Sometimes certain words become morally compulsory. Current examples include ‘sustainable’ and ‘transparent’. A new phrase coming up the track is ‘energy security’. It is stated that we risk the energy security of the United Kingdom by being so dependent on foreign oil, gas or nuclear-generated energy. How much better, it is also stated, to have our own sources of energy like wind-power and tide-power. I wonder if this is right, even if — which is highly improbable — such alternative sources could suffice. It is true, in principle, that suppliers can decide to cut off their customers, but the natural tendency of an international energy market is the opposite. It is in the interest of everyone involved to keep the thing flowing. British history suggests that the greatest threat to continuous supply comes from our own people — miners, power workers — when taken over by militant unions. It is also much easier for the suppliers to force up the price in a ‘self-sufficient’ economy than in a global one. The most secure answer is continuing ‘insecurity’.
Sometimes certain words become morally compulsory. Current examples include ‘sustainable’ and ‘transparent’. A new phrase coming up the track is ‘energy security’. It is stated that we risk the energy security of the United Kingdom by being so dependent on foreign oil, gas or nuclear-generated energy. How much better, it is also stated, to have our own sources of energy like wind-power and tide-power. I wonder if this is right, even if — which is highly improbable — such alternative sources could suffice. It is true, in principle, that suppliers can decide to cut off their customers, but the natural tendency of an international energy market is the opposite. It is in the interest of everyone involved to keep the thing flowing. British history suggests that the greatest threat to continuous supply comes from our own people — miners, power workers — when taken over by militant unions. It is also much easier for the suppliers to force up the price in a ‘self-sufficient’ economy than in a global one. The most secure answer is continuing ‘insecurity’.
I am flooded with learned contributions about the nature of the entail in Downton Abbey [see Notes, 16 October]. A solicitor friend writes that the ‘tenant in tail in possession’ (who seems in this case to be ‘in tail male’) could usually act unilaterally to disentail himself. If Lord Grantham has only a life interest, however, he would need to get Mr Crawley’s consent to disentail. It is possible that what is being considered is not breaking the entail, but varying it. Another friend, a former parliamentary clerk, writes even more magisterially: ‘Professor Vincent seems to be confusing baronies by writ and property. We do not know whether Lord Grantham has such a medieval barony in addition to his earldom, but if he did then it would indeed not be inherited by his cousin Matthew like the earldom, but would go into abeyance between his daughters. But none of this has any effect on the entail which provides that the …Downton estate passes upon the death of the present earl to the next earl, unlike the situation in Brideshead Revisited where Lord Marchmain recalls that the entail ended with him and he is free to leave Brideshead to Julia even though the marquessate would go to Bridey.’ He wonders if ‘the end of Downton will disclose that there is a barony by writ which will go to all three girls in common until “called out of abeyance” in favour of one after a petition to the Crown.’ Even for Julian Fellowes, such a twist might be a bit recherché.
Last week, we went to a performance at the Cottesloe of Craig Brown’s brilliant parodies, which appear in his new book The Lost Diaries. It went excellently. But it did occur to me, listening to what people did and didn’t laugh at, that the ear for parody is weaker than it was. People love mimicry of voice and manner, but they are so much less trained in literary attentiveness than they would once have been that they do not notice the stylistic quirks of writers and therefore do not pick up their parodies. I wonder if parody will gradually die out, like composing Latin hexameters.
As if to confirm this column’s claim last week that the acquittal of Lady Chatterley’s Lover 50 years ago was not an unmixed blessing for civilisation, up pops the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian. In a piece of ineffable complacency about the triumph of progress, Robertson’s central untruth is his claim that ‘Judges in 1960 regarded themselves, rather more than they do today, as guardians of moral virtue’. Nowadays, with their wide powers under human rights law, judges lay down moral rules of their own invention much more freely than half a century ago. It is simply that the virtues they uphold — the rights of terrorists set above the collective freedom of the peaceful citizen, for example — have changed. Robertson hails the post-Chatterley era on the grounds that Peter Finch could now refer to Glenda Jackson’s ‘tired old tits’ in Sunday Bloody Sunday and ‘Ken Tynan said the first “fuck” on television’. O brave new world.
For my approaching birthday, I said I wanted a type of slipper which I have worn ever since I was at school. It is leather, but with corduroy — in burgundy, blue, green or black — covering the main body, held in place by a rather elegant leather edging. My old pair has worn out. My wife kindly searched high and low, without success. New and Lingwood, in Jermyn Street, appeared not to offer them. Then, at a shoot, I met a friend who was wearing a blue pair round the house. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘where did you get those?’ To my surprise, he was slightly embarrassed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know I shouldn’t really be wearing them. I’m only an Amplefordian.’ I didn’t understand. He explained that this slipper is called ‘the Eton Slipper’, and that you can get it from New and Lingwood, but only if you order it personally, under plain cover, as it were. So I rang the Eton branch instead. Yes, they did have a few, but the assistant said the company was trying to wind them down since ‘they’re such slow sellers’. Why? In modern times, the mail order companies, such as Charles Tyrwhitt, which sell ‘Jermyn Street’ clothes and shoes, do extremely good business. I’m sure the Eton Slipper could sell well if it were rightly marketed. It is only because it is treated as ‘ghetto posh’, an expensive item (£117) on the Eton new boys’ clothes list, that it is sinking. Rebrand it — perhaps with an eye to what is probably called ‘the correctional community’ — and it will fly off the shelves.
Our round-robin email from Sussex police reports an incident in which three ‘white males’ (‘large build and one with tattoos on his arms’) threatened a man who refused to sell them his Red Diesel. ‘The informant stated that they did not have local accents, possibly Kent.’ This localism is rather touching: the Kent border is only five miles from where the incident took place.
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