Tedious hairsplitting

Mr 'Shorthair' tediously accuses me of splitting hairs. In this he is like the BBC presenter who moaned that the problem over Ed Miliband's alarmist Global Warming advertisements was over 'just one word'. That 'one word' was the difference between certainty and doubt, and therefore entirely crucial.

In this case we have a simple distinction between the hope of an advantage gained, and the fear of mockery or even physical attack.
Here are two examples, generalised to allow speculation on unknown motives:
Example a) A young woman, possibly under pressure from parents ambitious for her future, qualifies by effort for grammar school and then qualifies for Cambridge, also attending elocution lessons to make her sound more patrician. She does this to gain the prizes of ambition and advancement, and becomes wealthy, successful and widely respected.
Example b) another young woman, blessed with the advantages of wealth and good education, adopts the accent of the less wealthy and less-educated, so as to fit in with the crowd, and avoid mockery or bullying.
Spot the difference between the two. Mr Shorthair, who prefers the wisdom of the crowds to thinking, cannot. Can anyone help him?

By the way, I don't see how the swimming analogy works. People learn to swim for many reasons (often because parents or schools press them to do so, not because they themselves see the point). But they have to learn, to make an effort, to acquire a skill they wouldn't naturally have. This plainly provides many advantages in pleasure, health, etc. It also provides them with an ability to avoid a disadvantage, an ability to save themselves in certain circumstances. You might compare this to the laborious acquisition of knowledge, or even to taking elocution lessons, both of which require comparable application and dedication. But you cannot compare it to the conscious or unconscious adoption of a funky street accent. I know of no teachers who make a living by instructing people in how to do this. Does Mr 'Hair'?
I couldn't care less if a 'random group of English speakers' cannot tell the difference between seeking to gain an advantage, and trying to avoid a disadvantage. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are not decided by opinion surveys.

PS A note for specialists on a couple of this person's other feline points, which suggest a spiteful personal hostility of some kind, presumably the reason for his hiding behind a false name. I can spell T.S. Eliot's name, and lots of other things too, and will enter a spelling contest (though not a typing contest) with anyone who wants one. What I cannot do is check proofs in which this name has been inserted and incorrectly spelt by another person, when I am on an aeroplane thousands of miles away. (The British edition of my book, as anyone who buys it can check, does not attribute the Little Gidding quotation to Eliot. But it does mention Eliot earlier, in the context of a sneering reference to his Christian conversion by Virginia Woolf. See the index.) I know this inability to proofread by telepathy is a failing, but I am prepared to live with it. And I specifically don't 'take on' Christians more fervent than I, having no opinion of my doctrinal or theological knowledge. Nor do I make myself out to be either pious or virtuous, as is also clear to any reader of the book.

I have answered the complaint about my hostility to and mockery of fake names from Mr 'Bronstein', elsewhere on this thread.

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Accents, Tories and Aspiration

A few responses to readers. Mr Butterworth says: ’What absolute bunkum. Changing the way you speak to aspire ‘upwards’ - by speaking in a more refined accent demonstrates insecurity of equal measure to those who dress down their accent. It's precisely this sort of emphasis on details, which are of no real consequence to our lives, that fan the flames of snobbishness amongst both the rich and poor. Leave people as they are - besides a cockney accent has never done Michael Caine any harm.’

I am puzzled by people who take the trouble to comment without taking the trouble to read what I say. I wasn't commenting on 'insecurity', nor did I use any such expression as 'refined' (the word makes me think of one of Peter Simple's characters, the appalling 'Diane Refayne'). I was talking about what people these days aspire towards, as a metaphor for our society as a whole.

I took great pains to write the article in such a way that nobody could justly accuse it of being snobbish, or of being a personal assault on Mrs Cameron (though I knew there would be unjust attacks of this nature). There isn't a snobbish sentiment in it, in fact. The fact is, however, that (as I think GBS said) 'No Englishman can open his mouth without instantly making another Englishman hate him'. We have, whether we like it or not, a class system. It has, whether we like it or not, found expression through accents. Many of us might wish it otherwise, but that's another matter (see Nevil Shute's enjoyable wartime novel 'Landfall' for a gentle and kind-hearted - but severe - attack on petty snobbery, of a kind that has in fact largely - and rightly - disappeared since that time).

My writing about it (and I was by no means the only person to notice and remark upon this, despite the amazing inability of 'Mev' to detect anything incongruous in Mrs Cameron's manner of speaking) did not make it more or less likely to happen, or more or less controversial than it already is. The adoption of a street accent, which she is unlikely to have been brought up with, by a person of wealthy background and more or less aristocratic status is a significant act. Just as the adoption of what was then an 'educated' and predominantly southern accent by someone brought up in Stockport was a significant act in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I didn't point out, as there wasn't room, that Joan Bakewell's girls' grammar school has now - of course - been closed down, and a fee-paying school, which her mother couldn't have afforded, occupies its site. So there won't be another Dame Joan from *there*.

Someone who isn't really called 'British Shorthair' (isn't that a sort of cat?), decided to disbelieve me. He or she says: ’If Mr Hitchens genuinely did like all the accents of these islands, then Samantha Cameron's accent would not be an issue.’

Really? Why would that be so? Just because I have that view, it doesn't mean that perhaps millions of others take a different position. All right, I'm unusual. I have lived and worked in many parts of the country, my earliest memories being affectionate ones of Scotland. My father, a career naval officer, knew - as most service people do - that stupid class prejudice was an obstacle to achievement and a waste of talent. And he was used to working and living alongside people from all parts of the Kingdom who spoke in many different ways, often in conditions of some peril and mutual dependency. I like to think he passed on his complete lack of silly snobbery to me. On top of that my years as a Marxist revolutionary meant spending a lot of time with industrial workers, often in their hospitable homes. I was a labour and industrial reporter for many years, which also meant a lot of contact with people who didn't speak the way I spoke. Class bigotry can't long survive that, either.

Our feline friend goes on: ‘People have always adopted forms of speaking which will gain them perceived advantage with their listeners. Hence Mr. Hitchens' concerns about the night bus.’

I don't follow this. What 'perceived advantage', apart from not getting thumped by a drunk, is under discussion? Self-protection is hardly an 'advantage'.

Our pussycat continues: ‘and we might also speculate that Mrs Cameron is concerned that her original accent might give ammunition to those who apply the ‘Etonian toff’ label to her husband.’

Well, maybe so, if the thing is a matter of conscious decision (which I doubt) but there are plenty of stops on the line between Aristo and Estuary where she might have alighted, aren't there?

‘and when there is no perceived advantage in adopting an upper-middle class accent, people will not do it;’

I'm not sure about that. But most people do not 'adopt' their accents. Most people have the accents they grew up with, and indeed there's a bit of scorn for the old idea of elocution lessons to speak more poshly. But by contrast, speaking 'less posh' is quite common. Oddly enough, something similar happened in post-1948 Communist Czechoslovakia, where the wise abandoned their pure Gymnasium Czech and spoke demotically, so as to avoid the attention of the Communist authorities who were actively discriminating against the middle class. Nothing of that kind is happening here, of course.

‘and it is upon this simple fact that Mr. Hitchens' excursion into sociolinguistics founders. Speech is one thing, and virtue is another. Let's not confuse them.’

Indeed, let's not. Nor did I. But others, I think, may.

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Leave it aht, Samanfa...Mrs Cameron's Estuary English typifies a society that mistrusts aspiration and mocks excellence

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

The strangest and most interesting thing I heard and saw in the past week was Samantha Cameron’s brief appearance in a programme about her husband on ITV.

I have little interest in Mrs Cameron. Unlike, say, Cherie Blair - who stood for Parliament - she has never until now had anything to do with politics.

And what I say here isn’t meant as a criticism of her. As far as I’m concerned, she can speak in any way she likes and good luck to her.

I like all the accents of these Islands. I’m two generations from forebears who spoke broad Hampshire, and my own slightly strangled plummy tones aren’t to everyone’s taste. 

There’s no doubt that, like most people brought up to speak as I was, I’ve semi-consciously toned down my inner Trevor Howard - not least to avoid getting beaten up on the night bus.

But I still think that it is enormously interesting and significant that the Tory leader’s wife, daughter of a land-owning baronet, brought up on broad acres, educated at a genteel private girls’ academy and then at one of the great Public Schools, and now running a business that caters to London’s dwindling but unflinching cut-glass classes, should speak Estuary English.

It’s an outward sign of deep and important changes in our society.

Compare Mrs Cameron with Dame Joan Bakewell. Dame Joan - like so many of her generation - got to Cambridge from a grammar school.

And part of her hard upward climb was a deliberate effort to get rid of her Stockport tones and to sound more like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter.

The BBC may claim not to be snobbish, but I don’t think Dame Joan would ever have presented Late Night Line-Up if she’d kept her Cheshire accent.

Now, you may think (as I do) that Joan Bakewell did better than a girl of her background would have done in the comprehensive age. Or you may not.

But I think a country where people change the way they speak to aspire upwards is likely to be a good and optimistic place, full of hope and opportunity.

And I think we would be better off with that arrangement than with today’s - a nation where people change the way they speak to fit in with a society that mistrusts aspiration; a nation where bright boys and girls are endlessly mocked and tormented in schools, simply for working hard and seeking to excel.

Feeble bias from the 'Warmist' BBC

The usually supine Advertising Standards Authority has managed to condemn some alarmist and political newspaper advertisements put out by the Government, warning of global warming doom.

These pathetic propaganda efforts - cynically aimed at children - used nursery rhymes to claim that man-made global warming was bound to lead to drought and storms.

There were 939 complaints, a very large number, and there would have been more if the ASA hadn’t announced they had enough to act on.

Now, if the ASA condemns an advertisement, you can be sure it is really, really bad. But what did the BBC, whose Charter obliges it to be impartial, make of this latest blow to the Warmist movement?

The fast-fading Today programme, whose feeble new presenters have blunted its edge so much that it is rapidly ceasing to be a flagship, and becoming a politically correct festival of boredom, aired the following exchange.

Presenter Justin Webb was talking to media correspondent Torin Douglas. Mr Webb was plainly peeved by the ASA decision.

He opined that the controversy pivoted on ‘just one word’, as if that meant that the difference between certainty and speculation was insignificant. ‘This is a sort of score draw between the Government and those who complained,’ Mr Webb editorialised.

‘Some of the advertisements passed and a couple, on almost a technicality, not.’
Mr Douglas replied: ‘I think you are right.’

Well, I think he is wrong, and if the BBC had any real concern for impartiality, it would tell them both so.

Kate Winslet, victim of a malady she helped create

I’m one of those people who think that every marriage break-up wounds us all, including that of Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet.

Heaven knows it’s hard for people to stay married in the modern world. The law makes it easier to walk out of a marriage than it is to get out of a car leasing agreement, where both sides have to agree to end it.

Property and custody settlements penalise divorced husbands so hard - even when they’re blameless - that it’s amazing that so many people still bother to wed at all.

Shoals of lawyers swim like sharks round every failing marriage, quick to encourage the divorce proceedings that pay their salaries.

But there’s also the cultural factor, the idea that marriage is a prison and
a trap, that the suburbs are a zone of frustrated misery, that motherhood is a mental desert and children are bound to hate their parents, and vice versa.

And much of this propaganda is spread by TV and movies, not least films such as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, which just happen to have been made by Sam Mendes and, in one case, to have starred Kate Winslet.

Hollywood didn’t always take this line, and I think producers, directors and actors should wonder what effect their dramas might have on the world we live in.

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We have doctors who cannot speak proper English, and we cannot do anything about it.

Places at good universities are being filled by young men and women from other countries, so depriving British students of courses for which they are qualified.
And we cannot do anything about that either.

There is absolutely no point in getting angry about either of these things unless you are also prepared to recognise the solution - that this country must leave the European Union and re-establish control over its own frontiers.

Any politician who will not address this huge and pressing question - which now affects almost every aspect of our daily life - is not worthy of your vote.

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David Cameron, in a weird effort to prove that his party is not wholly dominated by louche West London swells, claims that the supposedly gritty Northerner William Hague couldn’t find his way to Notting Hill.

Having met Mr Hague in Notting Hill on at least one occasion, I can deny this calumny on the Shadow Foreign Secretary’s map-reading skills - and it would indeed be worrying if a would-be foreign policy supremo couldn’t even grope his way round the capital of his own country.

Much more worrying is whether Mr Cameron can find his way to a conservative policy. I am always telling you that the Cameron Tories are Blairism reborn, but you don’t have to take my word for it.

Take the words of Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove, spoken a few days ago:

‘At its best, New Labour was a recognition that the values of enterprise and aspiration could be fused with a commitment to social justice and fairness. And the party that best exemplifies that view now is David Cameron’s Conservative Party.’ He said it.

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