The Spectator’s Notes

20 May 2006

The worst thing about being conservative is that it is so bad for the character.

Given how much effort is put into teaching children to look right, then left, then right again, it is surprising how few seem to be taught how to walk safely down a road without a pavement. If you drive through country lanes at a weekend, you nearly bump into families walking, with the traffic, on the left-hand side of the road. Unless they walk facing the traffic, they are semi-invisible, but they appear not to know this. This fact is counterintuitive, perhaps, like the truth that it is easier to carry a heavy object walking backwards, but that is only more reason to teach it.

Correspondence rages in the Daily Telegraph about the expression ce (Common Era) replacing ad in schoolbooks, etc. Those who support the change say that it is arrogant of Christians to expect everyone to accept a date deriving from their religion. But that derivation continues even if the phrase chosen to describe it conceals this fact. In what sense did the birth of Jesus (or rather the supposed date of the birth of Jesus, since it is almost certainly wrong by four years or more) usher in a Common Era? If I were a Muslim, I would resent the suggestion of commonality more than the explicit reference to Christ (some Muslims send out Christmas cards with greetings ‘on the birth of the Prophet Jesus’). A truly multicultural society would insist on different dating systems being given ‘parity of esteem’. By the way, as a Christian, I vehemently object to several days of the week being named after Viking gods.

The other day I heard the sad story of a doting Jewish father who bought his daughter a flat to celebrate her engagement, and arranged for a telephone line to be put in. Her caddish fiancé then broke the thing off, and the girl no longer wanted the flat, so the father rang to cancel the order for the line. The female voice in the call centre, which seemed to be in India, asked whether the company could provide any other service. ‘Can you mend a broken heart?’ asked the father. ‘Hold on, please,’ she said, ‘I’ll just check with the manager.’ She returned a moment later and said, ‘I’m afraid we don’t provide that service, sir.’