One of the weirdest articles I have ever read appeared in the Times last week. It was by Ken Macdonald, and it was about child abuse in the Catholic Church. It was clear that the author has a ferocious hatred of the Church in which, he said, he was brought up. He described Catholic parents as being ‘sold at birth’ into believing in the rightness of the Church. He pronounced that the Church is not repentant about child abuse and thus ‘mocks the sacrament’ of confession. He accused the Pope of refusing, in his recent letter to Irish Catholics, to admit the failings of an authoritarian Church, although in fact, Benedict’s letter explicitly laid part of the blame on too great a deference to ‘clergy and other authority figures’ and ‘a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church’. The article was extreme, unfair, tinged with hysteria. But what made it really alarming is that Sir Ken Macdonald was, until 2008, the Director of Public Prosecutions. His piece showed no concern for that rather important doctrine about being innocent until proved guilty. His solution — ‘If you suspect abuse… just call the police’ — showed no recognition of the difference between suspicion and evidence, upon which, surely, police work depends. It is true that the Catholic Church has often dealt wrongly with child abuse. But what is also clear is that people like Sir Ken are looking not for justice, but for revenge. I wonder what it was like for Catholics when Sir Ken’s Crown Prosecution Service came after them. They have experienced penal times here in past centuries. Would Sir Ken like them back?
A great many voters want to protest about the MPs’ expenses scandal at the coming election, but cannot work out how. They also want to vote on other national issues, and are therefore reluctant to turn out a candidate of the party they support, even if they dislike him. In our own seat of Bexhill and Battle, Stuart Wheeler has just announced his candidacy against Greg Barker, the sitting Conservative MP. Mr Wheeler’s attitude to MPs’ pay and conditions is admirable (see Notes of 27 February), but my guess is that this safe Tory seat will stay that way because most of the voters here want a Tory government. So what is the best way of protesting? I suggest that it is to focus on a single symbol of what is wrong with parliament. Step forward the Speaker, John Bercow, who was elected for depressingly partisan reasons and is the veteran of more than one ‘flip’ of his second home. Getting Mr Bercow out would strike a dramatic blow for reform. By convention, he will not be opposed by the main parties in the election, so the electors of Buckingham, by voting against him, will not sacrifice their chance to help choose the next government. At least three candidates are offering themselves against Mr Bercow. First came Patrick Phillips, a leading local Tory. Next came Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip. And now enters John Stevens, the former Conservative MEP, who is making the expenses row the centre of his campaign. It is hard to tell which would be the best. Mr Phillips may not have a wide enough following. Mr Farage is the candidate of a party which has a mass of other views, and which, in the European parliament, has had its own expenses scandals. Mr Stevens is a pro-European so ardent that he left his party on that issue: this will annoy some. But I do hope the Buckingham voters can work out which candidate is the cleanest, most able and most likely to win, and back him.
Within ten minutes in London last week, two conversations. The first was a call from a friend in Greece. Rich Greeks, he told me, thought their country might be forced out of the euro, so they were removing piles of cash from the banks and putting it in safe deposit boxes. A few minutes later, I bumped into a friend who works in high finance. Half the hedge funds in London, he said, have now gone to a firm called Kinetic Partners, which specialises in these matters, to seek advice on how to relocate abroad. In both cases, I suspect, the panics will subside, but I record them because they catch the mood of these strange times.
Lady Park, the most senior woman in the history of MI6, died last week. She had that peculiar clarity of mind which goes with an old-fashioned education, the experience of adversity and the ability to crack codes. One who worked with her tells me that he once drafted a message which began, ‘We feel that…’. Daphne Park pulled him up: ‘John, in the Service, we think, we act. We do not feel.’ She was, nevertheless, a woman of feeling. In old age, she did a great deal to help the white farmers persecuted by Robert Mugabe. And when she spoke at the Royal Society of Literature three years ago (the only speaker there ever to have received a standing ovation), she said that the greatest novel ever written about espionage was Kim. This was because Kipling captured the essential points about spying — that it requires total immersion in the culture observed and a deep understanding of human nature.
Not for the first time, our parish news is sensational. In its latest edition, my wife reveals the coming of a ‘voracious predator… bent on world domination’. She is speaking of the harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axyridis. Native to Asia, it was introduced into North America 20 years ago to deal with aphid infestations in pecan orchards by eating the aphids, which it did. But soon the ladybirds started swarming, invading houses in the autumn, and discharging a foul stink when frightened or squashed. They like fruit, and have ruined American grape harvests. They came here in 2004. Like grey squirrels threatening our own red ones, they are displacing our 46 native species of ladybirds. They are already the commonest ladybird in the south-east. Should this tale, asks my wife, be cautionary against the plan to introduce Japanese psyllids to control Japanese knotweed? This is just the sort of immigration debate which the main political parties are too nervous to engage in.
In recent months, my invitations to work-related dinners have become really obsessive about ‘special dietary requirements’. In a society with several religions and lots of health fads and allergies, it may be polite to ask, but I have sometimes received three separate emails pressing the question about the same meal. Doesn’t acceptance of an invitation imply acceptance of the food on offer, or at least, that one will quietly leave the bits one doesn’t want? When I get pushed on the point, I reply that my special dietary requirement is food, lots of it.
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