RSS

Contact us

Monday 13 October 2008

The Spectator’s Notes

Charles Moore reflects on the events of the week

TV Licence (continued). I have now received an Official Warning at my flat in London, where I do not have a television licence because I do not have a television. In its fiercest letter so far of the many that it has sent to me, TV Licensing, the body responsible, tells me that ‘Enforcement officers have been authorised by us to visit your address ...to interview you under caution’. The Official Warning ‘strongly’ advises me to buy a licence ‘to avoid a court appearance’. It makes no allowance for the possibility that I do not have a television. Many readers have written to me about such letters, and they point out that these threats are, in their experience, empty. That does not, they rightly add, make them better. What it shows is that the authorities are perfectly happy to frighten the innocent as well as the guilty, because it involves little cost to themselves. Bureaucracies automatically behave badly if empowered to do so. God knows what it will be like when the equivalent of TV Licensing is empowered to chase up the identity cards of 60 million people.

A Conservative peer, who claims to have the deference natural to a boy from a minor public school, tells me that his fellows have adopted the (now defunct) Eton custom of ‘capping’ David Cameron when he walks past. The action, a vestige of the time when boys had caps or hats, involves raising the right finger as if to remove the imaginary headgear to one in authority. It reminds me of a junior bishop who fell on his knees to the late Bishop Mervyn Stockwood when he spotted him in Boulestin’s restaurant and kissed his episcopal ring. ‘That was very respectful,’ said his lunch companion. ‘Oh,’ said the bishop, ‘I only did it to mock him.’

In the latest Sunday Times, Andrew Davies, the man who keeps shoving explicit sex into television versions of Jane Austen, wrote an article praising her because, in her novels, ‘everything works ...all the details are accurate’. As a generalisation, this is true. But Davies goes on to say, ‘If the apple trees are in blossom, she will make sure we are in the right month’. Famously, this is not so. In Emma, the Donwell picnic scene takes place  ‘at almost Midsummer’ i.e., late June, and the view discloses the ‘orchard in blossom’. This is impossible in late June.

More articles from: Charles Moore | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved