Archbishop Vincent Nichols told the Sunday Telegraph that Facebook and the like meant that young people were ‘losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that’s necessary for living together’. Just after reading the Archbishop of Westminster’s words, I happened to be going to confession in his cathedral. Preparing for it, I read what the Simple Prayer Book says about how one should examine one’s conscience: ‘Careful preparation is vital in order to make the most of this encounter with our loving heavenly Father. Find some time to be alone and quiet to reflect on your life, your relationship with God and others.’ It struck me that my relationship with God closely resembles what worries Archbishop Nichols about Facebook. God and I have never met. Sometimes I tell myself that the relationship is going well and that God really does love me. At other times, I feel that He completely ignores me. When this happens I — like, I would guess, almost all believers — feel like teenagers on Facebook, as regarded by the Archbishop: ‘the friendship… collapses and they’re desolate’. As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, ‘my lament/ Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent/ To dearest him that lives alas! away’. Archbishop Nichols is right that we must have ‘rounded communication’ to build a ‘rounded community’, but the very existence of prayer is an acknowledgment that the human predicament is inevitably unrounded and therefore also requires a much more hazardous and lonely form of communication.
My most learned regular correspondent writes: ‘Seventy per cent of old people own their homes. The average home is worth about £150,000. Who would not take Mum to Zurich for £150,000?’ He concludes that euthanasia ‘will be as with abortion: from small beginnings for special cases, to normal practice within a generation’. I hope he is being too pessimistic about human nature, but there is certainly something strange about the fact that the cry for assisted dying has become louder as we have got wealthier. There is particular outrage at the idea that people should have to sell their houses to pay for long-term care, with the implication that those in this terrible situation would be kinder to themselves and everyone else if they took their own life. But when you think about it, isn’t long-term care exactly the sort of ‘rainy day’ against which capital is supposed to provide? And if you are living alone and going into such care, isn’t it reasonable to sell a house that you no longer need? And this is not to mention the help which children and other relations can provide. Of course all these decisions are hard, and are often made in distressing circumstances. But my point is that the collective despair about care for the very old in Britain today is not justified by the economic facts. We are better placed than ever before to look after old people. It is just that we don’t want to. We prefer freeholds worth six- or seven-figure sums.
The more you discover about the endless activities in Trafalgar Square, the worse it seems. The reason that there are so many rallies, shows and jamborees is Ken Livingstone. When he was mayor, he wanted Trafalgar Square to be the epicentre of his idea of London as a ‘world city’. His version of cosmopolitanism was really an ethnic division of the spoils. Each interest group was given the right to have its day in the square, paid for by council taxpayers. This was against the interests of all those Londoners (the great majority) who do not wish to be defined by an organised ethnicity. What is so maddening is that it continues under the mayoralty of Boris Johnson, whose appeal is to replace multiculturalism with an easy-going, inclusive Britishness, but who can’t be bothered to act. On top of all this we have the depressing ‘One & Other’ Antony Gormley idea, which not only puts boring exhibitionists on the fourth plinth 24 hours a day, many of them made more objectionable by a megaphone, but also parks a huge green prefab in the square so that the whole enterprise may be filmed. Part of the square is roped off by screens which say ‘Mayor of London’ on them. These eyesores should shame Boris into action.
A few nights ago, I was walking through the square when I came across two policemen mildly asking an illegal cyclist to dismount. Some show-off of our ‘vibrant’ street culture was harassing the police by sarcastically condemning their intervention over his loudhailer. The police, unfortunately but inevitably, were doing nothing to inhibit his right to amplified free speech. I was so irritated that I went up to him and told him to leave the police alone, that they were only doing their job and that people bicycling where the rest of us walked was inconsiderate. Of course my Mr Pooter act was grist to his mill. ‘Here’s a man in a suit who says the police are only doing their job,’ he broadcast satirically to the square. I stumped off to catch my train, impotently plotting revenge.
President Obama’s popularity is declining because of his policy on healthcare. His own Democrats in Congress are now worried about his reforms. It is a little bit like the poll tax. The poll tax was introduced because the governing party’s core supporters were angry about domestic rates. What was not understood was that the losers by the reform would be much angrier than the gainers would be pleased. In health, the Democrats’ core supporters resent the difficulty and expense of health insurance. But most Americans tell polls they are happy with the health insurance provided by their employers. To provide the universal service he seeks, President Obama will have to reduce the existing benefits to millions, or incur utterly astronomical costs. It begins to look like political suicide.
Early in July, I wrote to TV Licensing to explain that I would not be renewing my television licence, though I would continue to watch television, until the BBC sacked Jonathan Ross, to whom it pays £6 million a year. I got a quick reply, which said that the TV licence is ‘a legal permission’ and ‘not a payment for service from broadcasters’, which is another way of saying that paying the money gives you no power whatever. TV Licensing went on to explain that ‘We have no control over the quality or broadcasts of television programmes’, and to suggest that I write to the Correspondence Manager in Glasgow if I have ‘complaints of this nature’. I don’t think I shall bother, but will simply wait and see what happens next, now that my fee payment is overdue. The authority has just reported that the number of people it has caught evading in the past six months has risen to 214,000 people. I shall let you know whether this has gone up to 214,001 when this column returns in September.
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