Living in a monarchy, one naturally compares the inauguration of a US President to our Coronation. It compares unfavourably. It lacks beauty, mystery, good order, and, although it is full of history, it lacks the fascinating complications and accretions of a country like ours, which has no theory, only its history. I could not help being disappointed by the way the speakers were announced on the Capitol on Tuesday as if they were performing in some awards ceremony, or by the incompetence and lack of ceremony with which the Chief Justice administered the oath to Barack Obama. Even the music was pretty useless, because it had to embody current compromises about ethnicity and culture rather than lifting everything to heaven. But this, broadly speaking, is how it should be. The United States is a republic, and one of the genuine republican virtues is a lack of grandeur and ornateness. When Americans refused to pay British taxes, they also refused to buy the rest of the monarchical act. In the Coronation, of course, there is no speech by the monarch, because the office is too sacred and inexpressible. In the inauguration, the speech — apart from the oath — is the only thing that really matters. Like many people, I found Mr Obama’s speech more boring than I had expected. But he had carefully — and correctly — worked out that, if you are in Valley Forge, fine words can be annoying.
The Atheist Bus Campaign poster says: ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ Is this the best that the power of ratiocination in which people like Richard Dawkins put such faith (yes, faith) can manage? ‘Probably’ is a weak word, for a start, though I do see that the atheists would find it difficult to assert that there is ‘certainly’ no God. But if there is only probably no God, why would one stop worrying about this question? And how does His improbability make one able to enjoy life more? Those banners which one used to see at race meetings — ‘The end is nigh. Flee from the wrath to come’ — were less unsettling than this evasive and nannyish collection of non-sequiturs.
In the course of recent researches into Robert Burns (250 years old next week), I have once again come across the Scots word ‘pawky’. It is in current use, but each person I ask offers a different meaning. In the Burns context (as used by a commentator on Burns, not the poet himself), it seems to mean ‘cunning’ or ‘sly’. I have also seen it defined as ‘dry’. But then I heard someone praised for his pawky sense of humour. What does it really mean, and what, since it gave birth to an adjective, is a pawk?
In a Liverpool case last week, the court heard that a teenager had been paid £50 to brandish guns on a BBC Panorama programme. He was not paid directly, but had been procured by a middle-man, referred to as ‘Male C’. After the 17-year-old had waved his guns about for the cameras — to illustrate Merseyside gang culture — Male C said ‘Nice one’ and gave him the money. I felt a twinge of envy. At much the same time, I was being interviewed by Panorama for a programme, due next week, about swearing, Jonathan Ross and all that. At one point in the hour and a half of which, I would guess, a maximum of 15 seconds will be used, I mentioned payment for my services and was met with a gale of laughter. But then I had no Male C to fight for me, and I was unarmed. Ross, though 48 years old, in some ways resembles the Liverpudlian teenager. He has understood that there is money in bad behaviour. His equivalent of Male C is a figure known as his ‘agent’, who has managed to extract £6 million a year from the BBC in return for the use of four-letter words and making indecent suggestions about public figures. While I was doing my interview, I was told to sign the customary ‘release’ form assigning copyright to the Corporation. I noticed that it contained a clause saying ‘You agree that your contributions will not bring the BBC into disrepute or be defamatory.’ It occurred to me that if I removed the word ‘not’ from that sentence, I might be on the way to £6 million a year.
The Revd Paul Nicolson runs Zacchaeus 2000, a charity which helps poor people who are ruthlessly pursued for small debts. He has copied to me a letter he has recently sent to the Chairman of the BBC Trust. It points out that, under the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act 2004, and the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act of 2007, bailiffs now have the power to use force whereas ‘For the previous 400 years, bailiffs had only been entitled to enter peacefully’. Zacchaeus 2000 has dealt with cases of single mothers threatened by TV Licensing’s bailiffs with a break-in and removal of their possessions for failing to pay a television licence. In one case — par for the course — the woman had, in fact, arranged for the payment of her licence by direct debit before the matter came to court, but the court still fined her and the bailiffs then came after the fine, menacing her with a break-in by a locksmith. Mr Nicolson is rightly campaigning for a restraint on the bailiffs’ powers. It also strikes me as wrong that the source of this oppression — TV Licensing — is so named. Its name makes it sound like an agent of the state. It is not: it is set up and ultimately run by the BBC. All its literature should say ‘BBC’ in big letters on it, and then the public would know the origin of the threats to them.
What is the most dire phrase in the English language? I would say it is ‘a rich mix’, when used by television bureaucrats to describe their ‘public service’ output. What vistas of dreary uniformity it conjures up.
The late John Mortimer’s autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage is a gripping read. I particularly remember his description of his father’s last illness. One day, when the old man got notably furious, his wife pleaded with him not to be so angry. ‘I’m always angry when I’m dying,’ said Mortimer senior. It was a brave, sad, unanswerable reply. But it does not seem to have been true of John, as he approached death. He showed a different, cheerful sort of courage.
As Grace Mugabe spends 92,000 US dollars on her Christmas shopping in Hong Kong while Zimbabwe prints its first one trillion Zimbabwean dollar note, it feels as if nothing whatever can be done to help its people. But the Zimbabwe Benefit Foundation (patron: Desmond Tutu) believes it has found a way of getting round the authorities. It distributes packs of seeds of maize, sugar beans etc., directly to people who get nothing from the government. So far, 30,000 have been reached, but much more can be done. For anyone interested, try http://www.zbf.org.uk/.
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