PUBLIC SERVICE WILL NOT BE RESUMED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

It's now almost three weeks since the clocks went forward and still the "official" clock at Muswell Hill Post Office fails to display the correct time - or any time. For a few days following the change the MHPO showed the old time. Then the clock displayed - in analogue format - 11:57:55. Now it shows exactly 12:00. As a comment on the failure of the public services this is a prime example. [Yes yes I know the post office is one step removed from being a government department by the device of being constituted as a company with all shares held by the government but it's a public "service" all the same]. Nobody cares - least of all the PO management - what this broken clock conveys about its owners. Incuded would be contempt for customers, contempt for staff, contempt by staff, lack of pride and so on.

Another, small instance of the same uncaring, contemptuous mentality, is shown by HMR&C (the Inland Revenue to you and me). Today I received a request for information on a limited company. I ticked the boxes and put the completed questionnaire in the return envelope and what do you know? The questionnaire did not fit in the envelope (and had to be carefully re-folded) and the full return address did not display fully in the envelope window: and, oh yes, I had to pay the postage for something of no interest to me but, apparently, of some use to HMR&C.

When I was much younger - in the 50s - I always looked forward to returning home after a holiday on the Continent with my parents. I knew I'd be returning to a country that worked: public clocks showed the correct time, the streets were clean, the people were clean and respectably dressed, it was quiet, the police were polite (and tall) and, according to Dad, when the Inland Revenue wrote you a letter, it was signed by a "faithful servant". How times change!

CAMERON THE "CONSERVATIVE"

Christopher Booker's article on the leader of the "Conservative" Party article censored and spiked by the Sunday Telegraph of 3 December 2006 (from EU Referendum).

As David Cameron ends his first year as leader of the Opposition, there are clear signs that the greatest gamble in modern British politics has not come off. The little group of ex-public schoolboys who last year hi-jacked the Conservative Party have seemed to gamble on just one strategy. List everything the Party used to stand for – low taxes, the family, rolling back the power of the state, encouraging business, upholding our defences, curbing criminals, common sense – then go for the opposite.The essence of the gamble has been the belief that, in wooing the support of Lib Dems, would-be greenies, Guardian readers and the supposed "soft centre", they could take their supposed "core" supporters for granted. But as support for Cameron falters, all the evidence seems to suggest that those wished-for new recruits to his "Not The Conservative Party" are not forthcoming, while the Party's former natural supporters are left baffled, dismayed and increasingly angry.All this was neatly symbolised by the recent photo-opportunities staged by the three men now competing for the role of Britain's prime minister. Mr Blair and Mr Brown, aware that defence and national security (not long ago rating 34 percent on a Mori poll) still rank very much higher as voter priorities than "environmental" issues (only 8 percent), flew out to the Iraq and Afghan battle-zones to pose in front of the largest guns they could find. Mr Cameron, at the same time, flew out to the Sudan, in Lord Ashcroft's CO2 emitting private jet, to be pictured cuddling a little refugee child. It was the "Men from Mars" against "the Boy from Venus". "Darfur Dave" did not come well out of the contrast.The tragedy is that, confronted by the most corrupt, hypocritical, inefficient, illiberal, discredited government in history, what millions of voters are looking for is an alternative which might put an end to the sleazy, self-regarding sham of the Blair era by displaying some "masculine" firmness: in cutting back on the bloated public sector and the out-of-control bureaucracy which is destroying our health service, education and police; which might encourage enterprise; which might restore democracy to local government; bring back some balance into our public finances; sort out the shambles into which our Armed Forces are sliding; uphold Britain's national interest, as we suffocate under the malfunctioning system of government represented by the European Union.In other words, what much of the country is crying out for is a party which represents precisely those values which Mr Cameron's Not-The-Conservative Party seems so hellbent on abandoning. As for what he stands for instead, almost the only clear message Darfur Dave seems to have put over to the voters is his sentimental "save the planet" greenery, on which his dotty little gimmicks and practical ignorance have simply made him a laughing stock.What many voters sadly begin to conclude is that Dave and his cronies seem so hopelessly ill-equipped to take on the serious business of government that, if we have to choose between one gang of PR merchants and another, better stick with the devil we know. Hence the evidence of the latest polls appearing to show that the gamble has failed. Ever larger become the number of would-be Conservatives sorely tempted to join that 40 percent who already feel so alienated from politics that they just stay sullenly at home. But the Guardian readers are scarcely flocking to replace them. So where does all this leave our country?

RIGHT AND LEFT: A BARREN ARGUMENT

It’s fairly obvious, post 9/11, 7/7, the Cartoon controversy etc etc, that the centuries old dispute between right and left is going nowhere. Both sides accuse the other of being “fascists” or even debate the “socialist” credentials of the nazis. To what end? Rather the dispute should now be re-cast in terms of “authoritarian” and “libertarian”. The Authoritarians follow down the road of the Inner Party in 1984 by demanding “thou shalt”; the Libertarians go down the road of “you can if you must, but you decide”.

Such a reorganising of analysis of political opinion removes the present confusion whereby the left, although uncomfortable in its support of militant Islam and in difficulties trying to underpin a coherent argument, nevertheless is prepared to be anti-feminist, anti-gay and anti-Semitic. The left has always been uncomfortable with philo-Semitism, corrupted as it is with more than a suspicion of pro-Zionism. At last, extremists (eg SWP, BNP and the various Islamic front organisations) and not such loony extremists (elements of the Labour party; Livingstone comes to mind) can conflate their seemingly disparate policies into an authoritarian and unconfused intolerance which, conveniently, includes anti-Semitism.

The libertarian wing of politics would tend to include the “live and let live” tendency: most Conservatives, most Lib-Dems, a fair sprinkling of old Labour and the tolerant left, and the rest of us out here in the real world. This wing would also tend to despise political correctness, patronising politics (whether from Patricia Hewitt, Virginia Bottomley or Sir Ian Blair) and the endless success of single-issue pressure groups in subverting government policy to their agenda.

10 February 2006

FREEDLAND’S DHIMMITUDE

For a prime example of cleverness mixed with crass stupidity overlaid with cultural cringe and willing dhimmitude look no further than Jonathan Freedland’s article in last night’s London Evening Standard (9 February 2006) – sorry no link.

Under the headline of “Shabina’s Right to Choose” he reasons – if that’s the word – why he supports her “human right” to demand wearing the jilbab rather than the kameez: this despite the “involvement . . . of Hizb ut-Tahrir” and the 85% other Muslim pupils in her school who are perfectly satisfied with the kameez. He doesn’t think it fit to mention that her brother – who is apparently her guardian although this is not clear from the case – is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir (rather closer to the case than “an involvement”) and that there might be suspicions that she is being used as a pawn in this whole affair as well as being under some pressure to conform to her brother’s beliefs.

He also uses an analogy from his schooldays when Jewish boys at University College School in Hampstead, North London were refused permission to wear a skullcap which, according to Freedland, is “worn at all times by orthodox Jewish males”. I declare an interest here. I sent my sons to UCS. One of many reasons I did was the school’s strict non-denominational character. UCS was founded by Jeremy Bentham precisely to avoid the kind of denominational bullying of which Freedland apparently approves. If orthodox Jews (or orthodox Muslims) wish to adopt denominational garb in an institution specifically devoted to preserving freedom from such practices, they are free to go elsewhere. After all, UCS is a private school: there is no obligation to send your children there. Freedland is also offended by the singing of hymns at the school. He should know – I’m sure he does – that there is a legal obligation on all schools to conduct a daily act of worship. And anyway, what offends him about hymns from the Christian tradition of a free country? I suggest Freedland takes up his evident unhappiness with the circumstances of his education with whoever paid for him to go there.

The situation of Shabina Begum is different and therefore Freedland’s argument falls down anyway. Denbigh is a state school. There is no realistic alternative school for the children to attend. However, the school uniform was approved by the parents after rigorous consultation. The uniform provides a modest form of dress apparently acceptable to all the other school attendees and their parents. The sole reason for Shabina to object was that the kameez is used by unbelievers, not that it is immodest which is the Islamic stricture. The wearing of the kameez by non-Muslems does not, however, prevent her fellow believers in the land of her ancestors from wearing it.

It’s certain – although this does not occur to Freedland – that Shabina’s and other Muslim women’s human rights would be enhanced by a finding against her in the House of Lords. A finding for her will be another step in confirming Muslim women’s subordinate status in Islam and the closing of another window of escape to freedom under Western law. This case is not about freedom to wear the jilbab or similar garb, it’s about effectively confirming an obligation – approved by the English secular courts - on all other Muslim women to wear it.