Malcolm Fowler’s Blog

I don’t imagine that many will be unduly distressed by the departure of Carol Thatcher from the One Show, and most right minded people would not dream of uttering the word that she used. Nevertheless, there are some worrying issues here .

There is the question of the BBC’s inconsistency between their treatment of this incident; which involved a remark made in a private conversation; with the Brand-Ross affair, in which a harmless old man was publicly humiliated using vile and scurrilous language.

There is also the matter of the the breach of the principle of free speech. Here we have yet another example of pussyfooting political correctness driving a coach and horses through one of our greatest freedoms. I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

I’ve said it before, but it bears endless repetition; sticks and stone may break my bones, but words can’t hurt me.

I hope you’re not offended but if you are………get over it!

I have long believed that the whole ‘global warming’ movement is completely spurious. Climates change, and anything that we might might or might not do to combat this will influence the natural state of things not a jot. The proponents of such actions claim the high moral ground, and tell us that we must protect the world for future generations. I suggest that if they had their way the world would be rendered virtually uninhabitable for the human race. Perhaps that is what they really want!

If not malign they are, at best naive. Governments, whose principal objective is to exert as much control over the populace as they possibly can, are only too eager to embrace the environmentalists’ crazy theories to help their cause. No matter what they say publically, freedom is a dirty word for these people. I believe that the cause of  the environmentalists has been helped enormously by the fact that their main opponent on the world stage has been George W Bush. There has rarely been a man who was so unfitted for high office and yet attained it, but he was right about global warming.

Take transport. Man’s enterprise and industry has made it possible for us to travel to every corner of the globe within a day. We even have the ability to leave it and explore other worlds. It is one of the greatest of all freedoms and therefore must be quashed. If you really must have your own vehicle we, the state, are going to do all that we can to make sure that you don’t use it. We say that we want you to use public transport but then we discover that there isn’t any.

Most of this stuff emanates from London, where the last sentence sounds ridiculous. If I lived in London I would be only too pleased to travel on the excellent transport system, and would question the need to own my own car. Out here in the real world, where 90% of us live, the notion that we could rely on the public transport system to get around is quite ludicrous. Furthermore, the sketchy network that exists is so overloaded that prices have to raised to criminal levels in order to dissuade us from using it.

The irony of all this is that this great freedom; the freedom to travel; is increasingly becoming the exclusive preserve of the wealthy.

There are so many other areas in which governments, encouraged by the environmentalists, seek to exert more and more control over us. The recycling/waste issue is one which leaves me in despair and I do not propose to dwell long on it. But the notion that our elected councils should penalise us for mistakenly placing a piece of rubbish in the wrong container, and that we should pay people to check up on whether we do so, is, frankly, obscene.

The latest stance by the environmentalists, however, puts everything that has come before it into the shade. The absurdly pompous Jonathan Porritt, the governments’s green adviser, has decreed that couples who produce more than two children are being irresponsible. We could easily take the argument down the lines of other ‘authorities’ who have attempted population engineering; the Nazis, for instance; but in some ways it is good that he has come out with this garbage. It blows the gaff on the whole thing and demonstrates that control is the objective.

You see, Mr Porritt, reproduction is not something that man has developed; a freedom that he has laboured for, like travel. Like all animals, man’s two most basic instincts are to feed, and to reproduce in order to maintain the species. Any attempt, by any authority, to interfere with this is sinister in the extreme.

Where will these future generations; for whom we are told we must protect the environment; come from? Mr Porritt, like most of his ilk, gives me the impression that he loves the world but hates people.

The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Liam Donaldson, is to announce today that guidelines allowing children from the age of 5 to 15 to drink alcohol in the home, and under parental supervision, are wrong. His position will be that the years up to the age of 15 should be totally alcohol free, and the government will issue new guidelines based on this.

This is tosh for several reasons . We have known for many years that the French approach, in which alcohol is introduced gradually by parents, by means of watered down wine, is much more effective in training children to have a sensible approach as they grow into adulthood. How will Donaldson’s approach enable children to handle the inevitable peer pressure to drink outside the home? My belief is that it will make it all the more attractive for them to do so.

And how is it to be enforced? Will squads of parental supervision police batter down front doors at mealtimes to haul in offenders?

Of course, parental supervision is not an absolute concept, and it ranges in quality from superb to almost non-existent. But the top and bottom of all this is that it will be yet another excuse for the government to control us. Big Brother is absolutely relentless.

Make the most of it; it’s not often that the BBC gets it right. Of course they would be guilty of not showing impartiality if they were to do anything else. 

There has been a big hue and cry over the last few days about the refusal of the BBC, and now Sky News, to broadcast an appeal for contributions to a fund to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian victims of the fighting in Gaza. The BBC, for once, is right, and the publicity that this matter has received has served to promote the fund at least as well as would a 5 minute appeal.

Let there be a fund for all victims, whichever side of the border, and let Iran, who supply the rockets which initiated the conflict, make the first contribution.

The royal racism row has escalated with the revelation that Prince Charles addresses an Asian fellow member of the Cirencester polo team by the affectionate nickname ‘Sooty’. Give me strength!

The nickname by which Sooty addresses His Royal Highness is not reported. Might it be ‘Big Ears’?

Environmentalists are the new Luddites. There, I’ve said it. There is no concensus, amongst those who truly understand these things, that any climate change is taking place that we have any power to influence.

And yet we allow ourselves to be constantly hectored by all manner of groups seeking to modify our behaviour in order to conform with their particular views of the way that life should be lived. Our freedoms are anathema to them, and their biggest disappointment is that we are permitted the most important freedom of all - the freedom to travel.

I will return to this issue frequently, but the relevant news today is the purchase, by Greenpeace, of a piece of land which would be needed for the building of Heathrow’s third runway, effectively given the go-ahead by the government yesterday. They have sold parcels of this land to various people, including well known aviation experts Emma Thompson and Alastair McGowan, believing that this will make the compulsory purchase of the necessary land more difficult when the time comes.

Mr McGowan destroyed the case for a third runway with his perceptive and incisive analysis - ‘Heathrow already has a decent sized airport, so why do we need another runway?’

Fortunately, the latest planning laws mean that the pathetic efforts of those who would hold back progress are doomed to failure.

Prince Harry was foolish to call his friend a ‘Paki’ whilst he was being filmed, but that is the end of it. The fact that the term has been used by thugs who have committed racist violence does not make everyone who uses it a racist. Should we outlaw the use of the word ‘Jew’ on the same grounds? ‘Pommy’, ‘Limey, ‘Brit’, ‘Yank’, ‘Ozzie’, Jock’, ‘Taffy’; they all have a derogatory element to them.

Racism is an industry which involves the politically correct brigade turning trivial incidents into major issues and thereby creating conflict.  Prince Harry is a man who has put his life on the line for his country, and meant absolutely no offence. It seems that no offence was taken, but that is not enough for the professionally precious.

They should get a life. Even if we were insulting each other - better that than killing each other.

The word on the street is that the Tory leader is contemplating bringing Kenneth Clarke back into the shadow cabinet, despite being urged not to by many of his colleagues, who question the former Chancellor’s loyalty to the present leadership.

The most surprising thing about the whole affair is that Clarke would want to be associated with this nondescript band of second rate fops, when the party three times rejected him as leader and chose a much lesser man instead. From Cameron’s point of view, what is there to lose? The government is presiding over debacles in every sphere of public life and would be in total disarray were it not for the paucity of Her Majesty’s Opposition. The return to the political arena of a man with robust views, who is not afraid to express them, would surely benefit us all.

Dare we hope that it might bring a proper focus on the steady erosion of civil liberties which has been taking place almost since the Labour government took office? Can so few of us see that it is but a short step from the introduction of ID cards to a requirement that they are carried at all times, and produced at the whim of every petty official who struts the streets to enforce the PC brigades latest silly policy? Are we really going to accept the move to require that copies are kept of every email, without even a whimper?

Bring back Kenneth Clarke. At least he’ll give them a run for their money.

I hope that you are as unsurprised as I am to learn that the Disunited Nations resolution, calling for a ceasefire, has been rejected by both sides. I hold no brief for either; I have dear friends in both communities; but beg leave to point out that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and Israel the only democratic state in the region.

There is a great deal of cant spouted about the plight of the Palestinians, and there is no doubt that they have to live in conditions which we would find absolutely intolerable. They should, however, look to their own leadership when seeking someone to blame. The state of Israel has existed for roughly the same length of time as myself, and during my adult life there have been two occasions on which it has been invaded by the neighbours that surround it with the intention of wiping it from the face of the map. Had it not been ready to defend itself, and done so very effectively, it would have been consigned to history long ago, and it has limited territorial acquisitions to those that it considered necessary to defend its borders.

It is little wonder that Israeli governments accord such a high priority to the defence of the state and the protection of the people. Persuade Hamas to stop firing 80 rockets a day at Israeli towns and then complain to me if Israel continue the fighting.