16 September 2012 4:07 AM
So the Games transformed Britain? Tell that to tragic Jay's family
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column
You might think, from the way that we’ve gone on about it, that organising an athletics meeting was a gigantic task equal to putting a man on the Moon, or finding a cure for cancer.
You might also get the idea that the entire nation lives its life in front of a TV screen, and that because TV is enthusiastic about an event, the rest of us are too.
My belief and hope is that quite a lot of people, apart from me, thought that the Olympic frenzy was overdone and overblown.
A strange zombie-like thought control descended on this country during the Games. If you weren’t keen, you were somehow a bad person.
Just as in the early days of Blairism, and during the even more stage-managed creation of David Cameron as Mr Blair’s replacement, the reliable followers of fashion and the habitual suckers and dupes of public life all joined the choir of compulsory joy.
They said how wonderful it was that our bankrupt country was blowing nine billion pounds on a big party we couldn’t afford. There are always people like that.
But there was worse to come. One by one, men and women who I thought had independent minds stepped forward, like defendants at a show trial, to announce that they, too, had been converted by the beatific vision of Olympic piffle.
‘Yes, I was a curmudgeon to start with,’ they would intone, dashing tears from their eyes. ‘But now I have put my doubts behind me. I Love Big Brother.’ Well, actually, they didn’t say they loved Big Brother, but these recantations did strongly remind me of Winston Smith’s gin-scented collapse into the arms of conformity at the end of George Orwell’s 1984.
Let me remind you. During this supposed national triumph, our courts were still dealing with (and in some cases letting off) the culprits of the violent disorders of 13 months ago. It was still possible for a fine young man, Jay Whiston, to be knifed to death for behaving courageously at a suburban party. HMS Ark Royal, the idiotically retired mainstay of our naval power, was condemned to the scrapyard. Our chief surviving weapons manufacturer was threatened with foreign takeover.
A great tidal wave of inflation, whose arrival is only a matter of time, was being created by the major banks of the Western world.
In every town and city of this country, small businesses are suffering and dying. In large parts of the North, former shopping streets are parades of shuttered and abandoned premises stretching for miles like a British Detroit.
Not one of our national accounts balances. The Government is borrowing frantically to maintain services it cannot afford to supply. We buy far more than we sell. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has finally noticed that our schools are terrible, and that all the Blairite hoo-ha about ‘education’ had precisely no result (just as Michael Gove’s current hoo-ha will fail).
But take comfort. We have one growth industry. This country has never had so many cannabis farms, nor so many willing customers for their produce.
They said how wonderful it was that our bankrupt country was blowing nine billion pounds on a big party we couldn’t afford. There are always people like that.
But there was worse to come. One by one, men and women who I thought had independent minds stepped forward, like defendants at a show trial, to announce that they, too, had been converted by the beatific vision of Olympic piffle.
‘Yes, I was a curmudgeon to start with,’ they would intone, dashing tears from their eyes. ‘But now I have put my doubts behind me. I Love Big Brother.’ Well, actually, they didn’t say they loved Big Brother, but these recantations did strongly remind me of Winston Smith’s gin-scented collapse into the arms of conformity at the end of George Orwell’s 1984.
Let me remind you. During this supposed national triumph, our courts were still dealing with (and in some cases letting off) the culprits of the violent disorders of 13 months ago. It was still possible for a fine young man, Jay Whiston, to be knifed to death for behaving courageously at a suburban party. HMS Ark Royal, the idiotically retired mainstay of our naval power, was condemned to the scrapyard. Our chief surviving weapons manufacturer was threatened with foreign takeover.
A great tidal wave of inflation, whose arrival is only a matter of time, was being created by the major banks of the Western world.
In every town and city of this country, small businesses are suffering and dying. In large parts of the North, former shopping streets are parades of shuttered and abandoned premises stretching for miles like a British Detroit.
Not one of our national accounts balances. The Government is borrowing frantically to maintain services it cannot afford to supply. We buy far more than we sell. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has finally noticed that our schools are terrible, and that all the Blairite hoo-ha about ‘education’ had precisely no result (just as Michael Gove’s current hoo-ha will fail).
But take comfort. We have one growth industry. This country has never had so many cannabis farms, nor so many willing customers for their produce.
Sister Frances and her awkward secret
Powerful, successful Left-wingers have a nasty habit of concealing the fact that they went to grammar schools, or single-sex schools. They can’t admit that these fine schools benefited them, because then they would have to bring them back.
The Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa May, is one such. Her entry in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, the MPs’ reference book, says that she attended Wheatley Park Comprehensive school. In fact, when she arrived there (from a convent school) it was still very much Holton Park Girls’ Grammar. Would she have gone to Oxford and become Home Secretary from a modern comprehensive? I doubt it. The new chief of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, is another. She says that she attended Milham Ford Comprehensive. But when she arrived there, in 1971, it was a girls’ grammar. If it hadn’t been, I doubt very much if she’d now be in charge of the brothers and sisters of the TUC.
Lethal reality of the Arab Spring
Almost exactly three months ago I complained here that our useless media, and our purblind Government, had failed to give proper coverage or attention to an attempt by Libyan fanatics to murder our ambassador, Sir Dominic Asquith.
The attempt took place in Benghazi and the would-be murderers used a rocket-propelled grenade. It came shortly after a grenade attack on the US consulate there. Now the US Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, has been murdered in Benghazi, and his body apparently dragged through the streets.
The idea that the murder of Mr Stevens and his colleagues has anything to do with some stupid, amateur film that nobody has seen, and which a free country couldn’t have censored anyway, is doubly ridiculous.
The reason why Mr Stevens was exposed to this risk is – alas – that the British and American governments and media are blinded by dogma.
They cannot understand that the people they so rashly helped in the ‘Arab Spring’ were only using them, just as the Syrian ‘activists’ are using us now.
No Western diplomat’s life should have been risked in the violent, lawless chaos of post-Gaddafi Libya, and I wonder how long our embassy in Cairo will be safe. Arab Spring, indeed.
Powerful, successful Left-wingers have a nasty habit of concealing the fact that they went to grammar schools, or single-sex schools. They can’t admit that these fine schools benefited them, because then they would have to bring them back.
The Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa May, is one such. Her entry in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, the MPs’ reference book, says that she attended Wheatley Park Comprehensive school. In fact, when she arrived there (from a convent school) it was still very much Holton Park Girls’ Grammar. Would she have gone to Oxford and become Home Secretary from a modern comprehensive? I doubt it. The new chief of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, is another. She says that she attended Milham Ford Comprehensive. But when she arrived there, in 1971, it was a girls’ grammar. If it hadn’t been, I doubt very much if she’d now be in charge of the brothers and sisters of the TUC.
Lethal reality of the Arab Spring
Almost exactly three months ago I complained here that our useless media, and our purblind Government, had failed to give proper coverage or attention to an attempt by Libyan fanatics to murder our ambassador, Sir Dominic Asquith.
The attempt took place in Benghazi and the would-be murderers used a rocket-propelled grenade. It came shortly after a grenade attack on the US consulate there. Now the US Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, has been murdered in Benghazi, and his body apparently dragged through the streets.
The idea that the murder of Mr Stevens and his colleagues has anything to do with some stupid, amateur film that nobody has seen, and which a free country couldn’t have censored anyway, is doubly ridiculous.
The reason why Mr Stevens was exposed to this risk is – alas – that the British and American governments and media are blinded by dogma.
They cannot understand that the people they so rashly helped in the ‘Arab Spring’ were only using them, just as the Syrian ‘activists’ are using us now.
No Western diplomat’s life should have been risked in the violent, lawless chaos of post-Gaddafi Libya, and I wonder how long our embassy in Cairo will be safe. Arab Spring, indeed.
Time to make the break, Mr Bone
A Tory MP called Peter Bone seems to me to be sadly typical of so many honest British people who simply don’t understand what has happened to this country, or to the Tory Party.
In the past few days Mr Bone called for the resignation of Anna Soubry, a foul-mouthed ultra-liberal with ‘advanced’ views on assisted suicide, now a Health Minister; he then called for the resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister, who let slip that he thinks moral conservatives are ‘bigots’.
So Mr Bone wants them both to quit. Talk about the wrong end of the stick.
The point is that they have big jobs, and people like Mr Bone haven’t. Mr Bone reminds me of the story of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, lying on his deathbed in Madrid. A vast crowd gathers outside his palace, chanting ‘Adios, Franco!’ His nurses open the windows so he can hear. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Oh Leader!’, they trill, ‘that so many people have come to say goodbye to you?’ ‘Yes, yes!’ the old monster murmurs from amid the pillows. ‘Very nice. But where are they all going?’
Mr Bone, do please ask Mrs Bone, but isn’t it you who should be resigning from a party that despises you and everything you stand for?
A Tory MP called Peter Bone seems to me to be sadly typical of so many honest British people who simply don’t understand what has happened to this country, or to the Tory Party.
In the past few days Mr Bone called for the resignation of Anna Soubry, a foul-mouthed ultra-liberal with ‘advanced’ views on assisted suicide, now a Health Minister; he then called for the resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister, who let slip that he thinks moral conservatives are ‘bigots’.
So Mr Bone wants them both to quit. Talk about the wrong end of the stick.
The point is that they have big jobs, and people like Mr Bone haven’t. Mr Bone reminds me of the story of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, lying on his deathbed in Madrid. A vast crowd gathers outside his palace, chanting ‘Adios, Franco!’ His nurses open the windows so he can hear. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Oh Leader!’, they trill, ‘that so many people have come to say goodbye to you?’ ‘Yes, yes!’ the old monster murmurs from amid the pillows. ‘Very nice. But where are they all going?’
Mr Bone, do please ask Mrs Bone, but isn’t it you who should be resigning from a party that despises you and everything you stand for?
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
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15 September 2012 5:11 PM
Here Come the Comment Warriors
Peter Hitchens said :"Well, one thing is for certain. Within a few minutes of posting anything critical of cannabis, you can be certain to be besieged by angry pro-cannabis commenters. Could they be organised? Do bears go to the lavatory in woodland?"
And Peter Hitchens added: 'And would you believe that the Google webcrawlers, presented with so many other interesting things to pick up from this blog, have now reverted to the quotation, of a criticism of me and Melanie Phillips, which I had quoted to rebut, and which had been bizarrely highlighted out of all the many things I had written and which I had sought to displace by providing alternative material?'
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A Witness to History - how Justice Decays
Here I reproduce (with the author's permission) another first-hand account of an important truth. The writer was a direct witness of the decline and weakening of criminal justice in this country, during the period when authority was in visible retreat. I don't agree with the author that these changes were 'motivated by economics', though I have no doubt that then, as now, cost was used as a pretext to drive a different purpose. I think it is arresting, fascinating and deeply dispiriting. Please read it:
'I joined the Magisterial service in the mid-1960s, qualified as a solicitor through night school and a year at law school whilst in service, spent most of my working life at a busy Magistrates' Court where I acted a clerk to the Court in excess of 8000 sittings . I retired a few years ago but continued working on an agency basis at different courts due to qualified staff shortages for another two years or so. I feel well qualified to comment on the judicial process and especially Magistrates' Courts.
'In 1964 I remember that the offence of using a vehicle without insurance carried a possibility of a prison sentence.
'In 1964 I remember that the offence of using a vehicle without insurance carried a possibility of a prison sentence.
'Driving whilst disqualified could be tried either by the Magistrates or by Crown Court (Quarter Sessions back then) and invariably resulted in a custodial sentence. Compare those two offences to now when its usually 6 penalty points and a derisory fine because such offenders rarely have sufficient means.
'Burglars were always, OK nearly always, imprisoned. A burglary committed during the hours of darkness could NOT be heard by the Magistrates, it had to go 'upstairs'. So you can imagine the kind of sentences handed down.
'Cautions? In 1964 never heard of them, except perhaps the unofficial ones that right minded traffic officers used to administer.
'Magistrates had Licensing Committees that kept a strict control on outlets for alcohol and gambling.
'Women were forced by the benefit agency of the day to take proceedings in our court against absent fathers before they would be allowed benefit. The Courts enforced payment by such fathers rigorously and most men paid perhaps because of the real threat of imprisonment for those who didn't.
'Those are just a few random memories, but what does stand out is that Magistrates were usually sensible people and properly advised by a clerk worked well in balancing the protection of the public, punishment of the offender and sympathy where common sense dictated. Of course there was always a right of appeal
'Gradually however, motivated by economics I'm sure, Magistrates' hands became tied. Precedent from higher Courts, usually restricting imprisonment, became commonplace and then eventually the biggest insult to the Magistracy in living memory, the Sentencing Guidelines Council!!!!! Virtually ever offence has had its 'tariff' reduced and reduced over the years the Council has reigned over sentencing in this country, and virtually every Magistrate is utterly and completely frustrated, because they sit week in week out and see exactly what goes on in our society and in our Courts and they are powerless, unable to call a halt to the obscene leniency of sentences.
'Would I be wrong in thinking that if any political party were to take a real tough stance on criminality (not parking offences and people driving at 32 in a 30) then their votes wouldn't even need to be counted, weighed perhaps, but not counted. Im talking here of harsh prison regimes, no computers or playstations etc. Five years inside meaning five years served in a bleak environment to which no one would wish a return. Ok, at the end of the sentence I would offer the opportunity to stay in a kind of probation led half way house where meaningful rehabilitation could take place, but only AFTER completing the sentence. I could go on and argue the case for capital and corporal punishment, but I fear things are too far gone for those sanctions to be reconsidered , although again I suspect a referendum would provide some interesting results. Having said that of course I realise that politicians no longer represent the views of those who elected them.'
Note to webcrawlers: "Peter Hitchens publishes a sad account of the decline of justice and morality in the English criminal court system"
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Cannabis - A (former) User Writes
The writer of the words that I reproduce below recently e-mailed them to me. I have since spoken to him ( he is 33, by the way) and have his permission to reproduce what he says here. I offer them without further comment, except to say that he is fairly sure that his memory and some other faculties have suffered permanently as a result of his now-abandoned use of cannabis. He is, in what he says, too kind to me, but the general message is so valuable that I felt it best to reproduce it as written. :
‘I would like to offer a great deal of thanks for continuing to highlight the dangers of cannabis use. As someone who smoked the drug regularly for a period of time in my early twenties, I know, from first-hand experience, the debilitating effect it can have on the user's mind. I have no doubt that for a number of people, however small a percentage, cannabis can trigger serious mental health problems.
‘Before ever having taken the drug, I was a happy, smiling, extroverted young person with lots of friends and a positive outlook on life. Once I started to smoke the awful stuff, that all changed - and it changed very rapidly.
Paranoia, depression, panic attacks - This is how my life ended up. Most disturbingly was the way my mind began to lose touch with reality. I began to suffer from delusional ideas and would hear voices in my head. Some of the things I imagined to be real, seem completely absurd to me now. For example, I used to think that songs I listened to were coded messages. I used to think that God was trying to communicate with me via car licence plates. I believed I could speak telepathically with people and had the ability to read their thoughts and implant my thoughts inside their mind.
Paranoia, depression, panic attacks - This is how my life ended up. Most disturbingly was the way my mind began to lose touch with reality. I began to suffer from delusional ideas and would hear voices in my head. Some of the things I imagined to be real, seem completely absurd to me now. For example, I used to think that songs I listened to were coded messages. I used to think that God was trying to communicate with me via car licence plates. I believed I could speak telepathically with people and had the ability to read their thoughts and implant my thoughts inside their mind.
‘Eventually I ended up losing my job, I almost destroyed my relationship with my family and I was almost driven to suicide. With the help and support of a close relative, whom I cherish dearly, I eventually stopped. And when I stopped, the voices stopped, the paranoia stopped, the feelings of despair and sadness all stopped and my mind returned to how it was before I ever took the ghastly stuff.
‘I have been married for the past five years and have a beautiful daughter who has just started school. I am in full time employment and also do voluntary work using my talents as an artist. Had I still been smoking cannabis, I would have none of these things, but rather I would have ended up in prison, in some sort of mental health unit or worse than that as I am sure you can imagine.’
Note to webcrawlers: "Peter Hitchens reproduces a letter from a former cannabis user, highlighting the fact that this drug is anything but safe, and far from soft"
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14 September 2012 9:38 AM
An Experiment
If I say here “Peter Hitchens believes that numbers prove plenty. He also thinks that Twitter is an electronic left-wing mob” , will these words find their way on to the web?
If I say here that “Peter Hitchens says universities should select their students on merit, not in accordance with some egalitarian formula”, will these words find their way on to the web?
By posting these thoughts in this fashion (and readers are of course welcome to comment on them) I am hoping to find out how and why certain things gain prominence on the web, and others do not? Is it, as some say, purely to do with various automated crawlers and codes? Or is there some subjective influence at work, so that mentions of me only get wide circulation when they are, er, unhelpful?
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13 September 2012 2:20 PM
Numbers Prove Plenty. And Accurate Quotation is good too
The Monitoring Department reports
On a brief patrol of the Twittersphere, I found my name being linked with the words ‘numbers prove nothing’. I could see this wasn’t intended to enhance my already pretty low reputation among the left-wing electronic mob which inhabits that twilit zone.
What was this about? Twitter, by its nature, doesn’t lend itself to detailed argument or presentation of facts.
As an experiment here, I am going to summarise what follows :"Peter Hitchens does not believe that 'Numbers Prove Nothing' . But he does believe very strongly in accurate and careful quotation".
Let's start with the alleged quotation ‘ numbers prove nothing’, it’s rather important how and where the words appeared. There are indeed occasions on which this would be true. The fact that millions of people supported the Iraq war didn’t make it right. The fact that millions of people believe in man-made global warming doesn’t make it true. Scientific theories are not resolved or proved by opinion polls or majorities, but by experimentation and above all by their testable power to predict.
But there are other occasions when numbers obviously do matter, not least when data are being examined. I use them a lot myself, and if I didn’t think they mattered at all, what would be the point of my spending weeks obtaining, and then publicising (for instance) the astonishing figures on the numbers of people let off for illegally possessing cannabis?
So I wondered when and where I had used this phrase. I trawled the Internet, with my limited skills, and came up with two references (I’d be grateful to anyone who can do better).
I found, in essence, two (the others were repeats) Neither was sourced. Neither was complete or had any useful context:
Here they are:
I reproduce them exactly as they are displayed. The material begins and finishes with a line of asterisks
I reproduce them exactly as they are displayed. The material begins and finishes with a line of asterisks
*********
There is still 'no evidence' to support global warming. All the existing scientific data are 'suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing'
Peter Hitchens column in the Mail on Sunday
Found at http:/www.epa.gov/airnow/2006 conference/Sunday/maybe
Alternatively:
PETER HITCHENS
Peter Hitchens, like Melanie Phillips a provocative right wing journalist, is keen to promote denial arguments. In his column in the Mail on Sunday he claimed that there is still 'no evidence' to support global warming. In a reply to a complaint about this article he reiterated that all the existing scientific data are 'suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing'
Peter Hitchens, like Melanie Phillips a provocative right wing journalist, is keen to promote denial arguments. In his column in the Mail on Sunday he claimed that there is still 'no evidence' to support global warming. In a reply to a complaint about this article he reiterated that all the existing scientific data are 'suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing'
To be found at http://risingtide.org.uk/content/hall-shame
*********************
I then searched the Mail on Sunday’s electronic library for anything by me mentioning the word ‘warming’ and simultaneously mentioning the word ‘evidence’. I seldom write about global warming anyway, and the only article I could find in which I made a substantial reference to it was this review of Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ , published on 29th November 2009.
I then searched the Mail on Sunday’s electronic library for anything by me mentioning the word ‘warming’ and simultaneously mentioning the word ‘evidence’. I seldom write about global warming anyway, and the only article I could find in which I made a substantial reference to it was this review of Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ , published on 29th November 2009.
‘AS IT happens I was Green before the word came to mean what it does now. From a very early age, I hated the ploughing up of this country for the motor car, and grieved at the mad closure of the railways, a view that has now become much more widespread than it was then. I began bicycling to work before bike lanes had been invented, when Boris Johnson was still at Eton.
To this day I get a sort of red mist when I see great trees being cut down by over-cautious councils, and I gaze with limitless regret on the bleak prairies of Southern England, where hedgerows once grew. If I can take a ship and a train rather than a plane, I will do.
So it's no use trying to dismiss me as some kind of petrolhead polluter who wants to cover the planet with runways and motorways, nor to allege I'm in the pay of Big Oil, when I say that I doubt the existence of man-made global warming. I just doubt it because I am not convinced it's true. Actually, now that Big Oil has bought into the man-made warming scare itself, I generally get even cruder abuse, being called a 'denier' as if I were some kind of Nazi. And if I mention my doubts at public occasions, I can feel the swelling wrath of the unreasoning mob gathering against me.
There's seldom time to make more than a few points before you are howled down by righteous zealots. And that is why I, and anyone seriously interested in this subject, owes a great debt to Christopher Booker, who has set down all the arguments for doubt in a single, concise book that will no doubt be either ignored or abused.
IT WOULD be very sad if, as a result, it fails to reach a wide audience. I think anyone remotely concerned about this huge controversy should read this courageous piece of work. I am not asking you to agree with everything in it, or assuming that you will. I am asking any reasonable person, who is influenced by facts and logic, to consider the case made here.
If you have had doubts but suppressed them for fear of being drowned in anger or contempt, buy this book to arm yourself. If you know any global-warming fanatics, buy it for them for Christmas and ask them, even beg them, to study it carefully. At the very least, it should allow the debate on this subject to be conducted with more fairness and without such expressions as 'denier' being used.
What you will find out is this. That much of what passes for accepted truth is not. Facts have been ruthlessly twisted, suppressed or invented. Scientists are greatly divided on the subject. Many people - and bodies - presented as experts actually have little or no knowledge of the science involved. Gullible politicians and gullible media men and women have repeatedly fallen for it. Hucksters, profiteers, world-government fanatics and, of course, the EU (always searching for an excuse to increase its power) have latched on to it. Huge public subsidies, including the carbon-trading racket and the tragicomic building of hideous, worse-than-useless windfarms, now depend upon it.
But take, just for example, the famous picture of polar bears on a melting ice-floe, supposedly doomed victims of global warming. The USA's ex-Vice President, the propagandist Al Gore, got audiences going 'Aaah!' by saying the bears had 'nowhere else to go'. Really? The picture was taken in August, when the Alaskan ice always melts. The polar bears were fine. Think about it. They can swim and they weren't far from land. Recent studies show that most polar bear populations are rising.
The world was warmer than it is now in the early Middle Ages, long before industrial activity increased CO2 output, a fact that the warming fanatics have worked very hard to obscure. Oh, and the most important greenhouse gas by far is not CO2 but water vapour, which is not influenced by human activity at all.
Meanwhile, an English court of law (despite buying the CO2 argument) has identified nine significant errors of fact in Gore's Oscar-winning alarmist film An Inconvenient Truth, ludicrously being inflicted on children in British schools. Among these: sea levels are not going to rise by 20ft any time soon; there's no evidence that atolls in the Pacific have been evacuated because of rising waters; the Gulf Stream is not going to shut down; the drying-up of Lake Chad, the shrinking of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro and Hurricane Katrina were none of them caused by global warming; the only polar bears that have drowned were four that died in a storm.
BOOKER also reminds us that even if all the measures demanded by the warming zealots were put into action, according to their own calculations this would only delay the effects they fear by six years. In my experience, people who employ alarmism, and who turn with rage on their critics, do so because they lack confidence in their case. Watch their behaviour at the coming Copenhagen climate conference, a festival of panic and exaggerated woe.
This particular frenzy, if not checked, could end by bankrupting the West and leaving us sitting in the cold and the dark whistling for a wind to power our dead computers - while China and India surge on to growth and prosperity because they have had the sense to ignore the whole stupid thing.’
I should say, by the way, that this sums up my views on man-made global warming quite well.
Then I searched for the words ‘numbers don’t matter’ . The library came back with nothing written by me which contained these words. When I tried ‘numbers’ by itself, it came back with 300 references in 11 years, which suggests that I take numbers seriously.
The quotation including the words ‘ suppositions, allegations and predictions. Numbers prove nothing’ is said by the second source not to have come from a column ( as it doesn't seem to do, though even electronic libraries can be mistaken) but to have come from a 'reply' (undated and without any traceable reference) to a complaint. The library certainly can't find it, in any form, under my byline.
Without more information, I cannot attempt to verify this. What complaint? By whom? To whom? When? But I would be glad if the anonymous person who produced this quotation would give the context, without which its burden is unclear. In the meantime, I would urge anyone who is seduced by the claim that I think 'Numbers don't matter' as a general proposition should view the suggestion with caution. Numbers do matter, in general. And accurate quotation matters just as much, as I pointed out to the BBC some weeks ago.
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General Conversation Resumed
Looking back at responses to my columns while I’ve been away from the office, I am not surprised to see that the old death penalty quibbles continue. I do wish we could start this from a higher base(that is the purpose of the index). We might then break out of some of the logical circles in which many contributors are trapped.
Let me set out one or two of these;
1. How can you favour execution when the Ten Commandments say ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’? Well, because most Christians read the Commandment as ‘Thou Shalt do no Murder’ (this is how Christ himself expresses the Commandment at Matthew, 19, 18, Authorised Version, and how it is rendered in those Anglican churches which still display the Ten Commandments at the east end of the Church). Is this a get-out? I believe the original Hebrew of Exodus is ambiguous, but could any moral system survive which did not distinguish between defensive and offensive violence, or between the guilty and the innocent? I don’t think so. Even the Roman Catholic Catechism, which became more hostile to the death penalty under John Paul II, is not wholly hostile to it. And the 37th of the Church of England’s 39 articles famously says : ‘The Laws of a Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences’ and further ‘ It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons and serve in the wars’. This is why I am particularly baffled by those who write in and ask how I can be against the killing in the womb of tiny children who are by definition innocent, while I favour the execution of (some) convicted murderers. Surely the contradiction is the other way? How can those who blithely accept this daily massacre of the innocents in misnamed ‘clinics’ not also be in favour of executing the guilty, since their view of the value of life appears purely utilitarian?
2. What about America, then? They have the death penalty, and it hasn’t reduced murders there. I cannot count the number of times that I have pointed out that no state in the USA has an * effective* death penalty, that is, one which is applied swiftly and consistently. The modern death penalty in the USA (quite unlike its far swifter and more consistent operation before the 1960s) is a political show, designed to assuage an angry public, not to operate as an effective deterrent. The fact that people *are* executed isn’t the point. It’s that most murderers are not executed, and that those who are, are executed many, many years after their crimes. The question of measuring deterrence is very difficult, as the British Royal Commission concluded. This was the case in this country. The penalty was suspended twice between 1948 and 1957 (with interesting effects on crimes of violence in both cases), and after 1957 was much restricted and much less of a real danger to violent criminals. Countries which abolish the death penalty invariably do so after a long period of controversy, during which the penalty is used less and is often suspended for lengthy periods. It often also happens at a time of general social change. The moment of actual abolition is often not a good point from which to measure its effect. I’d add (yet again) that in our world of very advanced medical skills and equipment, people nowadays survive violent attacks of a kind that would assuredly have killed them in 1955. Offences which might have been deterred by the gallows are not, therefore, recorded as homicides, but as attempted murders or various forms of wounding. By some calculations, were it not for the NHS’s fine trauma services, Britain’s annual homicide rate would now be in the thousands.
3. For the nine millionth time, the danger of executing an innocent person must be reduced by all possible precautions. But it is absurd to imagine that it will never happen. Is this an absolute argument against the death penalty? Only in the way that it is an absolute argument against defending yourself militarily from an aggressor (innocents are also bound to die in this process, though the aim of the violence is good, however hard you seek to avoid it ) and (in my view) by basing your transport policy on motor vehicles, which is certain to lead to a large slaughter of innocents . Many forms of medical treatment, particularly major surgery, also seem to me to be hedged about with this difficulty. But perhaps above all there is the fact that all murder victims are innocent deaths, many of them preventable by the death penalty ; and that convicted murderers quite frequently kill again after being released from prison. So the argument that ‘ we can’t execute in case innocents die’ suffers in two ways . First, if generally applied, it prevents many other actions we would normally regard as good, therefore if you cannot show that the death penalty is not in itself a valuable good, then the fear of innocent deaths is a hard argument to rely on. Next, that if the arguer’s concern for the deaths of innocents is so great, why does it not manifest itself in preventing the murders of innocents?
I won’t in future respond to any arguments here on the death penalty which don’t at least take the above points into account.
Mr Armstrong, our resident Tishbite, chides me for saying that universal equality has no practical application, suggesting that by doing so I am denying Christian principles. I did not, in a three-minute audio essay, wish to address the question of equality before God. Nor was I addressing an audience which would necessarily accept the distinction between the temporal and the eternal. I happen to think that equality before God has no ‘practical’ effect, in the temporal world. It is only of interest or use, as a concept, to those who accept the existence of the eternal. It’s most unwise to assume that people generally do accept this,
So I don’t. By the way, something similar motivates my dislike of the phrase ‘born-again’, which I think (with its smug certainty and unappealing imagery) has done a great deal to repel inquisitive and sympathetic people who might otherwise have paid more attention to the Christian religion.
I note that on the Middle East I am chided for saying the bombing of the King David was a terrorist act. It most certainly was. Many non-combatants, including women, died horribly. One unpleasant detail of this event which has always stuck in my mind, as I know the hotel well, and the pleasant road in which it stands. is the fact that one officer, going to see if a friend of his who worked there had survived, found out in the most appalling way that he had not. He looked up at the front of the YMCA building opposite the hotel, and saw his friend’s severed head, gorily stuck to the stonework, into which it had been propelled by the force of the blast.
Another correspondent chides me for quoting Samuel Katz. But I point out clearly that Katz was a highly biased witness. Nonetheless, his book is worth reading, as it illuminates parts of the history of the region which are normally ignored, and explains to the British or American reader the thinking of a powerful and significant segment of Israeli society.
I long ago concluded that neither side in this conflict is free of moral stain, and it is absurd to reach conclusions on the idea that one side or the other is wholly right, or wholly wrong. I particularly regret Israel’s failure to do more to reconcile its Arab citizens, as I have written. I favour a compromise. I acknowledge that, if we were starting again, we would be wrong to do as we did. But that does not mean we can now expect the state of Israel to disappear, or help it to do so.
But I see no significant desire for such a compromise in the Arab Muslim world. Indeed, I would fear for the safety of any Arab politician or journalist who openly advocated any compromise which allowed for the continuing existence of a viable Jewish state in the region. Whereas many Israelis, and Zionists, have been willing to consider major compromise, and Israel has given up large amounts of territory in return for unreliable promises of peace.
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12 September 2012 5:03 PM
A Line in the Sand - Western Folly in the Middle East
As we contemplate the disgraceful murder of the US Ambassador to Libya – perpetrated by the very fanatics supported by the ‘West’ only a few months ago – we should devote ourselves even more carefully to understanding what is really going on in this part of the world.
The Middle East and the North Africa is a zone in which we repeatedly intervene, armed mainly with ignorance. The fact that we claim to be benevolent is no excuse. By failing to understand the place we seek to change, we ensure that there will be terrible unintended consequences. Is it any surprise that it has been the source of so much pain and trouble, when we take so little pain or trouble to learn about it. I do often wonder if David Cameron, Hillary Clinton or William Hague have any real knowledge of the area, or of they listen to their diplomats who do.
So, my renewed thanks go to Richard Carey, the kind reader who sent me his copy of ‘A Line in the Sand’ by James Barr, one of the most instructive books you are likely to find about the stupid mess we have made of the Middle East. I’d set it alongside Samuel Katz’s astonishingly revelatory (though very one-sided) account of the origins of the Arab-Israel dispute ‘Battleground’, as an eye-opening reintroduction to a subject we all think we know about, but don’t really.
Katz’s book, which is quite hard to get hold of in this country, mercilessly examines, questions and mocks the slippery way in which Britain sought to oil out (in more ways than one) of its 1917 commitment to a ‘National Home for the Jews’ . Katz is a supporter of Vladimir Jabotinsky, and an old friend of Arthur Koestler (whose novel ‘Thieves in the Night’ is strong fictional propaganda for his cause) . Jabotinsky’s ‘revisionist’ version of Zionism was far more realistic, and thus far more ruthless, than the soft-edged socialist mainstream of that movement. And it in turn gave birth to strands of thought which led to horrible acts of Zionist terrorism, notably the gruesome 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, when it was the British headquarters (91 died, 46 were injured). It is hard to say exactly who introduced political murder or terror into this dispute (the Jerusalem and Hebron massacres of Jews in the 1920s, and the Arab revolt in the 1930s must not be forgotten). But it is certain that neither side is innocent.
But one of the many things I never knew before reading Barr’s book is just how furious was the Anglo-French rivalry in the region, so furious that Barr produces persuasive evidence that France actively backed Zionist terrorism against Britain in the late 1940s. Yes, that’s right, the country which had recently been liberated from the German yoke by British , American and Canadian Forces, the country whose resistance leader had been hosted and financed by the British government, actively helped the violent enemies of Britain in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.
The origins of this go back to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, under which Britain and France secretly parcelled out the remnants of the Ottoman Empire (which they had yet to destroy), thus laying the foundations of a century of conflict and hatred which has yet to come to an end. They were planning to diddle each other even as they signed. At least, we were certainly planning to diddle the French.
The original sin, of course, is the West’s thirst for oil (in those days needed to fuel Britain’s global navy), oil which had recently been discovered in what is now Iraq – combined with France’s hunger for prestige, and Britain’s unending concern for the safety of the Suez canal from land or sea attack. One thing that was never involved at all was idealism or altruism, though the Balfour Declaration of a ‘national home for the Jews’ in 1917 was dressed up as such, making it awkward when later governments sought to break the promise.
There are interesting accounts of French rule of Syria which make the pious criticisms of the Assad government by France’s current leaders look a little silly. Did you ever wonder where the Assads got the idea that artillery bombardment of cities was an effective way of restoring control? Go on, guess.
But the deep suspicion between French and British empires at this stage led to many other problems (made even worse during the early years of the warm, when the French rulers of Syria remained loyal to the Vichy government of Marshal Petain. On the consequences of this for the wider Arab world, Katz is more entertaining and cogent than Barr (Katz’s description of Britain’s deployment of the two available would-be Kings , Faisal and Abdullah, is actually bitterly funny as well as devastatingly true).
One other interesting aspect of this, apart from the forgotten British involvement in both Iran and Iraq in the early years of World War Two, is the extent to which Britain and Vichy France were actual enemies, and very bitter ones indeed, during World War Two. Ever since the Entente Cordiale, there has been a sentimental assumption that our two countries are natural friends, and Germany our natural enemy. But ‘Line in the Sand’ makes it very clear that the enmity between Britain and France was much deeper, more profoundly felt (especially in France) and more recent than we care to admit.
Writing as a Francophile, who has loved France from the moment he first set foot in it, and admires the French greatly, this fact distresses me. As an English and British Patriot I am compelled always to view the French as rivals and potential foes. This is why I am especially haunted by the tragedy of Mers-el-Kebir, in 1940, when the Royal Navy opened fire on the French Fleet. It was nobody’s proudest moment, and not exactly Trafalgar, or the Battle of the Nile.
The curious relationship between us is enjoyably recorded and described in a fine book ‘That Sweet Enemy’ by Robert and Isabelle Tombs (he is English, she is French) . The title comes from Sir Philip Sidney, just to illustrate how long our relationship of mingled loathing, respect, contempt and admiration has been going on.
And another thing…
My latest podcast, this time on the making of excuses, can be found here
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10 September 2012 6:21 PM
Blowing my Own Trumpet…
… was something I was always taught not to do, in the pre-revolutionary era in which I grew up. I still feel bad about doing it. But readers here often say to me that they wish they had known about various other activities of mine. I still won’t give advance notice of broadcasts. These are too much subject to last-minute change, and in any case I often get very short notice of them.
But, before I resume normal postings here later this week, just a few events and other matters that readers might like to know about.
First, I have been making some brief broadcasts for a site called ‘The Agitator’, short polemics on subjects of our time.
The first two are on drugs, here
and on equality, here
Then, as some of you will know, I will be speaking at the Henley Literary Festival on Sunday 30th September, about my forthcoming book on the non-existent ‘war on drugs’. This was a late booking and tickets can still be had by going to
henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk
or calling 01189 724700.
I’m also planning debates with Howard Marks (whom I’ve debated before three times) on the subject of drugs, at Waterstones in Oxford on the evening of Thursday 18th October (I think it’s at 7.00 pm) , and in Bristol, at the Arnolfini Theatre, on Monday 29th October at 6.15 pm. This is part of the Bristol festival of Ideas.
And I shall once again be debating my old opponent Peter Reynolds at Exeter University (also on the subject of drugs) on Thursday 29th November
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