The Spectator’s notes
Charles Moore's reflections on the week
In fairness to the BBC, however, have you noticed how good Radio 4 has now become? It is starting once again to give meaning to the idea of public service broadcasting. The programmes look behind current trends, asking interesting questions. They tell the listener about other people, other places, other times. Without being obscure, they are intelligent and educated, and assume a desire to learn on the part of the listener. I would specifically praise this change as the work of Mark Damazer, the Controller of Radio 4, if I didn’t think it would damage his career.
Weather forecasters constantly talk about temperatures ‘struggling’, but they are always represented as struggling in only one direction — upwards. This is a version of the ‘pathetic fallacy’ in which human beings attribute their own feelings to forces which cannot feel. As we built a five-foot snowman in the garden on Sunday, I was convinced of the opposite: temperatures are resolutely struggling downwards and, judging by the rest of the week at the time of writing, succeeding.
One of the issues in the Governance of Britain Constitutional Renewal Bill with which we are threatened is the question of war powers. When he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown gave the impression that the ‘royal prerogative’ should be removed: Parliament, not the executive, should have the sole power to decide whether the nation goes to war. Last month, Jack Straw, the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, published the White Paper. Mr Straw is really the last cunning old fox in government. While deferring to the idea of parliamentary supremacy, his recommendation ‘does not see a requirement’ for most of the things which the reformers would like, and opts, instead of legislation, for something called ‘a detailed resolution’ which would set out the processes which Parliament would follow if war loomed. Mr Straw’s trickery is completely justified. It is ridiculous that the nation should have to wait for parliamentary approval before taking any military action, because timetables of war do not work like that. It is also democratically unnecessary, because no government can prosecute a war for any length of time without parliamentary approval. As Enoch Powell pointed out in the middle of the Falklands war, the royal prerogative is a huge power, but it is of no avail without ‘retaining the subsequent and continuing confidence of the House’. The demand for a change in all of this results from guilty feeling about the Iraq war. But the funny thing is that this, unusually, was a war that the Commons did clearly debate before it began, and clearly voted for.
Halliwell’s Film Companion lists every feature film ever released. The films beginning with the word ‘I’ give an insight into the human ego. Here are just the titles where the ‘I’ is followed by the letter a or the letter b: I Accuse, I Aim at the Stars, I Am a Camera, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, I Am Curious — Yellow, I Am Not Afraid, I Am Sam, I Am Sexy, I Am the Cheese, I Am the Law, I Became a Criminal, I Believe in You, I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, I Bury the Living.
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Charles MooreNew Labour has always preserved from the hard Left the Leninist idea that the party (or, in Blair/Brown theory, ‘the project’) is the only reality to be respected.
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Pat Clarke
April 10th, 2008 10:39amI've been warring with TV Licensing for years, on & off, and followed your references to it with wry amusement, occasional outrage and complete empathy.
There have been several periods in my life when a bit of belt-tightening has been necessary. When casting around for economies, paying for a television licence tops the list, I really can live happily without the mostly banal offerings. It is not illegal to own a television without a licence provided it isn't installed to receive broadcasts. I am always scrupulously honest in that respect: the television gets packed up and stored in the garden shed; I do not even use it to watch videos or DVDs.
On these occasions, when I receive the usual reminder to renew the licence, it includes a form that you can sign to declare that you have no equipment installed to receive broadcasts. I duly sign and return it. I then get the threatening stuff about inspection visits, which of itself proclaims that my signature to a declaration is worthless: in other words, I am lying. This doesn't sit awfully well with me since I am, in fact, telling the truth - amply witnessed by visiting progeny wailing "Mum, where's your tv gone?". "It's in the shed and, no, you may not resurrect it to watch Big Brother".
So where am I at this stage? With no television connected, I am pursued by TV Licensing and on the receiving end of stick from my family. The latter is ample motivation to confront the former!
Thus, over the course of at least ten years and probably more, I have fought my corner. I have suggested they forward to me their legal justification for entering my home with no evidence of crime committed. They never managed that! I have suggested that as woman living on her own who does not admit strangers to her home, their inspector should be accompanied by a uniformed member of the constabulary whose credentials I can check. The last time, I suggested that they park a detector van outside my home and monitor it for reception.
So far, I have been unmolested by 'inspectors' and simply buy a new licence when I feel like it.
Trying and time-wasting as it is to confront them, you can at least come out on top at the moment. If the day ever comes when they can kick down your door to discover that you're telling the truth, which under this government is hardly a remote possibility, I think I will jump under one of those delayed trains.
Slightly off at a tangent, but I had a long-running dispute with South East Water which was trying to charge me for money I simply didn't owe.. Months of paying for Recorded Delivery because they will ignore anything else. Did you know that? Anything THEY send YOU is assumed to have arrived, even though it frequently doesn't. But anything YOU send THEM is ignored as not received unless you use Recorded Delivery. Eventually, it was resolved in a letter from South East Water telling me "we discovered you were telling the truth". I will not pursue my reaction to that, my blood pressure is only now getting back to normal!
DougS
April 10th, 2008 3:31pmChuck: I'm generally with you: You're incredibly insightful and have a wonderful writing style.
I'm gonna' disagree with one thing here: your statement that the letters from Sky and the BBC illustrate the differences between the government and the free market.
They illustrate the difference between offering you something and trying to get paid for something (even if they are mistakenly convinced that you have a TV).
I think you'd agree that if you took Sky and then didn't pay that their letters would become increasingly like those of the BBC; exactly like them, in fact, culminating in a threat to take you to court.