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Tattoos and a torn shirt don't make you an expert on drugs

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Here’s how to influence Government policy: Make a career out of being coarse and crude; take illegal drugs, moan that it wasn’t your fault and demand sympathy for your selfish crime; get some tattoos.

Next, wear a cowboy hat and rip a lot of holes in your shirt (an aide can rip them for you if you’re too busy).

Then saunter into a Parliamentary Committee and casually mock its members, while saying nothing of interest or importance.

The MPs will pay you slavish attention, and the media – especially those bits of it who claim to be uninterested in celebrity – will give you a huge platform.

I sat behind the alleged comedian Russell Brand on Tuesday as he was giving his ‘evidence’ to the Home Affairs Select Committee. I was on next and, unlike him, I had something new and important to say.

I have spent the past 18 months researching and writing a book (out later this year) on the unofficial but near-total legalisation of drugs in Britain since 1971.

But in our superficial culture, it was Mr Brand (author of My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2) who featured in the newspapers and on the BBC (which did grant me a few seconds of airtime, it is true).

And I’ll be surprised if the alleged comedian’s views don’t prevail when the Select Committee eventually reports later this year.

Our establishment seem determined to believe various fictions about drugs. They claim there’s stern ‘prohibition’ when most people arrested for cannabis possession are let off without any penalty or criminal record, and when Pete Doherty can walk into a courtroom with heroin actually in his pockets and walk out a free man.

And, like Mr Brand, they claim that drug ‘addicts’ are cruelly punished  by the system, when in fact these  deliberate, selfish, pleasure-seeking criminals are idiotically treated as if they were ill.

Then, to save the 'addicts' from  having to steal to pay for their sordid pleasure, the State steals £300million each year from taxpayers to give them methadone, so that they can  stupefy themselves legally at your expense and mine.

That’s what I call organised crime.

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There’s a major problem with the planned satnav for old people, which will urge drivers to make turns at well-known local landmarks. Almost all the  well-known landmarks have  been turned into Tesco Metros  or charity shops or one of  Michael Gove’s ‘Academies’.

Instructions will have to say: ‘Turn right where the butcher’s used to be, then left where  the public library used to be,  then right at the old grammar  school, and left at the closed police station.’

When will they admit it's just a Great Green Fraud?

Atheists make me laugh when they claim to be bold and courageous. That hasn’t been so for a century. It’s dis-believing in man-made global warming that is dangerous.

The fanatical Church of Global Warming is a hate-filled conventicle of intolerant zealots. Armed with righteous certainty, it hoses its critics with slime and demands ever-madder measures on the basis of unproven scientific claims.

So why isn’t more attention paid to the fact that one of its high priests, the 92-year-old scientist James Lovelock, has recanted? Just six years ago, this genius declared that ‘before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable’.

Alas for this view, the planet hasn’t actually got significantly warmer since. Now, whoops, he admits: 'We don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago... the world has not warmed up very much.'

Those of us who have put forward reasonable doubts and urged sensible caution are now entitled to quite a lot of apologies, and a moratorium on any more wind farms and carbon taxes. Will this happen? No. Why not? A lot of people are now making a lot of money (most of it from taxes) out of the Great Green Fraud.

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As other pleasures cloy, the delight of  saying 'I told you so' has become one of my  chief joys. Here’s my latest gloat.

The enjoyably undisciplined actress Helena Bonham Carter knows David Cameron better than most of  us. And she says: ‘He’s not that conservative, actually.’ I told you so.

Cameron and the REAL Murdoch scandal

I find it hard to care who owns BSkyB. And I am not much  surprised that big companies lobby governments, or even that Ministers who are in trouble sack their subordinates to save themselves. What’s new?

But I cannot forget the bloody price that we, the British people, and especially the Armed Forces, have paid for David Cameron’s nasty bargain with Rupert  Murdoch.

Immediately after the Blairite Sun newspaper agreed to support the Useless Tories in 2009, Mr Cameron declared his frantic support for our military presence in Afghanistan. I don’t think Mr Cameron cares a bit about Afghanistan. He certainly can’t mount an intelligent defence of our pointless deployment there. But he knew that Mr Murdoch really wanted him to commit himself to this futile war, so he did.

So let us put this bluntly. In pursuit of office, Mr Cameron adopted a policy that has led directly to the deaths and  maimings of dozens of British servicemen, who would otherwise be alive or whole. I hope that, somehow and somewhere, he faces justice for this act of  bottomless cynicism.

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I have at last met Stephen Fry (pictured), at a  memorial service for my late brother,  Christopher. Mr Fry forced his company on  me and then posted an insulting remark about me on Twitter. The incident increases my  puzzlement about why this rather pathetic  exhibitionist is so widely admired.

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Bad drivers who endanger cyclists often defend themselves with the stupid argument that cyclists don’t pay road tax. It has gone deep into the minds of many. The boss of London’s largest minicab firm, John Griffin, seems to be claiming something similar.

This falsehood is a bad excuse for inconsiderate driving, and does limitless harm. Many cyclists do pay road tax as they also own cars – and almost all pay income tax, VAT and council tax, and so fork out for our enormous nationalised road system.

Cyclists take up much less space than cars, don’t congest narrow roads by parking on them, inflict almost no wear and tear on surfaces, and suffer much more from potholes and bad repairs.

And some of them – including me – are patriotic conservatives who don’t vote Green.

27 April 2012 11:30 AM

Home Affairs Select Committee on drugs. Full version of Peter Hitchens appearance

Here is the full version of my appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee, alongside Kathy Gyngell and Mary Brett.

26 April 2012 2:58 PM

The Over-rating of Oscar Wilde

How often a throwaway remark will ignite more interest than the main theme of an article.  When I said that Oscar Wilde was over-rated, I thought I was stating an uncontroversial truism. To say that someone is over-rated isn’t to say that they are no good at all (as some readers seem to think). Of course Wilde was a talented writer, and who could doubt it, or dispute it? But does he deserve his current status, as a sort of literary superstar or demi-god? For comparison, George Bernard Shaw, who was considered at least as witty in his time, has rather faded in recent years, though he has a more substantial body of work to his credit.

I don’t think Wilde was a genius on the level of, say, Charles Dickens. I’m not sure where I would place him, in fact. I just think he is too much praised, for reasons of cultural politics.

Do those who admire him,  admire him for his writing? In which case, which parts of it qualify him for the Pantheon of the Great? There’s a sentimental story or two, some plays, some essays, a long poem and a novel more praised than read. Let us start with the novel. How many people have actually read ‘Dorian Gray’ right through, without skipping to the supernatural bit about the portrait, except because they felt they rather had to?  I should have thought most people, at any stage in history,  would find its overheated, precious, affected style rather cloying.  There are some good lines in ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ . But does it rise beyond that?  Will it endure? Would it have endured as long as it has had its author not been either notorious (approx. 1895-1965) or a hero of the revolution (approx. 1965 to the present day)? The other plays are rarely performed.

The epigrams are amusing, but once again are they so overwhelmingly wonderful as to confer greatness? ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ contains some memorable lines (though I remain baffled by the claim that ‘each man kills the thing he loves’. Does he? Why?) . But how does it compare, for instance,  with the poetry of A.E. Housman?     

If you want late-Victorian or Edwardian wit, I think the short stories of H.H. Munro (‘Saki’) are at least as clever if not rather more so (it is nowadays widely assumed that Munro, too, was homosexual, but only assumed, since if it was so, he did not seek martyrdom for it).  P.G. Wodehouse (my brother suspected, and could argue cogently for the idea,  that Wodehouse got his idea for Jeeves from a scene in ‘Importance’) is much, much funnier and a far better writer – a fact often forgotten because he is so funny, and fails to deal with weighty themes, indeed runs as fast as he can to get away from weighty themes,   and it is therefore assumed that he is not also great.  

I suspect that Wilde’s current fame and standing have much more to do with his role as martyr, the harbinger of the sexual revolution, cruelly punished for being ahead of his time. Well, the punishment was indeed cruel and stupid,  and the law under which it was done should never have existed in the first place. But it did exist, and Wilde, in my view, deliberately chose his martyrdom and consciously  took known risks (see his remark about ‘feasting with panthers’) which he knew were great.  

He provoked his own prosecution with an extraordinarily rash libel suit.   He then refused to take the opportunity to leave the country before he was arrested, as he could easily have done (and I think it likely that the authorities of the time hoped he would do).  As far as he was concerned, I suppose this was a matter of man facing his tormentors and standing up to them. But it did not affect only him.  The consequences for his wife and sons were, without qualification, tragic and are very hard to read about to this day. I do not think Wilde’s martyrdom advanced the cause of tolerance by one half-inch, then or later. Quite possibly, it retarded it.  It is not a terribly heroic story, though it is a desperately sad one, and his crudely vandalised tomb in Paris remains one of the most dismal and dispiriting sights in Europe, decades after the passions and griefs it records were spent.  It is as if a great, despairing groan had been rendered in solid stone. But this sadness has no bearing – or rather, it should have no bearing –on the standing of his work.

25 April 2012 4:33 PM

A Clod Writes

Don’t worry, not all of this will be about Stephen Fry. I would point out, though, that the point remains that Mr Fry posted, on the Internet, a deliberately personally rude reference to me (the word ‘clod’ was part of it) , on the day of my brother’s memorial event in New York, . He later withdrew it, after some of his own followers rebuked him. But, as he must well know, withdrawn doesn’t mean expunged.

I felt entitled to respond to it, by giving a truthful account of our meeting.

Some contributors seem to have concluded, from my last posting, that Mr Fry was wounded by some personal insult from me, and so felt justified in his behaviour.

Not a bit of it. In our conversation, which I never sought, I was entirely civil. I just made no pretence of friendliness, nor was I specially tolerant of Mr Fry’s rather feeble boilerplate on the religious issue (for those interested, I did, as I always do, make my simple point that the issue of God’s existence or non-existence could not be proved one way or another. Mr Fry, as dogmatic anti-God people almost invariably do, pocketed this enormous concession without any acknowledgement, and without grasping that it applied to him as well. This is an invariable sign that the intellect is not fully engaged in the subject, as exemplified here so many times, and at such great length, by the ineffable Mr ‘Bunker’). I called him no names. I made no remarks about his personal qualities.   

I noticed that those Fry fans who found their way here tended to indulge in the same sort of personal abuse that their hero had employed. One even denounced me as ‘petulant’ for turning away from the microphone when I had finished reciting my contribution at the memorial event. What was I supposed to do, stand and wait for applause? Time was running on, others had to speak. What was more, I was keenly aware of the fact that I wasn’t quite in tune with the general tone.   Good heavens, there are some people for whom I can do no right.

They should note (and would have noticed had they been as bright as they think they are)  that the description’ a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like’ is not actually directed at Mr Fry, though it’s not meant to be complimentary to him either.   It is directed at his reputation and at his admirers.  Mr Fry may well be intelligent, though he has so far concealed this effectively from me. What I find amusing are the legions of people, and BBC producers,  who swoon and sigh before him as if he were a combination of Oscar Wilde (though he’s terribly over-rated too) and Freddie Ayer.  They do this not because of his intellect, but because of his manner and because of the fact that they agree with his sentiments.

I tend to suspect that the fact that he delivers revolutionary sentiments ( and lavatory words) in conservative accents endears him to the Radio 4 audience who want cultural conservatism, and a comfortable middle-class urban life, at the same time as they desire the destruction of the morals, traditions and customs which uphold these things. That’s my most fundamental reason for disapproving of Mr Fry. He represents a desire to have it both ways, to ride free. If he spoke in the accents of (say) Kenny Everett or Russell Brand, I doubt if the act would have such a following.

Mr Fry is of course free to give his own account of our conversation. No doubt it would differ from mine. I wasn’t taking notes, or recording it, so can’t offer a verbatim version, as some contributors seem to think I should have done.

Now, the mention of Russell Brand brings me on to my latest encounter with this person, which took place in Portcullis House, the hideous annexe to the Houses of Parliament, on Tuesday.

Both of us were there to appear as witnesses before the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.

I had some detailed, factual, knowledgeable things to say, and arguments to make which were based on those facts and that knowledge, much of it obtained during the writing of my next book.  He didn’t.  In fact he seemed to be under the impression, which I do not think can be in any way justified by facts, that users of the illegal drug heroin are in some way harshly treated by the law. He attracted a great deal of coverage.  I attracted very little.

The one useful thing he said (and I might add he was strikingly rude to the Labour MP David Winnick, so much so that, had I been chairman, I would have required him to apologise) was to describe being arrested for drug possession as ‘an administrative blip’. This is quite accurate. Where the police bother to arrest possessors of illegal drugs at all, the action has no moral or legal force, and is done only for the sake of form.

The same could be said of our entire system of drug law enforcement. It exists only because the majority of voters would never accept open decriminalisation, and because our international treaty obligations prevent us from abandoning formal legal bans. This has been increasingly the case since 1971, with the law being salami-sliced away, year by year by year, until it is so feeble and thin that it no longer has any power or force.

Oh, as for Jeremy Hunt, Rupert Murdoch etc, the thing I cannot forgive is that David Cameron’s first action on receiving the backing of the Murdoch press was to come out (in ‘the Sun’)  in fervent support of the continued deployment of British troops in Afghanistan.  We shall no doubt find out what other prices he paid or did not pay for this, as various inquests continue, but brave people have died and been maimed thanks to Mr Cameron’s pig-headed persistence with this moronic, pointless war.

23 April 2012 4:02 PM

Stephen Fry - A Stupid Person's idea of What an Intelligent Person is Like

I have just returned from the USA, where I attended – and took a small part in - the memorial event for my brother, Christopher. I was in an odd position. I was a Christian at an occasion that was Godless by definition; I had known my brother for longer than anyone else there; yet I was not part of his milieu and couldn’t share their joy and glee in his assaults on religion, or a lot of the other enthusiasms celebrated along with his life.

But as it happens, I am on reasonably good terms with many of Christopher’s old friends and I had (as most people know) argued directly and strongly, but in a civilised way with my brother about our religious disagreement. We treated each other with respect and parted, shortly before his death, on good terms.

Thanks to an extremely tactful and thoughtful suggestion from Christopher’s widow, Carol, I was able to contribute a religious reflection to a generally atheist occasion without infringing the rules of politeness or pushing myself forward. I recited the 8^th verse of the 4^th chapter of St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (‘Finally, brethren; whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things’). As I explained to those at the event, my brother had chosen this passage to read at our father’s funeral in Portsmouth nearly 25 years ago. It had, as it were, his approval.

I met and spoke to many people at this occasion, some of whom I hadn’t seen properly for many years. I met some of his old friends whom I had never previously met.  I tactfully avoided meetings with any there who I thought might be made uncomfortable by my presence. I didn’t want any rows or scenes.

And I made a special effort to avoid a meeting with Stephen Fry, someone whose actions, writings and opinions I have always disliked. Nor have I kept my dislike a secret. I have cheerfully (and on as many occasions as possible) repeated what I believe to be the apt and accurate summary of him in the ‘Dictionary of National Celebrity’ which forms the headline to this article – ‘A stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like’.

What was to be gained by meeting him? I couldn’t pretend to be pleased to do so. He surely couldn’t want to meet me.

Oddly enough, I had argued with Christopher about Stephen Fry. We both agreed that his performance in ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ had been a ghastly travesty, but Christopher was prepared to forgive him for this and had rather taken to him after sharing a debating platform with him a few years ago. It being a matter of taste, I agreed to differ. Mr Fry’s supposed merits and attractions are a mystery to me, and probably always will be, and as for his books…. but we can’t all be the same, can we? And it would be terrible if we were.

As we gathered outside the Cooper Union in Manhattan, avoiding him was easy enough. I could see and hear Mr Fry from some way off, indeed I imagine he could have been seen and heard from space,  and I easily managed to circle round him, well beyond encounter range. Alas, a little later on, inside the building, an innocent third party took it into his head to introduce us directly, so I shook his hand and said (as I generally do when unavoidably introduced to people I don’t want to talk to) ‘How do you do?’ in my best very polite Edwardian drawing-room manner, before slipping away on an urgent errand (the errand being, to get as far away from S. Fry as possible) .

But it was not over.  Those who had spoken at the memorial went afterwards to a rather small and intimate bar in Greenwich Village. And there I was approached again by Mr Fry (I must stress that he opened the conversation, and the space in the crowded room was too confined for me to get away easily).

Very well, then, I thought. If he wants to talk, we’ll talk.

Funnily enough, we had a brief and perfectly reasonable discussion of St Paul and his epistles. I said I thought they contained a great deal of great poetry, but that (as I happened to think) that I was particularly fond of the Epistle of James. I am not sure Mr Fry was familiar with it, though I helped him along a bit.  

Mr Fry said he knew that I didn’t approve of the things he did and the things he said.  I said this was correct.  I assumed that he had the Bill Clinton-like urge to find the only person in the room who did not agree with him, or like him,  and seek to change his mind. Hard luck.  I was not willing to pretend a friendliness I didn’t feel. I decided that if he wanted to argue with me, and he had plainly chosen to do so, then he was welcome. I would be polite, but not friendly (as Kipling’s squire advises his son to treat Bishops in that great poem ‘Norman and Saxon’).

So  I responded by telling him, since he mentioned it, that I strongly disapproved of his conduct during a  debate in London against the Roman Catholic church (the one where he had shared a platform with Christopher). I explained why (don’t get me wrong. I think the RC Church’s performance on that occasion was pretty dire too, in its own way, and I am myself a rather dry Protestant) .

The discussion turned into a more general debate about the dangerous intolerance (as I see it) of the anti-God faction for believers. It seemed pretty clear to me that Mr Fry was unschooled in the subject, often mistaking his opinions for facts, and given to circular argument and cliché. It was rather like dealing with some of the more obdurate and dogmatic contributors to this blog, in fact. He was rescued by the incomprehensible and (to me) unwanted intervention of another person in the bar. This baffled us both so,  that it derailed the argument and gave Mr Fry the opportunity (no doubt welcome to him) to break off. Later he bumbled up to me again, and when he tried to summarise our conversation to the person I was then talking to, I said that we had established that he thought he knew several things that he didn’t actually know. He didn’t like this, and said as his parting shot that  it was Rumsfeldian. I said that the remark about known unknowns was the only good thing Donald Rumsfeld had ever said. He surged off and our first (and probably only) encounter was over.

Well, I had some goodbyes to say and a train to Washington to catch, and forgot all about it until I returned to London this morning to find that Mr Fry had soon afterwards Tweeted an uncomplimentary remark about me (so rude that even his own fans rebuked him for it, and he later wiped it, though it is still easily findable on the Web, even by me) . I wonder if you can find it?   Anyway, I still think the headline is right. And I suspect that Mr Fry’s Tweet may embody his own justified fear that the headline is right.

21 April 2012 9:21 PM

Bundling bearded windbags on to jets won't solve anything

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Theresa May, one of nature’s soppy liberals, is struggling to seem decisive over the deportation of the Bethlehem-born windbag Abu Qatada. The trouble is, Mrs May isn’t  even any good at pretending to be tough.

Labour and Tory politicians love this sort of charade. It makes them look as if they are guarding the nation against the Islamist threat. Like so much of what they do, it is a noisy, empty fraud on the public.

They exaggerate hugely. Like several other furry-faced old blowhards, Qatada is said to have been Osama Bin Laden’s closest henchman. Perhaps  he was. Perhaps he wasn’t. He isn’t now.

He cannot really be much use as a Terrorist Godfather now that he has been on TV, and MI5 and the police watch his every movement. Well, can he? Think about it.

It has all gone wrong for Mrs May because she and her department are not very good at what they do. But really the British people ought to have seen through this fake controversy by now.

The real Islamist threat to Britain and the rest of Europe comes from uncontrolled mass migration from Muslim countries. Combined with our national refusal to defend our British, Christian culture, this is rapidly creating a powerful and influential Muslim vote which will increasingly change our country.

Given a few more decades, it will have profoundly altered this country. I have long suspected that this island will be more or less Muslim within a century, and it will be the fault of this generation. It would be perfectly legitimate for a respectable, law-abiding and civilised political party to act now to prevent this.

But instead they leave the subject to steroid-swallowing nutcases like Anders Breivik, or creepy opportunists like  the BNP.

Millions reasonably worry about this. But they are dismissed as extremists by a liberal establishment which views robust defence of Britain’s culture as bigotry.

In Labour’s case this comes from a genuine loathing of Britain as it was. For the Tories, as in so many other matters, it is cowardice, combined with total lack of principle.

They recoil like salted snails from the simple idea that immigrants should be expected to accept the customs, morals, language and traditions of their host country. They cannot explain why this idea is wrong, because it is not wrong.

The migrants have come here voluntarily. While they are welcome to follow their faith and maintain their culture, by seeking and continuing to live here, they and their descendants have accepted that our culture should remain dominant, our religion remain established and our language and laws remain supreme.

It is the opposite of ‘intolerant’ for any British person to say that he does not want to see Sharia law or polygamy in operation here. Nor should we be embarrassed to condemn forced marriages or the horribly misnamed murders known as ‘honour killings’.

As for ‘racism’, the statements of some Muslim leaders about Jews are among the nastiest examples of prejudice in the modern world. It is interesting, in a bitter way, to see how reluctant the politically correct Left are to attack this, or even admit the problem exists.

As a Christian who is grieved by many features of modern Britain I often find myself allied with British Muslims. I have yet to meet a Muslim I don’t like.

But that doesn’t stop me saying that I do not want this to be a Muslim society, which is the likely long-term result of the liberal elite’s twin policies – of open borders and multiculturalism.

Bundling bearded mullahs on to aeroplanes doesn’t actually make any difference to this. It is a crude attempt to seem tough while actually being weak.

Anyway, Mrs May cannot even bundle mullahs efficiently – because she and her Government insist on revering and obeying the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.

This court would have no actual power, if our ruling class had not willingly given it that power. If Britain withdrew from the entire Council of Europe tonight, nobody could or would do anything about it.

But we don’t withdraw, because our governing class long ago discovered that, in the name of ‘Human Rights’, it could override our old laws without any need for a vote or a debate.

Our allegiance to the court exists only because of a well-intentioned blunder by our grandfathers. When they adopted the European Human Rights Convention more than 60 years ago, they never thought it would apply to us.

In those days we were rightly confident that our liberties were guaranteed by safeguards forged over seven centuries, from Magna Carta of 1215 to the Bill of Rights of 1689.

On the far side of the Channel things were profoundly different. Despotism, fanaticism, organised hatred and aggression were never far away.

Take Strasbourg itself, where the Human Rights Court sits. In 1950, that lovely, haunted place had only recently got rid of its own Gestapo office, complete with torture chambers. National Socialist pseudo-scientists at the perverted Reich university there had been working on setting up a mad, grotesque museum of Jewish skeletons.

These medieval horrors were taking place in a modern city as late as 1944. Had events turned out slightly differently, they would still be going on now.

No wonder it seemed a good idea to set up some sort of mechanism to stand in the way of such things.

But we never needed it on our side of the Channel, and we do not need it here now. We only continue to obey it because our establishment finds it useful in its unrelenting campaign to stamp out common sense, and abolish Britain as we have known it.

Wives deserve more than 'equality', Nick

Nick Clegg's smooth and smiley public-school exterior conceals a bitter and intolerant commissar. The Deputy Premier says he wants men and women  to be regarded on ‘exactly the same basis’. How odd, when women can have babies, and men cannot. Treating different people as if they are the same  is unfair.

And he thinks it ‘really weird’ that other people ‘find it odd that women want to be both mothers and have a career’. Those who have doubts about this have ‘got to get with it’ and are living in a ‘sepia-tinted yesteryear’. 

The fact that something is happening now, and didn’t happen in the past, doesn’t magically make it right. 

Mr Clegg, whose wife earns a giant salary as a lawyer, has an interest in this subject. I expect that, like most elite couples, they can afford the very best in nannies.

But most women work because they damned well have to, thanks to years of campaigning by people like Mr Clegg. Many hate handing their children over to paid strangers. What’s more, it’s obvious the absence of mothers from children’s lives is one of the reasons for so many of our social and educational problems.

Raising your own children is an honourable and important task, not to be scorned. In my view it’s rather more valuable than advising mining companies in Morocco. What luck not to be a Liberal Democrat.

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After the 1976 drought, there was much talk of a national water grid. I wonder if this would have been built by now  if the water industry had not been privatised? Increasingly,  I cannot understand why Tories think privatisation is automatically good. It isn’t.