 1-3% of the population.’
I think this is now generally accepted and uncontroversial. The absurd Kinsey figure of 10% was long ago discredited.
You will have to read the whole paper (I have not yet done so) to make any judgement on the quality of the work. But this event does seem to be an instance of the existence of a new Test Act, under which a person’s views on homosexuality can disqualify him from public office, even where that is wholly separate from any matters touching on sexual behaviour.
Two points. If Dr Raabe had not involved himself in the homosexuality controversy, his enemies in the drug liberalisation lobby (whom I believe to be behind his removal) would have had to attack him directly because of his views on drugs, which would have been far harder. This confirms my ‘Stalingrad’ view, that other more important battles are lost because of the engagement of social conservatives in this futile siege.
The second, that this is a freedom of thought and speech issue, not one about sexuality. The ‘embarrassment’ clause and the ‘disclosure’ clause, under which Dr Raabe has apparently been ejected, both involve murky and subjective definitions of what constitutes ‘embarrassment’, or what is so bad about being ‘controversial’ and raise important questions about what can and cannot be said. I have written to the Home Office to ask them:
1. In what way is the report (which gives the results of a factual survey) controversial?
2. Who decides what ‘controversial’ means?
3. How controversial does a report have to be to for its non-disclosure to cause embarrassment?
4. At what level was the decision taken to revoke Dr Raabe’s appointment?
5. Were any other factors involved, apart from the allegedly embarrassing report?
6. Will Dr Raabe’s successor be chosen from among opponents of harm-reduction policies, so as to ensure that this view is represented on the ACMD?
Egypt
Is it immoral to refuse to egg on a revolution abroad? Is it immoral to refuse to mistake general idealism in distant, unknown places most of us will never even visit, for practical neighbourly charity among those known to us? One contributor quotes William Blake against me. I quote Blake back at him:
‘He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer’.
I regard most statements of joy in foreign revolutions as mere posturing, the use of someone else’s country as a moral playground in which one can be a utopian at no charge. By the time the utopianism has solidified into equivocal (or nasty) political reality, the journalistic poseur is long gone to a new playground and is generally not pressed to defend the regime his views may have helped to bring about . How many of those who posed about the place in former Yugoslavia ever even revisit Bosnia and Kosovo to review the paradise they helped to establish there? How many of those who confused a righteous loathing of apartheid with unconditional support for the African National Congress revisit the increasingly squalid state which the ANC has created in South Africa?
There is no direct connection between my point on the European Union and Britain (the end of the Cold War hugely intensified the centralisation of the EU under German leadership) and the dangers to Britain from a change of regime in Egypt (see below). I am sorry that I was so unclear as to leave anyone with this impression. The indirect connection is this parallel: the freedom of Eastern Europe led to disadvantages for Britain and its people. The ‘freedom’ (if such it be) of Egypt may lead to disadvantages for this country.
What might they be?
Most likely, more instability in the Middle East. This has limitless bad consequences for us. The last thing our weak, sick economy needs is a new Middle East war. Leave aside the destruction and loss of life, which all will deplore, the inevitable rise in the price of oil and severe inflation which will follow are exactly what we do not need.
Most of the reports of the crowds in Tahrir Square (note by the way - as no reports have - the word ‘Tahrir’, meaning variously freedom and liberation, which also features in the title of the dread Hizb-ut-Tahrir party, ‘the Party of Freedom’) seem to me to have been unconsciously self-censored.
I doubt that most of the reporters there have wanted to push the issue very hard. It might even be risky to do so, amid a crowd in times of tension. But during my only visit to Egypt (as mentioned in an earlier post) I found that, among all the highly-liberal, westernised and English speaking people I met - and very charming and pleasant they were too - there was an unremitting, bitter hostility to the State of Israel.
I found this out because I was interested, and because I had discovered the same heated view among similar people I had met in Jordan a few months before. And when I mildly questioned it, I found myself met with something very close indeed to fury. It was clearly something I was not really permitted to discuss, immune to facts or reason.
Now, if this is so among travelled, educated and wealthy intellectuals, how much more intense might we expect it to be among the Egyptian masses, exposed for decades to virulent anti-Israel propaganda, in most Muslim countries the only outlet for the incoherent anger that exists in the midst of the poverty and corruption?
I have only once in the past few days seen a picture of a portrait of Hosni Mubarak defaced by demonstrators with a Star of David, to suggest that he is a Zionist puppet. But I wonder how many more there are which reporters or picture editors sympathetic to the protests (who might not have wanted to draw attention to this aspect of popular feeling) have decided not to mention or publish?
This can happen. When I was in Gaza late last summer I came across - smack in the middle of the city where no visitor could miss it - a professionally executed and prominent wall-painting depicting an Israeli soldier as a hook-nosed child-killer in the style of Julius Streicher. Other journalists must have seen it, and been able to photograph or film it. But I had never seen it reproduced.
The Arab and ‘Palestinian’ causes tend to be supported by the liberal left in Britain, and I am sure that most such people loathe anti-Semitism and regard themselves as anything but anti-Semitic. (Pedants’ corner. Yes, I know that Arabs are Semitic as well, but you know what I mean.) So when they find irrational Judophobia among their Arab friends, they pretend it is not there.
Now that is not to say that the current Egyptian regime is free of Judophobia. The armistice between Israel and Egypt is famously known as ‘The Cold Peace’, because of the way in which Egypt meticulously observes its letter, while not observing its spirit. One example: Israeli tourists go to Egypt. Egyptian tourists hardly ever go to Israel, and it is said they can run into trouble back home if they do so. There is no friendliness in the relationship, just a sullen acceptance of its political convenience. But the Egyptian regime overcome their dislike for reasons of state, reasons which a new government might not acknowledge (and by the way, how sure is everyone that the replacement government, whose nature is a complete mystery, would in fact be incorrupt and tolerant of criticism?).
My worries about this are not in fact dependent on my support for Israel, though I’ve no doubt that my knowledge of this conflict makes me more aware of what is at stake. Even if you don’t like Israel I doubt very much if you want a new Middle East War. And the current Egyptian regime has prevented war in a highly sensitive part of the world for three decades. And Egypt, though less pivotal than it used to be, is a decisive voice in the Arab world. If it abandoned its peace with Israel, and aligned itself with Hamas in Gaza, I think many of us would find out very quickly how important Egypt’s future was to our stability and prosperity.
I hereby declare victory in the dispute with ‘Bert’. I believe that exchanges over the last few days have established beyond question a) that the EU’s 1999 Landfill Directive is the principal cause of the deterioration of rubbish collection in Britain and b) that this country has no difficulties of its own with landfill, but rather a growing surplus of holes into which to tip its rubbish.
Yet I have yet to see the slightest acknowledgement from ‘Bert’ that he was wrong in either case. He should be wary of such unrepentant wrongness. A similar hubristic spirit seems to have infused the Athenians as they pursued their daft and doomed Peloponnesian War, as recorded by the mighty historian Thucydides, ending in the catastrophic defeat at Syracuse.
Posts
