Kickboxing and Scotland – some responses

I had meant to deal with Scotland and other matters in my previous post, and in just a second I shall do so but the grammar school issue ran away with me because it still seems to me to be astonishing that no major political party favours the return of these excellent schools.

By the way, on the issue of streaming and setting, and why a top stream in a  comprehensive school can’t replicate the effects of a grammar school – it can replicate some of them.

But the institutional force of an entire school devoted to excellence, the traditions, honours-boards, esprit de corps of a school, rather than the functional effects of some selection inside a school which cannot provide these things, seem to me to be very important.

And perhaps Mr Charles will thinks this is about what he calls ‘oiks’, but many comprehensives are burdened by large numbers of boys and girls who are having to endure a (rather bad) academic education they do not want, when they would prefer vocational education, or to be out in the world, working. If such people are in your class, they can sabotage your whole education.

But even if they are in the same school, they can undermine many of the things a good school needs, particularly a united sense of purpose, plus peace and safety. This is especially important if your home life is chaotic or hostile to learning. 

It’s also my view that comprehensives, if they are to have big enough sixth forms to be practical, will themselves be far too big for anyone to control properly. This problem doesn’t arise in a grammar school, where everyone is destined for the sixth, so a decent-sized sixth form can be maintained in a relatively small school. Oh, and for many people, a return to Secondary Moderns, spoken of in tones of horror,  would probably mean a better education than they get in their current comprehensive, and almost certainly not a worse one.

Back to Scotland. I’m asked by Mr Wooderson :  ‘What lesbians and kickboxing have to do with this. Is it supposed to be self-evident? Are Ruth Davidson's admittedly unusual (but not greatly so) lifestyle and choice of hobby somehow symbolic of the Scottish Tories' removal from the mainstream? Would it be different if she were a heterosexual tennis player? I've no idea." Somebody else describes this reference as an ‘unpleasant personal remark’.

I have no interest in the sexual choices of the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. Has anyone who contributes to this site ever, ever asked anyone what his or her sexuality is? I wouldn’t dream of doing so. I think it a private matter. But Miss Davidson has publicly declared this choice.  It is the facts *that she thinks that it matters, and that she has chosen to make it public*  that interest me. This is a political position as well as a lifestyle choice.

I suppose I must admit that I might have been unfair to mention her kickboxing (which seems to me to be a bit of a marginal activity, verging on the laughable for a politician. Here I should confess that I have been known to do Pilates Yoga myself, so who am I to talk?) . But there’s a certain euphony about the phrase ‘Lesbian Kickboxer’, and who knows what sort of comments I would have attracted had I used the word ‘Lesbian’ on its own?  I think kickboxing is a more marginal sport than tennis, and that it conjures up an image that is more marginal. The two together are about as far as it is possible to get from the granite image possessed by Scottish Unionism when it was a major, dominant party.

But it is surely a reflection of the fact that the Scottish Tories are now so small and irrelevant that they are led by someone who chooses to go public about what many people regard as a private choice.

Political parties which are close to power generally seek to be, or appear, as mainstream in their appearance and way of life as they can. Their public spokesmen and women dress more conservatively, speak more cautiously, live more cautiously. Sometimes they even get married.  In the case of New Labour, they pretended to the point of agony to be fascinated by Association Football, in the belief that it was the mainstream sport of the voters.  The Tories would do this too, but they know nobody would believe them. Whether they should or should not do so is irrelevant to this discussion. They do, and judge it wise to do so.

Parties which have little or no hope of office indulge themselves, speak more openly and are less cautious about such things as radical and unconventional lifestyle choices. Once again, this is a fact (see Hugh McDiarmid, referred to below)  whether anyone likes it or not.

The fact that she worked for the BBC for seven years may in fact be more telling. But it doesn’t bear on the marginal nature of the Scottish Tories who (let us face it) are not well-represented at either Westminster or Holyrood, but who used to be a major Scottish party.

Anyway, if and when the  UK Tory Party (or the SNP, or the US Democratic party, or the German Social Democrats) chooses as its leader an ex-BBC lesbian kickboxer, we’ll see if this status has any relation to being marginal.

Quite how it’s ‘unfair’ or ‘insulting’ I’m not sure. Lesbianism, whatever your opinions may be about it, simply is not a majority lifestyle choice.  I was contrasting the days when Scottish nationalism was represented by the (to me)  marginal figure of Hugh McDiarmid (real name Christopher Murray Grieve),  hairy-faced Communist and alleged poet, and the days when Scottish Toryism is represented, and led, by a person who wants us to know that she is a lesbian. Would this be the case if the Scottish Tories were a mainstream party? Would the SNP now welcome Grieve as a major spokesman?

I certainly didn’t pick up my knowledge about Miss Davidson from a story in another paper. I met (well, shared a TV studio with) Miss Davidson in Glasgow last year and so became aware of her and her opinions (for this is really about opinions) before most English journalists knew of her. I was unsurprised to find soon afterwards that she was apparently David Cameron’s   favoured candidate for the Scottish Tory leadership. Her rival wanted to wind the whole thing up and start again. 

I am grieved that a contributor here has stupidly and wrongly posted a comment under my name. I have removed the comment, though I have left in place a number of reactions to it. This is simply not acceptable behaviour. It should not be repeated. The person involved will be written to.

William Dove asks a penetrating question: ‘I'm willing to accept that Mr Cameron will do almost anything to stay in office and so would secretly like Scotland to leave (taking Labour MPs with it) and so give him a majority. But have you not also in the past said that Mr Cameron likes NOT having a majority so that he govern more easily as a Liberal with the Lib Dems. Is there any contradiction between these two views or are you assuming (perhaps reasonably) that Cameron will not have the Lib Dems to fall back on next time round. Forgive me if I've misunderstood or misremembered your views on the subject. ‘

Yes, I am assuming that , if not next time then fairly soon, that even with Lib Dem support (which he would prefer to rely on) Mr Cameron may lose his majority to Labour unless Scotland is removed from the United Kingdom Parliament. Also, his leadership is a process. He is increasingly filling his Parliamentary Party with people like himself. And the ‘Tory Right’, spineless and absurdly loyal, is shrivelling before our very eyes, especially after absurdly taking Mr Cameron’s ‘non-existent ‘Brussels veto’ at face value,  so he may not need ‘the Lib Dems made me do it’ excuse forever to get his way. In fact it is quite possible that he will in effect merge the Lib Dems with the Tories at the next election, when the Lib Dems are certain to undergo a Parliamentary collapse. It’s also quite possible that the Lib Dems (who I predict will split from the coalition at least a year before the 2015 election) will ally with Labour after that election if it suits them to do so.)

Why is old age so much more merciless to women than to men? I don’t know. But it certainly is.

I think Mr Hodson may well be on to something.  Teaching seems to me to be increasingly conformist and bureaucratic. What then will happen to the often-eccentric and awkward men and women who are often the best teachers?

I think there is no doubt that Scotland is subsidised. But most civilised countries subsidise their less-prosperous and more sparsely-populated regions, and I don’t see why the United Kingdom should be any different.

As for a Scottish Parliament, for good or ill the two countries did not, at Union in 1707, merge their legal systems. Nor did they merge their national churches.  That is because they were and remain deeply different. These differences are profound, but can I think be sustained within a United Kingdom, and we will all be better off if they are. Two parliaments, one Crown, seems quite workable to me, with good will, and without the machinations of the EU.

I was interested (but disappointed) that nobody spotted the remarks about the weird constitutional position of London.

A free Scotland? No, it's being fed into the Euro-blender

If David Cameron wants to hurry Scotland out of the United Kingdom, he is going the right way about it. The more he says he loves the Union, the more I fear for it.
For all his bluster, he must know that the SNP has a moral mandate to hold a referendum on independence when it wants to do so. Placing legal obstacles in its way will rightly anger reasonable Scots.

I have seldom seen a clearer example of someone setting out to achieve the opposite of what he claims to want. Mr Cameron would guillotine the Queen in Trafalgar Square if he thought it would keep him in office. So breaking up the country for the sake of a parliamentary majority would not be much of a strain for him. And getting the Scots out of Westminster is his best hope of such a majority.

How on earth do we find ourselves in this mess? Only 40 years ago, Scottish Nationalism was a weird fad, preached in garbled tones by hairy communist poets and funny old ladies. Tory Unionists held dozens of Westminster seats. Now Nationalism is a mighty force, led by an astute man, close to attaining its goal. Unionism is dead and the Scottish Tories are a laughable remnant of eccentric bystanders led by a lesbian kickboxer.

But it is not Alex Salmond’s cunning that has brought this about. It is the European Union, which needs to turn this country into manageable chunks before it can feed it into the Euro-blender and destroy it for ever.

Notice how any part of the UK can have a referendum on reducing the powers of London (and Northern Ireland can vote to leave the Union altogether, any time it wants to).
But nobody can have a vote of any kind on reducing the powers of  Brussels, let alone on leaving the  EU. The truth is obvious, but nobody observes it.

Brussels rejoices to see Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland becoming ever more separate from England. It would like to see England itself Balkanised into ‘regions’ – and the new multicultural republic of London under President Boris is a major step towards that.

As it happens, I love Scotland. I value its huge contributions to our joint history in thought, war, invention, industry and literature. I think it should make its own laws. I think it is quite right that England, far bigger and richer, should subsidise it. But I do not think it can be truly independent. It is too small, and not rich enough.

And before anyone mentions Scandinavia, they should look at the troubled history of that region, its tiny nations repeatedly occupied or menaced into subjection by more powerful neighbours. All an independent Scotland could hope for, until the EU came along, was a grim, pinched future on the fringe of Europe.

Now, it can either be a part of a United Kingdom, sharing a long and mostly happy history, a love of liberty, an astonishing inventiveness and industry and remarkable valour in war; or it can be a province of the Brussels empire, granted all the toys and trappings of nationhood but actually far less free and autonomous than it is now.

Brussels would be happy to let Scotland (like Ireland) have a flag and an anthem. There would be Scottish EU passports, token Scottish armed forces, a Scottish international dialling code and internet  code, Scottish postage stamps and a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation.

The political classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow would be able to feast on Brussels money. But every important decision would be taken by the EU. You can see why this appeals to professional politicians. But it is hard to see how it would help normal men and women. Yet, unless we all fight our  way out of the EU, our country will be broken up and our flag made meaningless.

Old age shows no mercy to women. Nor does this film

The makers of the incredibly nasty new film about Lady Thatcher seem to have been mainly worried that the feminist sisterhood might attack it. I expect that is why they invited my anti-sexist, right-on opposite number, Suzanne Moore, to a private dinner with the film’s star, Meryl Streep.

Ms Streep cooked her own-recipe apple pie for Suzanne and several other notable media women. By contrast, they didn’t even ask sexist, reactionary little me to a preview, though their PR firm ceaselessly invites me to free advance showings of other, less interesting films.
Well, never mind. I can afford my own ticket and saw it on the night it was released, so you don’t have to.

After much thought, I have decided that it is one of the most cynical, unpleasant and cruel films I have ever seen. It will be  a pity if it makes anyone rich. I am certainly not a Thatcher-worshipper. But nor am I a Thatcher-hater. And I think you would have to hate her quite a lot to approve of this film.

Many of us – even if we do not now know it – will sink into the dementia which she has suffered. Why, the people responsible for this film may themselves end their days as tragic husks of what they are now.

Will they, their friends or their families think it proper to make a public spectacle of this decline while they are still alive? It wasn’t necessary. It was wrong. And because old age is so much more merciless to women than it is to men, I think the right-on feminists should join me in protesting.

We need low-speed rail... and lots of it

The campaign against the new high-speed rail line through the Chilterns is overdone. Railways don’t do nearly as much damage as motorways, and I can’t remember anyone fussing much about the hideous, irreparable scar made in the Chilterns by the M40, visible 20 miles away.

But if there’s money to spare for building railways, what we need is low and medium-speed lines that go where we want to go, not bullet trains between big cities. Our island is  so small that a 125mph maximum is quite  high enough.

The lunatic mistake of the Beeching cuts, which left dozens of medium-size towns without a station, needs to be reversed. And perhaps above all, England needs a decent East-West link for both passengers and goods.

Here we Gove again...

I wondered how long it would be before Michael Gove said he would make it easier to ‘sack bad teachers’. Every Education Secretary in living memory is eventually reduced to saying this. Nothing changes, and it won’t until they bring back grammar schools.

 

Judas, the First Socialist, and other issues

I’ll get on to Judas Iscariot in a moment. I am asked how I define poverty. I would define physical poverty as severe want – not enough food to eat, no access to clean water, absence of proper shelter either from great heat or from cold, inadequate clothing, untreated sickness and no possibility of medical help, conditions so squalid that cleanliness is impossible, severe overcrowding. These are the features of poverty that I have seen in various forms on my many travels into remote parts of the world.

 

I had an interesting discussion about this on Nicky Campbell’s Radio Five Live programme a few weeks ago, and was encouraged by a contributor from Africa who agreed with me that poverty of this kind does not really exist in this country. But he added that hardship undoubtedly does exist. Of course much of that hardship stems from not having things that others do have, and from a feeling of injustice and rejection. But this is not poverty, which in my view is an absolute condition of severe material want, not a comparative condition of being worse off than your neighbour. I would add, as I often do, that I suspect that there may be something very close to absolute poverty among the lonely old people of this country, trying to make ends meet on no more than their pensions, regarding any further appeal to the welfare state as a shameful (and therefore unthinkable) form of charity which they are too proud to accept.

Many of these live very pinched and deprived lives, though even they are materially rich beside the rural dwellers of North Korea or millions of the less fortunate in Africa and parts of India. But the measure of poverty as an arbitrary proportion of average income is just a device by which socialists justify their unending raid on the possessions of the wealthy and productive, to finance the unproductive and penniless state in its vote-buying projects. Some of these projects may incidentally do good. But their aim is not to do good, but to make their authors feel good about themselves, while increasing their power. It also incidentally shrinks the power of the productive middle-class to be charitable in their own right, as they have handed over a large part of their charitable duty to the state.

That is why I am so fond of Christ’s rebuke to Judas, and the account as a whole. The passage is as follows: The Gospel according to John, 12th Chapter, beginning at verse iv; Mary (not Mary Magdalene, but Mary, sister of Lazarus), has just taken a pound – or 454 grams in the Rocky Horror Bible - of very costly Spikenard ointment and wiped Jesus’s feet with her hair, ‘and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment’. ‘Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him : ‘Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?’ This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus :’Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always’.

 

As so often, there’s a lot packed into this, notably the realistic recognition that there will always be poor people in the world , and those who wish to help them will always have the opportunity to do so. But it is the biting observation that Judas, like so many since, is pretending a concern for the poor to cover up other, less noble motives, that really goes home with a satisfying thud. There is no new thing under the sun. I’m accused by some of saying that Christianity has no part to play in politics. I’ve no doubt, as it happens, that it does have a part. But that it is an individual part, in that the man or woman who embraces Christian principle may be involved in politics, in any party which is not actually wicked, and use his or her individual influence to good and Christian ends. But I do not think there is such a thing as a ‘Christian policy’ or a Christian party’, or that any grouping should arrogate Christianity to itself as its own possession. This is because Christianity is not about earthly power, but about love. And if you think about it, power is the opposite of love – and the less love there is, the more power you will generally find.

That’s enough religion for this posting (though I plan another contribution on a recent visit to Lincoln Cathedral which may be of interest to the atheist fancy). On other comments, Mr McDonald (or ‘McDonald’ as he perhaps prefers to be addressed) is wrong in particular in saying that the MPs’ expenses story was offered first to our sister paper ‘The Daily Mail’ (it wasn’t, though I should point out here yet again that I do not write for the ‘Daily Mail’, but for the ‘Mail on Sunday’ , a separate paper with its own editor and staff) and wrong in general, that the anti-EU rebels were specially spendthrift on the expenses gravy train ( I believe one of them had the lowest claims of any MP, whereas Mr Cameron himself, as I so often point out, was among the highest claimers – quite legally –for his nice country house, despite being personally rich. There’s a book to be written on the selective nature of the coverage of MPs’ expenses, and the selective nature of the way in which some were chosen for the public pillory and others exempted). Many of the rebels are, I believe, newly elected since the rules were changed). So the comment is both incorrect and irrelevant.

 

If people come here to plug the BNP, they must learn that they will earn themselves my utter contempt. I had thought we had got rid of them, but perhaps now the BNP – which is now tiny and very short of money - has emerged from its latest furious inner faction fight, it now has time to start spreading slime again. This revolting grouplet has been thoroughly dealt with here, and the index is full of clear explanations as to why no civilised person should dirty himself by association with such a spectacularly disreputable organisation. Reminder: It was founded by a Judophobe Hitler-worshipper, so pitifully obsessed with Jews that he once launched an investigation into Nicholas Griffin’s ancestry because he thought his (Griffin’s) father had rather a large nose, and still peopled with Holocaust-deniers and similar. The BNP’s noisy flag-wagging patriotism is wholly opportunist. So is its, er, critique of Islam. Mr Griffin, it might be recalled, once travelled to Tripoli to seek aid from the late Colonel Gadaffi. Not long afterwards he was consorting with the Ku Klux Klan. Is there nobody Mr Griffin can’t bring himself to meet? There is nothing to hope for from this squalid and pathetic faction, whose existence does grave damage to every cause it claims to espouse.

 

As for UKIP, I only attack it when I am foolishly urged to support it. I have explained why( again see the index) and only those who want me to attack it should sing its praises here or pointlessly seek my endorsement of it, which is never going to come. I cannot think of a more certain way of ensuring that opposition to EU membership returned to the braying margins of political, life, for the rebel Tories to have anything to do with this hopeless Dad’s Army, a group of people so politically naïve that they thought they could make use of Robert Kilroy-Silk. He tied them up, hand and foot, with their own cravats. The Gang of Four came closer to succeeding than most people realise. Their failure was not predetermined, though Margaret Thatcher bears some responsibility for it, as I shall one day be free to reveal. Oh, and to Howard Medwell ‘Why *not* “Pestilent”?’ It’s a good 18th-century pejorative term, much in need of revival.

Seventy is soon to become the new 40

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

There have been some disgusting attacks on the new leader of the 'Liberal Democrats', Sir Menzies Campbell, based on the fact that he is in his sixties. Now, I loathe the 'Liberal Democrats' and don't specially admire Sir Menzies, but stupid cartoons about walking frames and false teeth are just crude abuse, especially since Sir Menzies is a rather healthy former athlete with all his own teeth.

Most of our politicians used to be men well on in age. They knew a few things. They had raised families, lived abroad, fought in wars, done proper jobs, acquired some wisdom. They may not have been perfect, but they seemed to manage to run the country rather better than it is run now that the Youth Revolution has taken over, and we have ministers who look like teenagers.

It would be no bad thing if we went back to having a few more old people in politics. Actually, I think this is about to happen. The horrible, selfish bulge generation born in the late 40s and early 50s ( my own, as it happens) are about to become old and will change the rules so that they are not shoved into obscurity once they reach 60. Sir Menzies has the bad luck to be just a little bit older than them, so he won't benefit from the fast-approaching change, under which 70 will become the new 40.

Back in the 1960s, which I CAN remember even though I was there, I remember seeing a very bad, but quite prophetic film called 'Wild in the Streets' in which a youth revolution rounded up all the old people, drugged them and put them in camps. All went well until the new rulers started to get old themselves, and faced having the same thing done to them.