GIve and Take - answers to correspondents
Today I think I’ll just give brief answers to correspondents.
‘Jack’ says: ‘The Licensing Act 1988 allowed an extra 30 minutes drinking time up to 11 pm, abolished the two-and-a half-hour afternoon break, but cut drinking time on Sundays from five to four hours starting at 3 pm.
The criminal offence of selling alcohol to intoxicated customers or allowing the sale on licensed premises was not relaxed.
Perhaps drinkers ought to use their free will’
My recollection is that the break in the afternoon was not two and a half hours but three and a half (between 2.30 p.m. and six p.m.). Sunday drinking was still restricted, far more than it is now, but it did not start at three p.m. There used to be a short two-hour opening at mid-day, and then a 7pm to 10 p.m. opening in the evening.
Reports at the time stated that pubs in England and Wales would now be able to open, if they chose, from 11 a.m. to 11 pm without a break on weekdays, a huge change.
Indeed drinkers ought to use their free will, but long experience of the British people, going back to the days of Hogarth and earlier, suggests that many of them refuse to do so. And where men will not place chains upon their own behaviour, others have to do it for them.
One again in this discussion( as with drugs) I notice people attempting to claim that the ‘freedom’ to get blotto and ruin your own life and that of others is being falsely equated with the freedoms of speech, thought and assembly. These are opposites. The really funny thing is the absence of applause and thanks from all the ‘wot abaht alcohol and tobacco then, eh? eh? ‘ merchants, who never ever seem to be here when this is under discussion, or to read the things I repeatedly say about the need to restrict alcohol sales.
‘Paul P’ asks about church bells. Churches are well known to have bells, which are rung from time to time. If you don’t want to have to listen to church bells, don’t buy or rent a house next to a church. There’s no comparison between this and having noisy fireworks, audible for hundreds of yards, imposed on you without warning or choice by twerps who’ve never for a moment considered that others don’t share their joy in the ‘new year’, or wish to listen to loud bangs.
Gadjp Dilo writes :’ Sleep being 'impossible from 11.30 till 12.30', it's that's all that happens, seems a fairly small price to pay’
To which I reply, a small price to pay for what? I get nothing in return for this. I am woken from sleep, which I desire, to listen to noise, which I do not desire. Sleep is a precious possession which, once lost, cannot be replaced.
He adds ‘.. in some Mediterranean countries it's a right of passage to let off bangers in town squares at any hour of the night.’
Eh? A ‘rite of passage’, the phrase he must be hunting for, is a Baptism, a Wedding or a Funeral. The meaningless change of the calendar does not remotely compare to such events, significant alterations in the lives of all involved, which in any case take place in the daytime.
Maybe what he says is true about bangers in town squares. I don’t live on or near a town square but in a family suburb deliberately placed a long way from such things.
He adds:’ Don't forget, with so many people rejecting religion all that's left are little-signifying dates.’
No doubt. The question is ‘is this a good thing?’
Then he complains :’Ted Heath 'of accursed memory'? Not a wholly effective leader, certainly, but dare one ask how far we have to go back until we find a Tory who you don't consider 'useless'?’
Heath was a very effective leader, who chained this country to the EU, as he was determined to do. It was his main aim and he succeeded in it. It is what he should be remembered for. It is not about ‘effectiveness’, but about what effects he sought and achieved. The Tory Party was never any good. It has always been an engine for obtaining office for the sons of gentlemen, at any price, utterly unprincipled and so devoid of its own ideas that is quite happy to surrender to the spirit of the age.
If readers here would clear their minds of the banal and wholly false belief that I seek to return to the past, they might actually understand the points I make.
Michael Williamson writes : ‘The point is, if you support this action (the 1915 licensing laws), then you cannot in all honesty complain about what subsequent governments have done in interfering in our private lives. This was the start of the belief that governments can do whatever they want whether we approve of it or not.’
I don’t agree. Drunkenness is not private. The drunkard horribly demoralises, disrupts and affects the lives of his own family (most tragically of the children forced to witness these frightful scenes and the violence often involved) , of his neighbours, of his work colleagues, of the people who have to share buses and trains and streets and public lavatories and cafes and libraries and shops with him. Even if he is wholly solitary ( and few are, certainly to start with) he battens on the rest of us. He is a public menace. How do people manage to persuade themselves that self-stupefaction is some sort of historic liberty ( or even ‘human right’) . It is a curse, and a deeply immoral and selfish act, anything but private. The Temperance Movement, now either mocked or forgotten, was a noble cause which save many people from horrible fates. It needs to be re-founded.
In a semi-literate posting which suggests he does not himself read many books, ‘E’ urges : ‘He (me) certainly needs to stop trying to publicizing his books which no one apart from him appears to have heard of far less read.’
That, my dear ‘E’, is why I publicise them.
Mr David Wiseacre animadverts(the only word for it) on the Scottish tradition of Hogmanay, adding : ‘The first-foot is supposed to set the luck for the rest of the year. Traditionally, tall dark men are preferred as the first-foot. Could you imagine the look of disdain on Mr Hitchen's face were his neighbours to embark on such a practice.’
No, you couldn’t . If I move to Scotland, then I will of course adapt to the local customs. But Mr Wiseacre must understand that Hogmanay is a *Scottish* custom, not an *English* one. I live in *England*. Indeed, he will find explained in the article on which he comments the history of the ‘new year’ in England, which was not even an official holiday until 40 years ago, and which was not an occasion for midnight fireworks until the year 2000.
I’m grateful to Peter Preston for challenging the bullying tone of ‘Henri Noel’, who seems to think he or others have some sort of right to force others to be merry ( itsef a contradiction in terms).
I have no doubt that in a more primitive society (such as we once had, and such as we will soon have again) people like me were also routinely clubbed to death for being a bit different. My mistake was obviously to think that this ‘tradition’ was a bad thing.
Can people please stop saying that I’m ‘grump’ or suggesting that my attitude is akin to that of Scrooge. Scrooge hated Christmas precisely because it was a season of goodwill. He began that fateful evening by insulting and ejecting men who came to him seeking charity. The new year has nothing to do with charity.
First of all, my attitude is that the peace and sleep of others are precious, and that you need a better excuse than the change of calendar to destroy either of them. I hoped some people might even have the sense to see that this was a plea to consider the possibility that letting off explosives at midnight isn’t necessary and might be left out of their future celebrations. Can they really not mark the ‘festival’ they seem to think so important, without suburban gunpowder parties? If not, why not? Do they really think themselves so sovereign that they can blithely rob others of peace and repose for a few minutes passing pleasure? What morally illiterate, selfish four-letter men they must be.
My congratulations to ‘Kevin, for splatting one of our more obtuse contributors (who would probably have been against midnight fireworks if I had been for them) by saying : ‘Just one day of the year, eh? Well, just imagine, your local vicar skeet shooting the selected works of famous literary atheists, from the roof of his vestry, in his annual effort to spread the Christian message to a less than interested flock, early each Christmas morn. See how that grabs you.’
Ed writes : ‘"1949
George Orwell’s “Thought Police” = uniformed thugs who drag “thought criminals” off to the cells to be tortured.
2014
Peter Hitchens’s “Thought Police” = women with opinions."
Ah, the willful and stubborn obtuseness of the left.’
Actually, the phrase ‘Thought Police’ (while originating with Orwell) now has a general application to those who would seek to intimidate or control the thoughts of others. Orwell never foresaw(though Huxley did) that soft methods of thought control would ultimately be more effective than the rubber truncheon and the torture chamber. Also, when he says ‘Women with opinions’, is he suggesting that all women share these batty flat-earth views? Or that no men do? In my experience, Flat Earth Feminism is the province of concrete-headed zealots of both sexes. Why? Because it is a useful tool for intimidating the cowardly and confidence-free institutions of civil society, because its demands are limitless and can never be met even by the most grovelling obeisance, and because nobody, not even the silent can ever be sure they have not transgressed against it(making it a wonderful instrument of lawless tyranny).The left have learned a lot about methods. Their aims are the same. Their means are far more subtle. I don’t object to these flat-earth feminist opinions because women hold them, but because they are idiotic, and threaten freedom of thought and speech.
I was grateful of the post from Mrs B, and glad also that several of you posted about the horrible effect which fireworks have on pets, to whom nobody can explain what is going on and who are made extremely nervous by repeated loud bangs, which they instinctively. I imagine that to them it is much as it would be for humans if mysterious, unexplained air raid alarms were constantly sounding, and there was nobody to tell them when they might stop or what they might portend.
I had been concerned about ‘Stephen’ who has suddenly become a frequent and active contributor here. There were occasional flashes of what might have been intelligence(though these were combined with unscrupulous techniques of argument). But when he posted ‘Re. Fireworks, instead of yapping I would just buy a set of good earplugs?!’, I knew for certain that we had a candidate member for the Lasagne League. What a profoundly stupid, pompous thing to say. I hope this repulsive little twerp now goes away and does not come back.
Andrew Pitt writes : ‘But is New Year wholly separate from Christmas? Is it not marking the turning of the Christian calendar? And was it not marked in the past by the ringing of church bells? A very long peal was rung in Dorothy L Sayers's 'The Nine Tailors'. Perhaps we might see an appreciation of the book one day from Mr Hitchens? It's merely an entertainment and a very good picture of the fen country.’
I must say I thought I *had* written about the Nine Tailors. Can anyone else recall? The ‘new year’ has no feast or other day attached to it in the Christian calendar, though many days between Christmas and Epiphany do, starting with St Stephen’s, continuing through the Circumcision of Christ , St John, and of course Holy Innocents’ Day, now the most important of all as it is a way of commemorating the slaughter of the aborted, our greatest single modern crime. Some churches ring bells that night. Some do not. Bell-ringing is not in itself sacramental or even necessarily Christian, and I suspect many modern ringers never otherwise enter a church. As for the Nine Tailors, my memory is that the church of Fenchurch St Paul was not especially close to the houses of the village. Had it been, I doubt whether the kindly vicar would have permitted a lengthy late-night peal.
In reply to Bob, son of Bob – does he really think that Douglas Hurd would have been able to pursue his relaxation of licensing laws without the support of the Prime Minister - particularly that Prime Minister? Excuses are made for the over-rated Lady Thatcher about grammar schools (she could have resigned, and in any case was not premier but a very junior Cabinet member) or over the EU( actually she was for it until quite late, campaigned vigorously for it in the 1975 referendum, and was bamboozled by Nigel Lawson over his shadowing of the Deutschemark). I have seen no suggestion of the faintest friction between Lady Thatcher and her ministers over the licensing laws, or over her other attack on Christian Britain, the Sunday Trading liberalisation.
‘Isaac’ posts sarcastically : ‘The lamented Thames Conservancy would be the body that prevented the Thames floods of 1928 and 1947 would it?
Perhaps Associated Newspapers clippings of the above were destroyed in the Great Flood of July 1968 which deluged Chew Stoke.’
Oh, ha ha. No suggestion was made that any such body could prevent all flooding. The point (I think greatly supported by many well-informed contributions) was that such bodies were far better at managing the landscape, and its many watercourses, than what has replaced them.