Columns

They asked me how I knew/My true love was true.... Or so the song goes. But who were they, and why did they ask anyway? They don't appear very sympathetic - they with their sneering inquiries about how I knew my love was true. Are they the same They as the They who don't know It's the end of the world (It ended when you said goodbye)? They pop up not only in song but all over the place in English discourse. They sound like a bossy and snooty crowd of know-it-alls. They are well placed. They are in touch. They are in the loop. They can make waves. They are depressingly indifferent to our fate. They push us around. They talk behind our backs. They don't understand how we feel. Who do they think they are? When will they ever learn?/When will they ever learn?

There has been another huge rise in the numbers of those seeking asylum in this country. That the figure for the last quarter is 20 per cent higher than for the equivalent period in the preceding year is disturbing enough. That it is 11 per cent higher than the preceding quarter suggests that the rate of increase is itself accelerating. When an important topic returns to the news, a columnist may choose between repeating himself and contradicting himself. I see no case for contradicting myself. Twice now for the Times I have written that what is most worrying about rises in the numbers of asylum-seekers is not that some are abusing the system but that many are not; and there are hundreds of millions more where they came from.

Compared with the woes besetting our own royal family, the problems faced by the Swazi monarchy in adapting to the 21st century are minor. King Mswati III has just chosen his tenth wife. The wedding will not affect his marriage to the existing nine. There may be lessons here for Prince Charles. I have recently returned from a short visit to Swaziland, where I was educated as a boy. The country is about the size of Wales. Hilly, fertile and well-watered, and landlocked between the top right-hand corner of South Africa and the bottom left of Mozambique, this sweet and peaceful little place is unusual for being more or less conterminous with the modern homeland of a single tribe.

This is a reflection on boys and fathers. It may be different for girls. See what you think. Is ours the first generation, or the first for a long time, when boys know more than their fathers? I am not speaking of wisdom, whatever that may be. The older generation will always believe it possesses greater wisdom than the young. Knowledge that comes from emotional experience, perspective that comes from having seen it all before, can only be taught by time. Despite the bravado of youth, children dimly sense that, and will in every age. But do not exaggerate the automaticity of a boy's assumption that in the big, abstract questions of life his dad knows best.

In Manchester, a friend at university there tells me, a new word has entered smart parlance among the young. The word is 'raped'. The expression is moderately strong, and casual. It is a way of saying that one has in some way been done over, done for, or done in. 'I was completely raped,' a cool young Mancunian might remark, emerging from an examination in which the questions had proved impossible; or on discovering that something he had just bought was on sale much more cheaply elsewhere. My friend added that some women were complaining that to use a word like this so lightly was offensive, as if rape could ever be equated with everyday problems or setbacks. I see their point.