Roger scruton

  January My 2018 ended with a hate storm, in response to my appointment as chair of the government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. But the new year brings a lull, and I hope and pray that the Grand Inquisitor enthroned by social media will find another target. February The 27th is my 75th birthday, and as it happens the last Wednesday meet of foxhounds for the season. We host the meet and celebrate with our neighbours. Despite my wife Sophie’s protests, I maintain my resolve to give up hunting at 75, counting again the broken bones, sprains and muscular disorders acquired over 35 years in the saddle, or, rather, out of it. On my last hunt, I am glad to say, I stay in the saddle all day.

Two considerable injustices were undone this week. The first was the reinstatement of Sir Roger Scruton to the government’s ‘Building better, building beautiful’ commission. The second was the prosecution of Carl Beech for fraud and perverting the course of justice. The cases may be very far apart in their details, but their origins lie in precisely the same contemporary malady. Scruton was sacked from his unpaid position in April. The root cause was a doctored and false interview carried out by George Eaton. The New Statesman subsequently apologised for misleading its readers.

Roger Scruton has been reappointed as head of a government housing body after he was sacked in April following a magazine interview in which his views were misrepresented. The letter from housing secretary James Brokenshire, who fired Scruton, is published below: Dear Sir Roger, Thank you so much for our conversation about the next steps on the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.  As we both recognise, the publication of the Commission’s Interim Report provides an opportunity to consider next steps in finalising recommendations to Government to promote quality and beauty in the built environment.

James Brokenshire has apologised to Roger Scruton for sacking him as a government housing adviser. Here is the full text of James Brokenshire's apology: Dear Sir Roger, As you will be aware, the interim report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission is due to be published today. I wanted to take this moment to thank you for the significant contribution you have made in helping to bring this about and for your leadership in promoting beauty in the built environment. I believe the Interim Report maintains the intellectual underpinning which you set out through your work with the Commission and provides a strong platform from which further work can now continue as we look towards the final recommendations.

The New Statesman has apologised to Sir Roger Scruton. In a statement published on its website, the magazine has admitted that in April this year its deputy editor, George Eaton, tweeted out ‘partial quotations’ from an interview with the philosopher ‘including a truncated version’ of a quotation. The New Statesman has further admitted that the effect of this quote-tampering was that: The views of Professor Scruton were not accurately represented in the tweets to his disadvantage.  We apologise for this, and regret any distress that this has caused Sir Roger. It is good of the New Statesman to finally admit what any fair observer has known for months.

New York   Here’s a question for you: if your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, toy boy even, lied repeatedly to you about a serious matter such as fidelity, would you continue to trust them? I suppose some fools would, but most wouldn’t. So here’s another question: how can the British people even countenance voting for those they entrusted with implementing their 2016 decision to leave the bureaucratic dictatorship that is the EU? Duh! Actually, I’d be in the UK by now and trying to stir things up, but I’m stuck in the Bagel with pneumonia, bronchitis, and all sorts of other bugs that caught up with me while in pursuit of the high life.

What does it mean to be a conservative? Last night, The Spectator brought together Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton to discuss that question. Here is the full transcript of their conversation: Douglas Murray: Some months ago, The Spectator said to me that they would like me to do an event and who would I like to do it with. And I said I'm very used to doing events with my enemies and spend rather too much time with them and would like to spend the evening with a friend. And they said: anyone in particular? And I said first choice, Roger Scruton. And a lot of things have happened since we agreed to get together with you all. Sir Roger and I have known each other for almost 20 years now.

Roger Scruton has appeared on the Today programme to discuss the interview that got him fired. Here is the full transcript and recording of his conversation with Justin Webb: RS: I don't think I spoke intemperately. I speak as I speak and I discuss things as they are presented to me, according to my vision of them. But you know obviously the way in which it was presented in the New Statesman was such as to cause some kind of scandal. JW: At one stage, George Eaton, well he tweeted these words that he ascribed to you, 'each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing'. Let's listen to the context of that: There are difficulties around the corner that we are ignoring like the rise of China.

Sometimes a scandal is not just a scandal, but a biopsy of a society. So it is with the assault on Sir Roger Scruton, who in recent weeks has been smeared in the media, fired by the government and had his life’s work assailed. Scruton is the latest, though far from the first victim of the modern outrage mob. It is now four years since the Nobel prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt was fired by University College London (among other institutions who were lucky to have him). That happened after one member of the audience at a conference in Korea tweeted something he had said about working with women and professed outrage at the comment’s alleged sexism. None of the institutions which dropped Hunt asked if there was any case for the defence.

In American law there is a concept called ‘the fruit of the poison tree’ which means that if the source of some alleged evidence is rotten, or has been wrongfully obtained, then everything coming from it is also recognised as tainted. After this past week I would suggest a similar concept enters the lexicon in British journalism. Perhaps we might call it ‘the fruit of the Eaton mess’. I refer of course to the ‘interview’ with Sir Roger Scruton that George Eaton – deputy editor of the New Statesman – published last week. The interview led not only to Scruton’s firing from an unpaid government-appointed position, but to a set of excruciatingly inaccurate pieces in the rest of the media.

I recently gave an interview to the New Statesman, on the assumption that, as the magazine’s former wine critic I would be treated with respect, and that the journalist, George Eaton, was sincere in wanting to talk to me about my intellectual life. Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings. Here is my brief response to an unscrupulous collection of out of context remarks, some of them merely words designed to accuse me of thought-crimes, and to persuade the government that I am not fit to be chairman of the commission recently entrusted to me.