We are all being asked by the government what should be cut. I bet the British people will take part happily. Contrary to what you read in the papers, cutting is great fun. One serious contribution is already being offered by Paul Goodman, the excellent former MP for Wycombe, who stood down at the last election. Mr Goodman’s argument, in a new paper for Policy Exchange called ‘What do we want MPs to be?’, is the counterintuitive but correct one that the new restrictions on MPs’ earnings are against the public good. Once they depend on payment from the state, and are forced to account for all their time not spent on the state’s business, they cease to represent the variety of interests in this country and become simply second-rate civil servants. Freeze their pay, stop their pensions, says Mr Goodman, and let them fend for themselves instead. If they do so, they will represent those who elect them more faithfully. They will be part of the Big Society, not of big government.
Mikhail Gorbachev was in London last week, and I went to a dinner for him. It was held in the Jerusalem Chamber in the Deanery of Westminster Abbey. As I entered, a waiter said, ‘Please go straight through to the reception.’ I suddenly found myself in the Abbey itself, with a glass of champagne in my hand. In a chair beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier sat Lady Thatcher, flanked by the hosts, Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev, and looking, even by her high standards, beautifully dressed. She had come to meet Mr Gorbachev, but it turned out that he was too ill to attend. After a bit, she walked gradually out of the Abbey, meeting the other guests as she passed. I watched her greet first a pretty Russian girl, heavily pregnant and looking about 17, who appeared to be wearing nothing but a long white shirt; second, Vanessa Redgrave (the two exchanged easy courtesies as if no politics had ever existed); and finally, Boris Johnson, who came shambling hastily in, just as Lady Thatcher moved, slow and stately, out. It was surreal, like an actualised game of Consequences. Dinners where the main guest is absent are becoming the thing. The state banquet for the Pope in September will be held in Lancaster House, but Benedict XVI, who likes to go to bed early, will not be there.
One of my dinner companions was a young businesswoman and philanthropist who told me she was from Bombay. I remarked that she didn’t call it Mumbai. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘no Indian does. It is a word used solely in conversation with foreigners.’ She confirmed [see discussion of this in Spectator’s Notes 13 December 2008] that the switch of official name from Bombay to Mumbai was the result of anti-Muslim Hindu agitation in the 1980s led by the charismatic Balasaheb Thackeray. Thackeray’s sectarian Mumbai-Jumbo led to a rash of these name-changes — Madras becoming Chennai, Calcutta being re-spelt to sound less English — ignored by most Indians, but uncritically accepted by the outside world.
On Tuesday, I had lunch in Bexhill with Jean Melville Brown, or ‘Miss Brown’ as I still think of her. For 30 years, she owned and ran the kindergarten where I received my first education, in Battle, Sussex. The fact that it no longer exists can be guessed from its name, Gay Bowers. Miss Brown taught us to high standards, and was particularly noted for her ability to get her pupils reading. She showed me with grim amusement a letter she received in the early Blair years from the Department of Education. ‘Dear Miss Brown’, it began, ‘thank you for your letter about learning young children to read.’
The Rectory Society, of which I am chairman, runs field trips to parsonages. Last month, it was our turn, as old rectory owners, to be the hosts. Although Burns enjoins us to have the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us, it is an incredibly exhausting thing to do. When you look at your own house and garden in that light, there is no end to the work you feel is necessary. After it was over, we felt a new respect for those who open their houses to the public, particularly as the public — unlike members of the Rectory Society — are not invariably polite. There is little to see in our house, so we laid on a small show of old letters collected by my family. I like one from W.M. Thackeray, addressed to two officials at the Foreign Office. It says: ‘Gents: will one of you kindly pay 2 bob and procure a passport for W.M. Thackeray and 2 daughters, and you shall be paid back whenever we meet. My man can take it away.’ It would be hard to find a more succinct expression of a pre-bureaucratic world.
This column should not really complain about urban foxes, given the fine specimen at the top of the page. Indeed, when we lived in London, we had some enjoyable encounters with them. My wife, who can make good fox noises, even engaged them in reciprocated conversation. But of course Melissa Kite is right [see page 53] about the crazy attitude of local councils to the problem. Until the authorities admit that the numbers of animals or birds always need, in the absence of natural predators, to be controlled, the health of the creature itself — and usually that of other creatures too — will suffer. A few years ago, a gamekeeper told me that he had recently found a large van broken down in a country lane. While helping the driver get it restarted, he noticed a rank smell. He asked what was in the van, and was told that it contained 30 live foxes. The driver had instructions from a London council, which had secretly collected them, to release them into the countryside. The keeper told the man not to, because of the risk of their spreading mange, and of dying in the alien environment, but he said his job required it. Under the pretence of getting more help, the keeper summoned a colleague on his mobile phone, whispering to him to bring his guns. He turned up, and the two men persuaded the driver to let them shoot as many foxes as possible while he released them. It was the only humane solution to cruelty caused by the council ‘animal-lovers’.
Last Saturday’s Derby was a good race, but the television coverage was irritating. It reminded me of BBC’s election night. We kept being told how wonderfully exciting and amusing it all was. This insistence always has the opposite of the effect intended, like vicars who say ‘Smile! Relax!’ You just want to hear as much as possible, from people who know as much as possible, about the horses, and then to watch the race. Television’s demented fear of boredom is the most boring thing about it.
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