Death of the Newspaper?

A politician is a guy who is generous with other people's money, courageous with other people's lives and eloquent with other people's words. A journalist is much the same, except that he/she usually has enough talent to scribble the words.

With the threatened demise of numerous British and American papers in the current recession, the politicised journalist (is there any other kind?) has become more repulsive than ever before, if that were possible. Two of my favourite hate figures Polly Toynbee of "The Guardian" and Johann Hari of "The Independent" have recently written equally ludicrous articles lamenting the downfall of the printed media as advertisers go elsewhere or stop advertising altogether. As you might expect from these two worthies, their remedies involve extorting yet more money from the ever-luckless taxpayer.

Obviously journalists want money spent on newspapers, just as admirals want more aircraft carriers and truck operators want cheaper gas. But even by the low standards of special pleading and pork barrel politics Toynbee and Hari's appeals were exceptionally crass.

Johann Hari's more laughable idea was that students should be compelled to subscribe to a newspaper as part of the condition for being on a college course. He imported this idea from some American philantropist who was concerned about the impending mass extinction of the major US newspapers and, like any politician, was prepared to be extra-generous with other people's money. This compulsory subscription would not only support endangered titles, but encourage the spread of general world knowledge among future graduates, who are woefully ignorant on many aspects of public life.

Obviously the only printable repost to such an idea, both from students and the rest of the population, would be something like "Go jump in a vat of acid". Why should anyone be forced to buy something which no one wants to buy voluntarily? Why should low-income students be singled out for this honour? And even if students were compelled to subscribe to a newspaper, how many would read it, or read anything beyond the sports and cartoon pages? And why should anyone be forced to buy something which everyone on the planet can read for free on the Internet?

Polly's slightly less laughable idea focused on supporting local newspapers and their allegedly essential role in facilitating local democracy. Numerous local councils spend small fortunes producing glossy magazines to tell the hapless local taxpayers how they are pouring their money down the toilet. The actual readership of these magazines is not known; unlike commercial papers, no one needs to measure readership to justify their existence or to put a reasonable price on advertising rates. But it is unlikely to be larger than three figures for each publication.

One of her ideas is that this visibly wasted expenditure should be re-directed into supporting local newspapers, perhaps via funding mechanisms such as charitable trusts. Again, my only charitable reaction is "Jump in an acid vat, Polly". Why should my hard-earned money be squandered either on a politicians' propaganda sheet or a dying local rag which can't support itself? Sadly, as this is a family blog, I can't quote all the riotously funny and indescribably obscene abuse heaped on Polly by various bloggers such as "The Devil's Kitchen".

And if having Polly in print and on the Internet is not appalling enough, there she was on BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news peddling exactly the same drivel at the licence payer's expense. Being a newspaper columnist is a great way of getting access to other media and thus even greater exposure for your fatuous opinions. It really is a case of "Unto him that hath much, much shall be given", though not in the Biblical sense.

To prove that lousy ideas know no language barriers, the Sarkozy regime in France are proposing to pay for a year's newspaper subscription for all 18 year olds. Given that France has much better broadband provision than Britain, with super-fast connections piping hi-def TV to your plasma TV/supersize computer display, this sounds like a super-fast non-starter. I can read "Le Monde", "Le Figaro", etc on line any time I want. In fact "Le Figaro" (see www.lefigaro.fr ) is happy to send a daily newsletter to anyone on earth, even to a "rostbif" like me. So I get "La lettre d'info du Figaro" in my inbox each day. If your high school French is up to it, sign on for free for a language refresher.

You can see what local papers are up against in sheer value for money terms. My mobile broadband connection costs £8.20 ($12.00) per month (I abandoned the AOL landline link months ago). For that I get every newspaper on the planet in every language, hundreds of superb magazines on every conceivable topic, (all hosting writers far better than Toynbee and Hari), free email, free multiple libraries (see www.refdesk.com to name only one) and only God knows how many awesome databases, such as the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com).On the lighter side there's instant shopping from Amazon and thousands of other providers, free music from www.Spotify.com (which is like having an Ipod the size of a suitcase - never buy a CD or MP3 again), video from countless sites, internet radio from 6,000 stations....the list goes on and on.

And I don't even have to get out of bed to obtain any of these goodies. With my netbook and mobile broadband dongle, surfing in bed is one of the little pleasures of modern life.

Our local "daily" rag, the "Evening Post", is published only on five days a week. In a month of 30 days, that is 22 issues at 40 pence per day....say £8.80. So-called "serious" national newspapers, filled with the sort of garbage peddled by Toynbee and Hari, cost twice as much per day. Comparing the "Evening Post", or any other "newspaper", to my internet link is like comparing a horse-and-buggy to a state of the art BMW. I'm afraid the old faithful nag is being retired to the knacker's yard. The difference is that some people actually want to use a horse and buggy on special occasions.

Unlike hundreds of local British papers, the "Post" is not going bust immediately, but it is being reduced to two issues a week from later in 2009. As the weekly "Reading Chronicle" is much fatter and more marketing-savvy (for example, it produces a Polish edition for the thousands of recent arrivals in town), how long a twice-weekly Post will survive is anyone's guess, especially once it loses its frequent publication edge over the "Chronicle".

It is obviously not just the technological gap between print and electronic media. It is displacement time; time spent sampling the internet is time not spent reading dead tree media. After a while you lose the habit and taste for reading traditional newspapers.

But all this is horribly selfish and inconsiderate, you cry. How can we ignore all the people who don't have Internet access and rely on the local paper for local news? Well, obviously the printed media themselves aren't much use to the 15 to 20 per cent of adult citizens who are wholly or partly illiterate. In fact sites like the brilliant www.spotify.com point one possible way to a post-literate future. At present Spotify is content merely to provide truckloads of free music in every conceivable genre from Janacek to Glenn Miller to children's nursery songs to U2. (Sorry, US readers, it is only available in certain European countries as yet). But it can obviously deliver every kind of audio material with equal ease; news broadcasts, documentaries, lectures, drama, "audio books" and much more.

The professed concern of Toynbee and Hari for local or national democracy if newspapers die is particularly laughable, given that their newspapers represent only a small minority of the British public. So-called serious papers like the "Guardian" and "Independent" are outsold 15 to 1 by the tit-and-bum titles like "The Sun". As Toynbee herself told me, when I emailed her in response to one exceptionally idiotic piece she had written: "We need a better quality public in this country". Obviously.....we need far more people who agree with La Toynbee. The true "De haut en bas" voice of the modern secular atheist.

Hari protested that traditional news-gathering journalism is very expensive and has been supported only by cross-subsidies of various kinds, e.g. from traditional advertisers. Seeing the vitality of on-line bloggers, some of whom make a good living from the Internet, and the fact that some bloggers have broken important stories which the traditional reporters have missed, I am not losing any sleep over the possible demise of the traditional hack.

Newspapers, like it or not, are only one small and disposable piece of the modern democratic jigsaw. Large numbers of people are going to lose out on local and national democratic access if they don't use the Internet, or can't read the local paper, or don't go to council meetings or never approach their local councillor or Member of Parliament.... Actual direct observation of council meetings and direct contact with local politicians costs nothing and is open to every one rich or poor, literate or illiterate.

Part of my joy at seeing the discomfort of Toynbee and Hari is that these two obviously sense that the days of influence of highly placed commentators like them are nearly over. The Internet gives unprecented open access to a worldwide audience to everyone with an opinion.

As I noted in an earlier blog, there are still horses around in present day Britain. But they play an utterly different role in the economy to that they enjoyed 100 years ago. One of the pleasures of studying the old Reading street directories in our local library is the sight of the long-extinct businesses who provided essential services in the early 20th century. Horse traders, blacksmths and suppliers of horse fodder and harnesses share the pages with the early car dealers who would soon replace them. The horse economy is important less than 40 miles west of Reading. In the Lambourn area, there is a major centre of race horse training and breeding. A major infrastructure, including a very specialised horse hospital, thrives in its support - though of course the horsie folk use Range Rovers and Volvo and Mercedes estate cars for everyday transport.

In the same way printed material will thrive in a different way in future. Our local newsagents shelves groan under the weight of traditional dead tree magazines covering hundreds of specialised interests. The "newspapers" stand is an isolated island which could be replaced in a few years by other merchandise with few people noticing or greatly caring. With the super-netbooks of the near future, who will bother to buy a newspaper even to read on the daily commute to London? Already the express coaches from Reading Station to Heathrow Airport boast free wi-fi. Those travellers are already more interested in continuos Web access. Most of the rest of us will soon follow them.

Conventional Wisdom - Pure Drivel

Dear Stan,

At least one commentator (Peter Hitchens, as ever) was willing to back the Pope. And incidentally willing to point out that conventional wisdom (i.e. 90% of both politicians' words and media output) is pure drivel.

* Conventional wisdom says the Pope is stupid and wrong to say fidelity and abstinence are better than condoms at guarding Africans from AIDS.

Conventional wisdom, as usual, is talking out of its backside. What the Pope says matters only if anyone listens to him. If nobody does, his opposition to condoms won’t stop anyone using them and will make no difference. If lots of people listen to him, his support for marital fidelity will persuade many people to follow this path, and so save untold lives.

The experience of such countries as Uganda suggests very strongly that he is right when he says this, and that fidelity is a far better protection than a rubber sheath. The only real hope is a change in sexual habits.

I am not a Roman Catholic, but I am weary of the concerted smearing and misrepresentation which the Pontiff constantly faces.

The Other Side of the Revolutions

After my recent visit to Basildon Park and seeing the exhibition for the "Pride and Prejudice" filmshoot, I reflected on my trip to Jane Austen's home in Chawton last year. Chawton is a picture postcard village and the Austen connection will doubtless ensure that it stays unaltered for a very long time to come.
 
But of course the outward shell of the buildings does not reflect the multiple social revolutions within the walls. As I toured the upper floor of the Austin house, I heard horses' hooves outside. Sure enough, there was a pair of well groomed animals, with their equally well groomed riders, walking at a relaxed pace down the one street of Chawton. No need to rush; after all, this was Sunday and these were animals kept as an expensive hobby.
 
In Jane's time, there would have been plenty of horses around, but as essential working beasts, supporting everything from farm work to deliveries of essential products to transporting people locally or nationally. The only horsepower used by most Chawton people today is the 200 bhp under the hoods of their BMWs as they set off for well paid jobs in the Thames Valley or up the M3 motorway to London.
 
As I came out of the Austin house, I heard the unmistakeable and very rare sound of a steam locomotive. The last steam locomotive ran on British Rail in 1968.  Of course - it was the preserved railway which runs behind the row of trees near the house. Again, a form of transport which was the backbone of the Industrial Revolution for over a hundred years is now a tourist curiosity. The famous "Watercress Line" starts at Alton, less than two miles north-east of Chawton. Alton is a little gem of a historic English town, as much as Chawton is a little gem of a village. Appropriately, Alton station is both the terminus of the Watercress Line and the terminus of the real present day trains which carry commuters to London.
 
Jane Austen's life finished shortly before the railway revolution started in the 1820s in England. No wonder such a famous person traveled only short distances in her lifetime, as I noted in a previous blog entry. Before the railways, any long distance travel was laborious, expensive, time consuming, uncomfortable and often downright dangerous. Period films hardly convey the problems; the immaculately polished carriages and impeccably presented horses are covered by present day Health And Safety laws and legislation forbidding cruelty to animals.
 
The Railway Revolution was only one of multiple revolutions which separate us from Jane. The Industrial Revolution of which it was an integral part is obviously another. The social and sexual revolutions within Chawton are less visible than the flat screen TVs and the broadband internet links within the historic houses or the BMWs in the driveways. But they are longer lasting and more deeply felt than the ephemeral technologies around us.
 
Watching the glossy, but unsatisfying 2005 version of "Pride and Prejudice", some of the aspects of the social revolution are far more startling than the beautiful houses and costumes. The interesting, but inadequate "additional material" on the DVD outlined some of the aspects of social attitudes underpinning British high society of the time. Obviously the kind of potential husband with an income of five or ten thousand pounds a year was part of a very, very tiny minority of the British population. Yet a procession of such desirable beaus was paraded across the screen.
 
Most telling was the position of clergymen. It is almost unimaginable now, but in Jane's time a clergyman held one of the most lucrative and desirable professions in the land - comparable to a very high powered lawyer or City trader today. This is evident in the reference to one character getting eyewatering compensation for losing out on preferment for a parish. The power and wealth of the ordinary clergy was a direct reflection of the national power and wealth of the established Church.
 
Almost as revealing are the courtesies and behaviors between the sexes - with the young ladies bowing automatically before any gentleman and the care taken over the reputations of the ladies. It was not merely bad being "damaged goods", as Elizabeth's youngest sister threatens to become as she elopes to London. Being related to the damaged goods would be social disaster and spell the end to any hopes of a respectable marriage.
 
The discretion exercised between a potential "couple" rang a distinct bell. Of course - all that old Catholic teaching about "avoiding the occasions of sin". You should not just avoid sin, but any circumstances likely to lead you to sin. No doubt Jane Austen and all her characters would have been horrified at any insinuation of Popery, but here they were, taking traditional Christian precautions, ensuring that a young man and woman should not even have a private conversation by themselves and that they behaved with the utmost decorum.
 
Even the present day actors portraying these characters could see some of the advantages of such rules; people knew where they stood, how they should behave and how to interpret the almost invisible signals given by the opposite sex. Not much scope for the present day excuses of "I though she meant Yes, Your Honour".
 
So here we are after 200 years of English revolutions far more radical than either the French or Russian variety. As Dr Johnson so truly remarked, no sensible man would pay a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. Jane could hardly have comprehended our present day technologies, beyond anything imagined by the most visionary science fiction writers of her time. But she might have written an even more devastating satire on present day sexual behavior - "Nonsense and Insensibility" perhaps?
 

Jane and Jesus

It was the 30th anniversary of the opening of Basildon Park (picture to right) to the public under the auspices of the National Trust. So they dropped the entrance tickets to their 1979 price of 90 pence ($1.35) and I arrived early to grab this bargain offer.

I have been to this minor stately home, 10 miles north-west of Reading, once before. But there had been a few changes since my last visit. A whole room was devoted to the filming of "Pride and Prejudice". Part of the 2005 version, starring Keira Knightley, had been shot at Basildon Park, with a few even more magnificent houses around England providing other backdrops. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414387/

Jane Austin was a relatively local girl, spending most of her life in the county of Hampshire, immediately south of Berkshire. I visited her home at Chawton, about 40 minutes drive from Reading, last year. She also spent a short time in Reading, attending the Abbey School about 200 yards from St James. This early 19th century establishment had absolutely nothing in common with the present-day Abbey School for the daughters of the affluent, but I suspect that the latter is very happy about any confusion on the part of the ignorant.

Her life is a reminder of how "local" was the life of nearly all people until very recent times. Such a famous (and fairly privileged) person never travelled outside a 70 mile radius of Reading in her whole life. In her later years, when she wrote her most famous novels, she spent most of her life within a small family circle in a very small radius of Chawton. But then Jesus travelled in an even smaller area and look at his impact...... (Chawton house at right.)



The film exhibition conveyed a highly positive image of the cooperation between the movie makers and the National Trust. This was in marked contrast to the impression of the James Bond film, "The Living Daylights", filmed at Stonor House (picture at right) on the other side of Reading. One of the staff at Stonor told me "Never again!!" Filming a huge budget Bond film was obviously a very different enterprise to "Pride and Prejudice". P and P's budget of $28 million was large by European standards, but modest in Hollywood terms.

Working in such a historic house posed endless problems for the crew. They obviously wanted to keep the National Trust on-side, otherwise they would compromise future cooperation in granting any filmmakers access to the hundreds of wonderful locations controlled by the NT. There were endless restrictions on the intensity of light and temperature; no equipment was to touch the historic walls. All the priceless and irreplaceable artifacts in certain rooms had to be catalogued, dismantled and carefully packed away.

As ever, the perversity of the creative team knew no limits. Having gone to all this trouble gaining access to a splendid house of the correct period, they decided that certain rooms were not splendid enough and needed some improving touches. 18 feet high pillars were constructed by a master plasterer (no fibreglass here) and shoehorned into a room. Once filming was over, they would just be dumped. No use storing all that expensive workmanship in the hope they might be reused in some future historic epic.

Basildon Park has known its up and downs; it is very lucky to survive to the present day without being demolished or destroyed as so many major houses have been. The 1930s depression and World War 2 obviously didn't help. During WW2, the legendary 101st Airbourne Division was billeted there, plus Italian prisoners of war. Between neglect, abuse and the ceiling of the library being scorched by brasiers during the grim 1940s winters, it was in a very sorry state by 1950.

Other parts of Basildon Park were equally enthralling. I couldn't recall them from my previous visit - I can't have paid proper attention. The Sutherland room was given over to a celebration of the largest tapestry in the world "Christ in Glory". This stunning work, 78 feet high by 39 feet wide, hangs in Coventry Cathedral. See http://www.know-britain.com/churches/coventry_cathedral_6.html


The original Cathedral was destroyed in the 1940 air raids on the city; Coventry was a major centre of the arms and vehicle manufacturing industries. At the time the destruction of this major city eclipsed even the London blitz; a new phrase, "to Coventrate", conjured up the new total warfare on civilian and military simultaneously. But was a civilian on a production line making a gun or a truck any less of a soldier than the man who used them on the battlefield? In 2005, when I visited Berlin, the German Historical Museum had relics from Coventry Cathedral on display.

The new Cathedral was consecrated in 1962, with the scorched shell of the old cathedral still standing beside it as a memorial. I have visited it only once in 1967. There was a still a huge empty area, used just for car parking, surrounding the new building. The rubble of 1940 had been cleared away, but no new buildings yet filled the vacancy. The enormous tapestry was emblematic of the new hopes for a new cathedral, a new city, a reborn Anglican Communion in England. The 1950s were a time of religious revival in Britain, with both the native clergy and exotic visitors like Billy Graham attracting churchgoers. In a few decades there was a catastrophic collapse into doctrinal chaos, moral confusion and organisational schism.

The Iliffe family, who bought and restored Basildon Park after WW2, made their money in provincial newspapers in the Midlands. They were friends of Graham Sutherland who designed the tapestry.

The Sutherland room contains numerous sketches and designs, both of the whole tapestry and detailed sections. Such a colossal project had to be subdivided to make it manageable. It also describes the manufacturing process at Freres Pinton in the little town of Felletin near Aubusson in France. To tackle this unprecedented task, this very specialised family firm had to bring out a huge loom last used 50 years earlier - talk about long term investment.

They were not even sure if this old tool could handle the sheer weight of the fabric, over a ton. But they did it and the whole enormous artwork was finally airlifted to Coventry. Someone suggested a 500 year warranty for the tapestry. No problem, monsieur. Tapestries made in the 15th century in that area still hang in cathedrals 500 years later.

See http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france_159/label-france_2554/label-france-issues_2555/label-france-no.-46_3691/feature-creative-arts-very-much-alive_3692/tapestry-tradition-of-excellence_4947.html

Royal Bank of Madoff

Some much needed light relief; "The Daily Mash" is in prime form with a comment on Bernie Madoff's fundamental mistake.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/madoff-pleads-guilty-to-not-being-a-bank-200903131639/

The picture of the "Royal Bank of Madoff" is a quick adaptation of the "Royal Bank of Scotland". RBS's recently departed Chief Sir Fred Goodwin has pocketed a pension of well over $1 million a year after flying the bank into the ground - and thus into the pocket of the taxpayer.

Despite all the ludicrous huffing and puffing by the media and various politicians, there is no legal way of relieving him of the money. And he is only 50 and in excellent health, so we may be paying him the $1 million a year for the next 40 years.

Still, informal vengeance is often the best. Some one daubed "Scumbag Millionaire" in large letters opposite Sir Fred's home in Edinburgh - in the same neighbourhood where J K Rowling of "Harry Potter" fame lives. As you might guess, it is a rather different neighbourhood from that inhabited by Danny Boyle's Edinburgh druggies in "Trainspotting".

Because It's WRONG! (Part 3)

A further postscript on the ever-depressing subject of child protection from the news this morning (Friday 13th March - how appropriate). The eminent Lord Laming complained that his recommendations for improvements in Social Service child protection had not been implemented. These recommendations were made years ago after the horrible death of a little girl, Victoria Climbie, in London. The occasion for his protest was a further investigation after the more recent and equally horrible death of a little boy, Baby P, in London.

With all respect to the good Lord, one of his well-meant recommendations was that sufficient resources should be devoted to child protection. Given the scale of the problem, do you think the entire Gross Domestic Product might make up for the failures of parents? The inefficiencies involved are mind-bending.....not to mention budget bending.

One social worker described the follow up to a family visit. If she spent a hour with a problem family, on return to the office she might spend anything from 30 minutes to 3 hours on electronic paperwork and other actions. There has to be a full accounting for all actions; even telephone calls to other agencies (e.g. police, schools, National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, etc) have to be recorded. And that is excluding other "downtime" such as travelling to and from families, team meetings, training, sick leave, holidays, etc.

A classic theme in past inquests into the horrible deaths of battered children has been "failures of communication" between the numerous responsible agencies. Teachers' worries about a neglected child did not get passed to Social Services, Social Services' communications to the police got buried in police files, the hospital staff hesitated to breach medical confidentiality, etc, etc. So the remedy for bureaucracy is super-bureaucracy.

And of course while the social worker is covering his/her backside in the case of one family, he/she cannot give attention to the other problem families in the desk. A totally perverse set of incentives encourages the social worker to spend more time protecting himself than protecting little children.

But given the way in which Social Service departments, from the most senior to the most junior front-line worker, have been mercilessly vilified in the media every time another disaster happens, such self defence is inevitable. And the witch hunting media are not going to indulge in any self-criticism about the way in which they have promoted the sexual liberation agenda and hence the mass abuse of children.

One of the few thoughtful articles I have ever seen on the subject is in the ever-superb "Touchstone" magazine:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-03-031-f

Carson Holloway's article "Dare We get real about sex" argues forcefully that you cannot promote the sexual liberation of adults without promoting the sexual abuse of children.

Which is why well meaning but unreflective politicians like Tom Harris are caught on the horns of a dilemma. He is rightly horrified at mass bastard breeding by vulnerable girls who are hardly more than children themselves. But to coherently argue for reform means far more than condemning such behaviour, however cautiously and diplomatically. You have to reject extramarital sex among consenting adults....and the gay agenda....and contraception...Er, hold on, Holy Cow, I want a few voters behind me come the next General Election. And the next General Election in Britain is barely a year way. All the New Labour chickens, from years of schmoozing bankers to PR spin to illegal wars to lying about education, are coming home to roost in quick succession.

Because it's WRONG! (Part 2)

(Stan writes:)
Bill,

In the previous post on Right and Wrong, are you indulging in sarcasm or are we to take you literally? There are several places in this post where I had that question. I'm not saying you need to make it clear, as such ambiguity fosters thinking.

Stan

(Bill's response follows)

Dear Stan,

I meant it literally; the problem with Tom Harris's article, like many "conservative" commentators' writings on "morality", is that he makes moral declarations without any bedrock of seriously considered principle to give them credibility.

Consider his sentence:

Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.

This statement by itself is obviously silly beyond belief; it condemns a large percentage of our mothers, grandmothers, etc. It is wonderful that modern teenage girls have far more opportunities than their ancestors. But what about those who have no aptitude for or interest in formal education, especially given the abysmal quality of secondary school qualifications in Britain? There is nothing "wrong" in the serious moral sense, about choosing to have children at an early age. It might be a misguided, ill-advised or short-sighted decision.....but that's part of the risk of being alive. For some girls it might actually turn out to be a very worthwhile choice.

Of course, if there were radical reforms in education to make it more relevant to deprived young girls' lives you might get some of them going for careers rather than diapers. God knows, Labour has poured more than enough money into state education to make some difference even in the worst areas. But Tony B Liar's mantra of "Education, education, education" doesn't seem to have reached the grass roots, at least in Tom Harris's constituency. What about a voucher system to promote new schools and draw educational innovators into providing for families who have never known the dignity of choosing their own private schools? Well, Tom's fellow Labour education bureaucrats and the teachers' unions would never stand for it, so I think we can forget that one.

And if he is condemning young girls only for having children out of wedlock at the ever-luckless taxpayer's expense? Well, that IS doubly wrong in a serious moral sense, both as an abuse of sexuality and recklessly making yourself dependent on the public purse. But Tom will have to do some serious arguing about the correct use of sexuality within the context of marriage and he's going to sound like the Pope, despite his unconvincing protestations that he is not promoting Christian morality. Or we are all going to suspect that he is picking a soft target for cutting public expenditure.

You can make a very convincing and purely rationalist case for encouraging people to have children within stable marriages by pointing out the terrible statistical outcomes for children born to single mothers. But these arguments always seem to lack practical effectiveness in the face of the libertines' ideology and their assertions that people are free to indulge their sexual preferences in any way they want.

In fact Tom almost endorses the libertines' position:

Don't interpret this as any kind of "back to basics" crusade; I'm not remotely interested in what adults do in the privacy of their own homes, and I'm not sounding the rallying cry for Christian or religious morality. But when the actions of others has such a debilitating effect on the rest of society, it's time to stop being polite. It's time to stop worrying about how people's feelings might be hurt if we question the choices they've made.

If he is not interested in what adults do in private, why does he regard it as wrong for young girls to be sexually active - unless he is hiding some religious agenda?

Tom gives a superb exhibition of delicate figure skating on very thin ice where he describes the grandfather whose immature daughter had just given birth. He did not want to condemn the father or daughter; after all, he is a politician and does not want to offend too many potential voters or seem to be religiously judgemental. But how are we going to reduce the incidence of illegitimacy unless it is again regarded as a target of serious social disapproval? The complacent acceptance of illegitimacy is plainly an important support for a girl's decision to get pregnant.

In short British politicians, even the sincerely well meaning like Tom Harris, are too compromised in too many ways to act as credible contributers to any serious debate. Merely lamenting the eyewatering expense of single mothers looks ludicrous when the Government and Opposition are united in continuing public expenditure at its present crippling level and in refusing to abandon anything: useless defence projects, useless computer systems, hordes of parasite consultants and Public Relations liars, expensive schools with appalling exam results, the 2012 Olympics, countless building programs which run way over budget.....and that is barely scratching the surface.

As for objecting to the killing of little children....well, some of us have problems taking any British politician seriously, given the scale of abortion in Britain and the near-impossibility of even reducing the number of weeks at which a baby can be aborted.

[More on the next post.]

Because It's WRONG!

It was a strange and unnatural sight. Here was the word "wrong" being used in an article in the "Guardian". It was seemingly being used in the sense of "morally wrong", not in the sense of getting the answer to a maths question "wrong". Indeed, the article was headed: "The return of morality". How could such an article be published in the temple of secularism and liberalism, "The Guardian"? And, to stretch the eyes wider, it was written by a Labour Member of Parliament, Tom Harris [picture at right].

He was rightly horrified by the spectacle of young women, barely out of childhood, giving birth to children out of wedlock and preparing for a lifetime on Social Security benefits. In short, a member of the Labour party was prepared to see the downside of the Welfare State which his party had promoted for over 60 years. And Tom Harris is a Scottish Member of Parliament; they don't come more hard-core traditional Labour than the Scottish variety.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/welfare-children

The very conservative writer Peter Hitchens [picture at right] went into understandable outpourings of joy over this apparent repentance by one member of the party of sinners. He declared:

I'd like to say a word in praise of the Labour MP Tom Harris, who this week very courageously spoke up for millions of respectable working-class people, long deprived of a voice by New Labour trendies who know nothing of real life.
He said: ‘Teenage girls shouldn’t be having underage sex. Why? Because it’s wrong. Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong. Parents shouldn’t teach their children that a lifetime on benefits is attractive or even acceptable. Why? Because it’s wrong.’

As he rightly says: ‘The most vociferous critics of the dependency culture and of deliberate worklessness have always been those who live in the same communities, those who resent paying their taxes to help other people waste their lives.’

Welcome, Mr Harris, to the ranks of the wild-eyed extremists. And good luck.

Peter's enthusiasm ran away with his normally sober brain, as I explain below. But it was forgivable; the sight of any British politician showing the smallest glimmer of sanity or courage is so rare that you tend to overreact in delight.

"Scotland on Sunday" on 8th March described one end result of multiple strands of the permissive society, aided and abetted by the Welfare State. The short and wretched life of Brandon Muir in the small city of Dundee came to a disgusting end just before his second birthday. With a junkie prostitute single mother who had just shacked up with a child-abusing paramour, his long term prospects were never promising. But to die in hours of lingering agony after a savage assault.....

It was a sobering reminder of the drugs underside of modern British life. Scotland's beautiful and prosperous capital, Edinburgh is famous for the biggest arts festival in the world. And its historic castle and other ancient buildings. And its Scottish Parliament. And its art galleries and film theatre. And the biggest theatre in Great Britain. (I saw "Les Miserables" there in the early 1990s). And the highest concentration of HIV sufferers in Britain, thanks to intravenous drug use.

You probably won't find any links to the Brandon Muir article on the Scottish Tourist Board's website (http://www.visitscotland.com).

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/opinion/The-Forgotten-Children-How-society.5049981.jp

A few weeks ago Danny Boyle won the Best Director Oscar for "Slumdog Millionaire". I thought it was a grotesquely overpraised movie, especially in comparison with his earlier brilliant "Trainspotting", which depicted the lives of junkies in Edinburgh. Trainspotting's most unforgettable scenes appropriately featured a dead baby. [Picture at right: EWEN BREMNER the perpetually unfortunate druggie Spud in Danny Boyle's cult classic Trainspotting (1996)]

Now we had a real life dead baby coming out of the drugs underworld of central Scotland. Not the first and certainly not the last. One estimate puts the number of children living in the Edinburgh area with at least one junkie relative as 6,000. There are 143 social workers looking after families in the Edinburgh area. Doing simple maths, each vulnerable child might have as much as 20 minutes attention per week from a social worker, once each worker has spent hours on his/her laptop doing the electronic paperwork to cover his/her backside against the next Dead Child inquest. These children might as well rely on a paper napkin to protect them from armour piercing bullets. As one commentator noted after the death of yet another abused child in London, there was a perfect audit trail showing how the social workers had failed to protect the deceased.

All this ought to be good ammunition for any ardent social reformer seeking to arose public determination to reverse disastrous trends. Yet the limitations of Tom Harris' position become horribly obvious once you think about them for ten seconds. What particular moral authority has he? About as much as you or me or the resident bore propping up the bar who declares it is all "wrong" that these Poles are allowed to come over here and take British jobs.

Take his proclamation:

Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.

Of course it's not wrong. This is a perfectly laudable and worthwhile ambition, as long as the teenager has a good husband to support her and the children. What is the glorious value of spending thousands of hours of your young life getting the transparently bogus British educational "qualifications", followed by years as a wage slave in some supermarket or call centre?

But, you protest, Mr Harris is merely objecting to such young women breeding at the taxpayers' expense. So what? Which paragon of moral authority decides that such actions are "wrong"? The British state pours about $150 billion per year down the toilet on wasted public expenditure of all kinds from useless defence equipment to useless computer projects to the 2012 Olympics. Who cares about a few billion spent on single parent families? As for ordinary people objecting to professional welfare claimants - who gives a **** about the opinions of our moronic tabloid reading masses?

And why is it "wrong" for underage girls to have sex, especially if they avoid pregnancy or seek an early abortion? The current age of consent (16) in Britain was imposed in the 19th century as part of the fight against child prostitution - and against the ferocious opposition of some senior politicians who wanted to continue breaking their sons in on child prostitutes. A girl's 16th birthday is a legal borderline as arbitrary as a tax percentage or a speed limit, with zero reference to objective morality. In other parts of the world, including Catholic areas, a girl can be married at 14. Tom Harris declares elsewhere in the article that he is not seeking to reimpose religious morality. So what basis of morality is he leaning on? The guy's a politician, after all. You can't help feeling that part of his Damascene conversion is down to the catastrophic recession - we just can't afford to fund a never ending stream of bastards out of the public purse. So is it just expedient to trumpet those fragments of "traditional" morality which assist public expenditure?

But surely some actions are visibly, indisputably wrong all the time, regardless of political ideology? Battering a little child like Brandon Muir to death is just plain "wrong". Well, at the moment, most people would agree. (What about the thousands of innocent Iraqi children killed horribly in an illegal war waged by a, er, Labour government? Er, well, er, that's different). But if Brandon had been two years younger many people would have reluctantly supported his termination right up to birth. What hope had he as a child of a junkie mother? Much better to eliminate him quickly and mercifully and avoid all the later pain and expense.

Tom Harris is notably silent on any other aspect of morality except the
is expensive moral failure of the underclass. But his confused and incoherent contribution is one hopeful sign that genuine moralists may have more public space and more sympathetic hearers for genuinely intelligent discussion than for decades past.

POST SCRIPT:

It was the Brandon Muir tragedy which sparked off Tom's article. On his website, Tom expressed his frustration that the Dundee child protection authorities hesitated about taking Brandon into care, even though his mother was a drug addicted prostitute with learning difficulties. But if he was taken into care, where would you stop? There are so many little children at varying degrees of risk from druggie parents; there aren't enough specialist social workers to supervise them or foster parents to care for them all. And there probably isn't enough capacity in the courts or legal profession to accommodate thousands of legal cases taking children into care and the resulting appeals....

[See following post for continuation of Bill's posts on this issue, and perhaps clarification of the problem facing all society.]