Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, stands explicitly in the tradition of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum 135 years ago. Both seek to uphold the dignity of human work in the age of the machine. The present Leo warns eloquently against building the Tower of Babel rather than, like Nehemiah, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem by cooperation. He does not, however, engage fully with the discussion of what AI – and particularly AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) – might be. The Pope proposes his ‘civilisation of love’, but the promoters of AGI themselves claim to be conducting ‘a civilisation experiment’. If AGI can discern patterns in an infinity of data which the human mind cannot, will it produce a new understanding of nature, a theory of everything? If so, is humanity itself redundant? ‘Why God man?’ asked Anselm. AGI might reply: ‘Why either?’
People want devolution because it brings power nearer to them. That is hard to argue with. But the Peter Murrell case shows that devolution makes corruption likelier. In Westminster, it would have been impossible to get away with so much for so long. MPs are not ethically superior to Scottish MSPs. It is just that, in Westminster’s intensely competitive political and media atmosphere, Murrell-like behaviour could not escape notice. Think of the relatively minor corruption of Sir Keir Starmer and colleagues by Lord Alli’s suits and wellington boots. This was exposed almost immediately after Labour’s massive 2024 election victory. Public support was at its peak, yet Labour lacked the power to suppress the story. In Scotland, which the SNP have governed for 19 continuous years, few dared challenge the husband-and-wife combination which ran both party and country. Devolution confers political prizes on the leader who screws the most money out of the UK government. Voters are reluctant to notice it sticking to some of the politicians’ fingers in the process.
It does look as if the judge in the Southampton rape case was more interested in the rehabilitation of the boy offenders than the feelings of the girl victims. No one explained, however, why a custodial sentence would have made such boys less likely to commit rape. The company they would keep in custody would probably confirm their criminal tendencies. How grateful one feels for not being a judge and therefore not having to decide such a question. If you want to move beyond polemic on the subject, go to Inter Alia, which has moved from the National Theatre to Wyndham’s. It is about a female judge (Rosamund Pike) whose young son is accused of rape. The whole thing could so easily have become didactic. Indeed, the opening scene seems at first to be an arrogant lecture by the confident, bewigged judge who is proudly defeating the patriarchy. The play could have ended vindicating approved modern doctrine. Certainly, such doctrine is not rejected. But what goes on is so much more – a play in which the mother must perform a sort of judgment of Solomon upon herself. Pike, in her astonishing performance, makes her dilemma real. In the packed house, one could hear gasps and sudden intakes of breath, particularly from women whose sons are teenagers. The absolute dominance of Pike, so physically inventive and funny as well as so emotionally powerful, reminds me of the triumph of Mark Rylance in Jerusalem a few years ago. This is what only theatre can do.
Now and again, essentially the same item appears on the BBC Today programme in the same, completely predictable form. It happened again this Tuesday. The correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, says that the wicked gamekeepers of wicked landowners are illegally killing birds of prey. Such cases do exist, but the lurid statistics given tend to rest on corpses found ‘on or near’ moors rather than significant numbers of crimes proved against anyone. The story is always supplied by the RSPB and is accepted uncritically. It usually has a political purpose – in this case, the alleged need to impose licensing on ‘game estates’. Would Today ever treat with such a reverence a story coming from, say, the CLA, about how reintroducing sea eagles tends to push out golden eagles, or how wind turbines slice up birds (a golden eagle was cut in two in Galloway recently)? One never hears the BBC hold up wicked wind-turbine owners for public opprobrium.
Heathfield Agricultural Show, near us in Sussex, is always a treat, being genuinely rural rather than just ‘lifestyle’, but is usually fiercely cold. High and exposed to the wind on open slopes, it previously convinced me that T.S. Eliot should have declared May, not April, the cruellest month. This year, however, it was suddenly perfect summer. As a result, we lingered by the outdoor shows rather than cowering under canvas. One such was ferret-racing. As a spectator sport, it lacks drama. Lots of children volunteer to disappear into long, narrow tunnels to be chased out of them by ferrets. But the introduction by the ferret-master, a pony-tailed man from the Black Country, was proper history. We quickly learnt that the Romans introduced the rabbit – cuniculus and hence, eventually, coneys – to our shores when they invaded. We also learnt that the later word ‘rabbit’ originally applied only to the creature in the first 12 months of life, after which he became a coney. The distinction is the same, said the ferret-master, as that between lamb and mutton. Anyway, polecats were good at catching coneys, and from them a specialised breed, ferrets, were developed to keep households clear of rats and mice. They secrete a vile smell, however, and so, over the centuries, cats coming from the east gradually took their jobs. According to our learned compere, the word ‘ferret’ derives from the Latin furs, meaning a thief (which survives in the word ‘furtive’), a libel of these likeable animals. We bought a gallon of Devon dry cider and went home better educated.
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