Any other business

The decisive culture war of the 21st century is likely to be between the Darwinian fundamentalists and those who believe in God and the significance of human life. It will be prolonged and bitter. Culture wars do not usually end in bloodshed but they break hearts and minds and bring terrible sufferings to the losers (and to many of the winners too). Most observers today would put their money on the Darwinians. They already control the universities of the West, or at least their science departments, and persecute with ferocity any who deviate from their narrow orthodoxies. Such heretical scholars — whatever their qualifications or the strength of their arguments — are simply labelled ‘creationists’ and dismissed or barred from academic posts.

To be watching the last days of poor old Rover is to intrude on canine grief. A wise vet would have put this dog down long ago. I was asking only last week when Rover would go under: after the election? Some means could surely be found, after all those years on and off life support, to make the patient hold on until Friday 6 May. The Prime Minister must have thought so too. Had he not sent John Prescott and then Gordon Brown all the way to China, to coax Shanghai Automotive into giving the dog a good home? Had he not himself picked up the telephone to exercise his powers of persuasion on China’s President? Could anything have gone wrong in translation? He was on his way to Rome for the Pope’s funeral when, with four Fridays still to go, Rover keeled over.

The passing of a great pope promotes thoughts about goodness, and what constitutes it. What is goodness? And, for that matter, what is good itself? Joseph Addison was quite clear: ‘Music is the greatest good that mortals know.’ But among the greatest evils of our time, I would put pop music, its idols, its drugs and its diabolic possession of tender susceptible youth high on the list, certainly among the top ten. Edmund Burke was equally sure: ‘Good order is the foundation of all good things.’ That is arguable, anyway, though most dictators would support it ex officio. And all good things? Surely not. Most poetry, art and literature spring from disorder. Art is itself an ordering process.

The trouble with a referendum, as Kenneth Clarke noted, is that people do not always answer the question you ask them. You want to know if they favour a bimetallistic approach to the currency, and they say ‘Throw the rascals out.’ Something of the sort may be happening to Jacques Chirac. He had the French all geared up to vote for Europe’s new constitution, the polls are now running against him, but it may be that the voters have tired of a President who keeps flying off to Japan to watch the sumo wrestling. Even so, a Non vote next month would halt the constitution in its tracks, and would not say much for Europe’s confidence in its structures, current and proposed. Last month another structure came apart.

This is where I came in. Another Gordon Brown budget: how well we know them by now — the thumping delivery, the gabbled numbers, the loopholes closed and opened, so many initiatives, so much complexity, so many popular causes. British films, British science, children’s centres, cars propelled by fuel made from processed hen-droppings — are they all there this year? (Yes.) Are these the same schemes as last year’s? (Quite likely.) By now some of his audience must think that this is what budgets are like. They can never have seen or heard anyone else’s. Old hands have learnt to listen for the gaps between the sentences. What has he somehow forgotten to mention? What low ball has he saved up for the small print of an Inland Revenue notice?

Like many journalists, I can write anywhere and under any conditions. I honestly believe I could do an article in the middle of the street provided there was somebody to fend off the traffic. Certainly I could manage on the rim of Alfred Gilbert’s delightful Eros fountain in Piccadilly Circus. More impressive, to my mind, is Mozart’s ability to write bits of a violin concerto while playing a game of billiards. He wrote all five of his admirable exercises in this genre during a single summer, aged 19. While his opponent clicked off a long cannon he had time to jot down an entire cadenza. Rossini was, if anything, even more hard-boiled. I believe he composed his admirable aria ‘Di tanti palpiti’ in Tancredi during the time it took a saucepan of rice to boil.

It may not be too late for me to bid for the Stock Exchange. Open season has now been declared, Deutsche Borse (Frankfurt) and Euronext (Paris and Amsterdam) are manoeuvring for position, and there must be room for one more contender. I could even offer to save the Exchange for the nation, though not exactly in its present form. When it was a club it belonged to its members, who used its services for exchanging stock. In those days it had a monopoly, but competition has broken in and the Exchange has lost ground. I would offer to sell its stock-exchanging business to a consortium of its customers. No one, so far, has asked them what they want, but they might know at least as well as the Exchange’s highly paid management, large board and fly-by-night shareholders.

Government continues drive for better, more efficiently organised public servicesIn a guidance pack sent out today to Leaders and Chief Executives of all local authorities in England, the government outlines how local authorities will measure and report efficiency gains they have achieved by means of a three-stage self-assessment process. This method has been determined following consultation with a group of local authorities and organisations including the Audit Commission, Local Government Association and INLOGOV of the University of Birmingham. The pack offers guidance on how change agents such as the Regional Centres of Excellence will support local authorities in delivering efficiency gains.