Charles Moore

The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay. The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay. And a good thing too, in the circumstances. But it is fascinating how little protest there has been from the people who are usually noisiest about any infringements of international law, and of human rights as currently interpreted. This must be because the perpetrator is Barack Obama. He has behaved exactly as George W.

The coalition wants to change the ‘discriminatory’ law of succession and allow any first-born daughter to ascend to the throne. The coalition wants to change the ‘discriminatory’ law of succession and allow any first-born daughter to ascend to the throne. People witlessly nod their heads at the idea that male primogeniture is an ‘anachronism’. Mr Murdoch’s Sunday Times has decided that such a change would be ‘a perfect wedding present’ for Prince William and Kate Middleton. I think they’d prefer an electric toaster. Why, after all, is primogeniture itself not an anachronism? Why is succession by blood allowed at all? Once you start asking these questions, it is hard to stop; that is what republicans intend.

The justification for banning the burqa and the niqab in France surely has nothing to do with the French ‘separation of Church and State’. The justification for banning the burqa and the niqab in France surely has nothing to do with the French ‘separation of Church and State’. If it is justified — I would rather hesitantly argue that it is — it is solely because the veil hides identity. Common citizenship involves trust, and trust cannot exist where one cannot see people’s faces in public. Obviously there can be necessary functional reasons for concealment — surgical masks, beekeepers’ helmets, extremes of cold — but concealment in normal circumstances in an open society amounts to a hostile act.

There is a school of thought which argues that President Obama’s reluctance to lead over Libya is a brilliant piece of presentation. There is a school of thought which argues that President Obama’s reluctance to lead over Libya is a brilliant piece of presentation. He wisely does not wish to be seen to attack yet another Muslim nation, the argument goes, but he will, in fact, do what is necessary. There is certainly sense in an American president being asked by others to help, rather than the other way round. But there are two problems. The first is that the ‘backwards into bed’ theory is not true.

‘You can be young, optimistic and oppose AV’, says the magazine spiked. ‘You can be young, optimistic and oppose AV’, says the magazine spiked. I am sorry to hear it, because we anti-AV people were hoping not to be pestered by any young, optimistic people, but to oppose change in an elderly, unthinking and sullen manner. ‘Non tali auxilio!’, we cry, confident that young, optimistic people will not know what we mean. But one might feel more optimistic if one could have referendums on subjects for which there is real popular demand. The AV vote is so obviously and solely the result of a treaty between politicians that it just isn’t reasonable to ask the rest of us to interest ourselves in the details of the matter.

In common with, I suspect, many of those writing most censoriously about it all, I have no idea whether the Duke of York has done anything wrong. So far, the charges against him are that he is friendly with a convicted sex offender, and that he has met Saif Gaddafi and given lunch to the son-in-law of the then president of Tunisia. The first accusation proves nothing against him, but the newspapers are trying to hint, without stating evidence, that the Prince himself may have committed sexual offences. The other accusations prove even less: the Duke is this country’s informal trade ambassador, and he met people with whom the British government happily did business, so he was performing his official role.

In Jerusalem last week to interview the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, I noticed several changes since my last visit 15 years ago. The first is that Israel is now quite rich. It even has its own gas and shale oil, prompting Netanyahu to tell me that he is being forced to revise his view that Moses, for all his heroic virtues, had been a ‘bad navigator’ in finding the only place in the Middle East with no natural resources. Israel used to be socialist — democratic, of course, but almost Soviet in its collectivist austerity. Today, the annual growth rate is nearly 8 per cent, even the West Bank looks smarter, and the wine, which used to be undrinkable and served in thimbles, is delicious. But the precariousness never goes away for long.

The National Health Service has now lived almost long enough to test its claim of full treatment ‘from cradle to grave’. The National Health Service has now lived almost long enough to test its claim of full treatment ‘from cradle to grave’. Certainly most of those now dying under its care have paid taxes for it throughout their working lives, in the name of this proposition. Now we hear from the Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, that it frequently neglects old people, often to the extent of killing them. Why does this surprise anyone? It is in the nature of a service which forbids genuine choice to patients that it will end up suiting the convenience of those who work in it rather than meeting the needs of the sick.

To interview people for my biography of Lady Thatcher, I often go the House of Lords, where many of the best witnesses lurk. Recently, the place has become so crowded that queues form at the Peers’ Entrance and mobs of petitioners are kettled beside the coat-racks. The reason is that New Labour created more peers than any government since Lloyd George, so the coalition felt it had to balance the numbers. As controversial legislation, such as the Alternative Vote referendum, is debated, three-line whips have become frequent. This week, we had the great sleep-in. The place is an ermine slum. Now reformers are saying that it is disgraceful that some peers do not attend the House much. But why should they?

Last year, we stopped sending Christmas cards. We are not sending them this year either. I still feel guilty about it: friends take the trouble to send such nice ones. Part of the problem — as well as laziness — is technology. Emails make one extremely conscious of the number of separate operations required by ‘snail mail’. You need the card (whose choice is also a complicated matter), the envelope, the addresses, the stamp, the pen, the post box, and the energy to write your name hundreds of times. This all seemed worthwhile when one had confidence in the postal system.

Kenneth Clarke’s reform of prisons is an example of the target culture which the coalition says it wants to stop. Kenneth Clarke’s reform of prisons is an example of the target culture which the coalition says it wants to stop. His target is to reduce the prison population by 3,000 by 2015. Since the projected increase in the population (absent the new policy) is somewhere between 2,000 and 7,000, this will be a very hard target to hit. It is therefore almost inevitable that people will be kept out of or released from prison for bad reasons. As soon as the public sense this, they will lose confidence in the policy.