Research and Enlightenment

2005-12-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

From this bastion of unbelief and decadence, a very merry Christmas to all of my enormous readership! I am now esconced in my family residence in the rolling hills of the Borders. I Went to Midnight Mass last night (i.e. this morning). How droll and boring. I can see why the congregation is reducing in number. I wished I'd had a bit of Dutch courage and taken over from the priest - such was the overwhelming drollness of the Mass. I mean, who preaches a pre-prepared sermon that he's found on the internet. And all of that silly Popish ritual - kneeling before entering the pew, making the sign of the cross, incense - how can people take it seriously?!

I've cracked it. I know why Catholics are the filthiest, naughtiest denomination of Christendom. It's all of that ridiculous ritual. I mean, if you had to maintain the pretence of doing all the signs, the rosary beads, etc., of course you'd get bored and start fantasizing about the choirboys or Mrs. Jones and her daughters in the pew 2nd from front.

To appeal to the decadent masses of Europe, Christianity must be stripped of superfluous ceremony. We must remove the rituals and costumes. And in Europe in particular, we must brace ourselves for the onslaught of radical Islam. I don't think it's a huge stretch of the imagination to think about congregations gathering in secret while the civil war is in full swing. Myra Hess playing piano in the National Gallery while the blitz was raging; same kind of thing. Instead of Catholic priests sneaking away into hidey-holes in country houses, this time Christians of all denominations will be under duress.

The United States will be the last redoubt of the Christian faith, unless events take a sudden change of course, and soon.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and let us hope that our politicians regain their senses, or perhaps that a great man rises from nowhere to confound them all.

2005-12-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

What hope for true conservatism in Britain?

It may have escaped the attention of American readers that this man, David Cameron, has just been elected leader of the British Conservative Party. If it has, don't worry, it matters not a jot.

As it says on the BBC website, David Cameron is an Old Etonian and an alumnus of Brasenose College, Oxford. According to the BBC, his tutor at Oxford, Prof. Vernon Bogdanor, describes his views as "moderate and sensible conservative". Could there possibly be a less suitable candidate for a conservative revival?

"Moderate and sensible" is codespeak for "wet". What Prof. Bogdanor is saying is that Cameron is not the sort of chap who intends to rock the boat. He doesn't have any zeal for genuine reform. He's a nice, sensible, middle of the road ordinary guy just like you and me who happens to be vexed and goaded by some of life's petty annoyances - high taxes, public sector inefficiency etc. that he's decided to be a public-spirited individual and try in his own small way to sort things out. Never mind the bigger picture - Islamic extremism on the march, the loss of British sovereignty to "Europe", the growing problem of an uneducated, violent underclass, the loss of social cohesion.

The Tories, despite all the rhetoric they can muster, have been beaten so often and so comprehensively by the media that they've developed a sort of cuckold-husband syndrome. The more they are hurt by media caricatures - too white, too male, too middle-class, etc. - the more they prostrate themselves before their tormentors and the more concessions they offer in a desperate attempt to dispell some of the "nasty party" myths.

Though I realise that every man and his dog has a theory about what the Tories need to do to win power, let me explain what we need to happen, not necessarily for a revival of the Conservative party, but for a revival of conservatism in Britain.

Two things are required:

A free market in televisual media. The majority of people in this country get their news from the BBC (ostensibly impartial but well to the left of centre), ITV (soft left but vacuous and devoid of hard content) and Channel 4 (explicitly left wing). Hence, no surprise that the Conservatives have trouble getting impartial or favourable coverage on TV. However, if one looks at the political inclinations of the printed media, there are plenty of right-of-centre papers - the Telegraph, the Mail, the Express, the Sun. There would undoubtedly be a market for a conservative news and documentary channel, perhaps along the lines of Fox News. The Tories need to realise that they can NEVER expect fair treatment from the MSM, and that the best approach is to fight the cultural hegemony.
Pick a candidate who isn't as damned boring as Cameron. I'm not asking for a Barry Goldwater, just someone with a bit of steel in them. Someone in the mould of a Reagan or a Thatcher. My concern now is that the post-Thatcher transformation of the Tories has put off true conservatives from trying to join the ranks of the Parliamentary party. If all the Tories can get excited about is a few pennies off the tax here and some public sector reform there, then those people whose lives are blighted by crime, who are concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism, who have enough common sense and a vantage point more suited to seeing the bigger picture will give the Tories the cold shoulder they deserve.

To sum up, the prospects for a conservative revival are slim. Not because such a revival is inherently impossible, but because of the naive and wrong-headed way the Tories are going about it. Day by day, the country slides towards civil disorder and societal breakdown. The man in the street feels that there's something wrong with this country and he can't quite tell what it is. Let us hope that true conservatives understand what is going on and persuade the public to vote for them. The alternative scenario, that of a new form of facism exploiting mass public discontent is a terrible one and would seem peculiarly inappropriate for this country, which played a pivotal role in the fight against the orginal form 60-odd years ago.

2005-11-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

BBC Action Network

I'm not sure whether anyone from one of those blogs which, like mine, take an interest in the BBC have commented on this in much detail, but I've discovered that the BBC website has an "Action Network" section. Hmmm.... Strange that a public broadcaster, which aims to be "impartial", to "inform, educate and entertain", should regard giving succour to a generation of do-gooder nimbys as one of it's aims. And, broadly speaking, nimbyism is essentially what the Action Network seems to be about. What doesn't fall under the heading of nimbyism can usually be categorised as platitudinous poseur politics - Cambridge Women in Black for example (a bunch of sanctimonious preening know-it-alls who get a kick out of displaying their collective moral conscience) or the frankly ridiculous - don't attempt to read the "windfarms kill birds" page with a mouth full of cereal.

Most amusing is the rules page. "We want Action Network to be challenging and provocative as well as safe, civil and constructive" says auntie. One wonders whether it's crossed their minds that being truly provocative and challenging quite often means putting safety to one side. (See the glut of articles about Ayaan Hirsi Ali over at LGF for a recent example of what being truly provocative and challenging is all about).

This is strikingly reminiscent of New Labour's "Big Conversation". It's a sort of half-baked attempt at letting people think their opinion has value [is "challenging and provocative"], but without the risk of it actually having any effect [i.e. making sure that it is "safe"]. Forgive the broad brush approach here, but doesn't history teach us that progress is only made when conventions and beliefs are challenged, and that quite often brings about violent confrontations. Would America be an independent country without having fought for its independence? Would we have freedom of expression without brave men having challenged the authority of the Church?

2005-11-25T22:48:00.000-08:00

George Best and the fate of modern Britain

As almost every British person, football fan or not, will be aware, George Best, the Manchester United legend died today in hospital. He had suffered multiple organ failure, a consequence of decades of heavy drinking. Of course, given his high profile and the numerous scandals that have surrounded him down the years (cheating, divorce, alcoholism etc.), his predicament was naturally the subject of much media interest and speculation. Watching the front page of BBC news for the last day or so, one might be forgiven for thinking that the media trendies of Shepherd's Bush were trying to portray Best's final hours as some sort of tragic drama. I was hoping that our media classes would have grown tired of the urge to inflate the death of any person thought to be popular, innocent, a man (or woman) of the people, into a dreadful tragedy of such intensity that ordinary people, swept along by the atmosphere created by the media, will take to the streets with flowers and weep together in public. However, it seems that the hysteria of September 1997 still lingers in their collective memory and they couldn't resist attempting a spot of grief-mongering.

Born in 1946 in Belfast, George Best lived through the period of turmoil as Britain made the transition from a world power to a neutered vassal of the EU. Of course, it wasn't just the political structure of the country which changed during his time, the established social structure, the class system, the morals and mores changed too. As an aside, if you ever have the chance of listening to an upper-middle class man in, say, his 60's, compare his accent, with it's clear enunciation and surety of verbal touch to that of a young man of the same social class. You'll notice that the young man will often mumble his words and speak with much less of a tone of command than his father. The anti-establishment revolution has been of such power and scope, it has even corrupted and enervated the spoken word itself (it's now a rare pleasure to meet someone who pronounces their 't's.) Anyway, to return to the subject, this man lived through a period of great change in his country, and perhaps his story and the story of Britain since the war have a number of parallels.

Probably the two most interesting periods of his life from the perspective I describe above are the peak of his career in the 1960's and during the early 2000's when his alcoholism, marriage scandals and so on were all over the news. Back in the day, Best was a legendary player, both on and off the pitch. I recall watching a television programme where a teammate told how Best had 'had' 7 women in 24 hours, or something like that. As he said himself, "I spent 90% of my money on women, drink and fast cars. The rest I wasted." He lived a hedonistic lifestyle, and in that respect the only difference between him and present day Joe Bloggs is that Best indulged in his wild, self-destructive antics amidst a whirlwind of publicity and with a lot more money and style than the average man. But did the drinking, fast women and fast cars buy him happiness in the end? No. I think it's clear that, especially during his decline in the last few days, he himself realised that all the bravado about women and drink was really a sign that he was a man unhappy in his own skin. Moreover, he was deeply unhappy and caught in a vicious circle of despair, every latest press scandal causing a few days of introspection, then back to the boozing and shagging with renewed vigour, as if he thought that such activities would be a way out of the problem, in the short term at least.

His drinking and promiscuity, along with a vacuous and short-termist approach to life are now the norm for most of my contemporaries. I wonder if perhaps his predicament might cause a few enlightened individuals to stop and ponder whether we took a wrong turn in the 1960's when we adopted a more liberal approach to sex and drinking. Maybe when we reach his age and find ourselves still trapped in a teenage state of mind, perhaps rich in money, but without any close family bonds and feeling utterly spent and bereft of self-respect, maybe then we'll realise where we went wrong.

Modern British society is a bit like George Best. We're all stuck in a vicious circle of despair. Our tabloid press can't decide whether to be stern 1950's moralists (which they are fond of being, especially when a senior politcian is involved in a scandal) or to go with the flow and endorse the practice of libertinism as being the natural behaviour of enlightened individuals. But suppose a change of mind did occur. Suppose that real conservatives came to power and wanted to end the culture of nihilism and hedonism. How to get out of this vicious circle? How would it be possible to re-install, or re-instill those values which we have lost? Or perhaps the momentum of the cultural revolution still so great that any political efforts against it will be rendered futile and we will find ourselves destined for a similar fate to that of George Best.

2005-11-16T21:24:00.000-08:00

BBC Have your say: How should Britain be policed?

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=361&&&edition=1&ttl=20051116211949

The masses opine on how we should be policed. There's a wonderful contrast of opinions in evidence, but since the length of each comment is kept short, no one involved has the chance to develop a coherent argument. Hence we end up with a series of occasionally pithy, sometimes curt and mostly blunt statements, which can usually be put into a category that most people will already be familiar with. Allow me to list a few of them:

Civil libertarians: no to ID. Paranoid about Britain turning into a police state. I must declare some sympathy here. I recall reading an article by Theordore Dalrymple, where he desribed the police as being "at once menacing and ineffectual". The good doctor is absolutely spot on. To sumarize with a soundbite, it used to be the case that the police were nasty to the nasty people and nice to the nice people. They now seem to have got that the wrong way round. It's not surprising though - namby pamby human rights legislation means that the police treat the real thugs with kid gloves, whereas the nice people are subject to increased low level annoyance because of more speed cameras and a whole load of new and restrictive laws about what they can and can't do - drinking on public transport for instance.
Hang 'em and flog 'em: I have a certain sympathy for these people, I just wish they were more articulate. Naturally, the BBC and other elements of our political and media classes sweep aside the feelings of these people as the bigoted, backward attitudes of Daily Mail readers. Their rage at natural justice being flouted and the evildoers getting away with it is treated with contempt.
ACAB (All cops are bastards): The police, being a symbol of authority, are inherently distasteful to these people. They are evil; inside every copper there is a Nazi waiting to get out. We should reduce their power accordingly, to prevent 'discrimination'. One must remember though, that 'discrimination' is a rather nebulous phrase. Mostly applied to poor, working class, non-white people, it reflects a perceived grievance, not necessarily an actual one. "Palestine" is a case in point. Large numbers of self-loathing white liberals will take to the streets to shout their 'solidarity' with "Palestine", keen as they are to take the side of the downtrodden and aggrieved. No actual connection with the conflict is required for a person to develop strong feelings on Israel/Palestine (I suppose I'm an example of that, except I've taken the side of democracy rather than supporting a quasi-religious death cult). This is essentially a Hampstead liberal's way of keeping up with the Joneses; the long term consequences are beside the point - one must remember to always take the side of the oppressed - that way, one can guarantee that one's reputation among fellow members of the media and political cognoscenti will be safe.
If we let the police carry guns, then all criminals will arm themselves. "We don't want to become more like America where they're all shooting each other" they shriek. G*d help us if these naive bunch of middle-class know-it-alls continue to have their way. We used to be able to get away without armed police in England because of a strong sense of social cohesion, and because of a willingness on the part of ordinary members of the public to deal with transgressors and law-breakers directly. Now, the police tell us not to confront criminals but to ring them instead. That's the real reason why crime has increased. Less social cohesion, less public willingness to step in and directly confront criminals. An armed police force, willing to use lethal force when confronting criminals would be a start, but the ideal is surely for an assertive and armed citizenry, like in America.

2005-11-15T21:23:00.000-08:00

Corporate EVIL!

I know this is old news, but I couldn't resist highlighting this story. It encapsulates perfectly the contradiction central to the lives of many of the Notting Hill/Hampstead trend-setters.

Coldplay attack corporate evil:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4557877.stm

The hypocrisy is simply wonderful, I bet he pissed himself laughing when the story hit the papers. 'Just think, a load of fuckwit teenagers will go out and buy our records because they think we're really, like, ethical and down with the kids and expressing our solidarity with all the poor people of the world who are oppressed by nasty men in pinstriped suits'. I'm sure all the old buffers will guffaw with laughter when Chris tells them the story at the next Sherborne Old Boys' reunion!

2005-10-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

The malign influence of well-meaning, well-educated people

I'm back to posting again after an unplanned hiatus. Apologies to any "regular" readers, if there are any. I thought I'd take as this evening's subject the damage that can be created (wittingly or otherwise) by the well-educated, well-intentioned members of the intelligentsia in their role as paragons of virtue and advocates of "social justice".

I feel as though I'm blessed with choice; so many examples to pick from, where do I start? Perhaps I might begin with teachers.

My job has recently brought me into contact with the British education system through a school-industry link scheme type thing (I won't mention which one exactly as it's not relevant). I thought that after 13 years of school and 4 of university I'd be done with education now, but it's not so. Anyway, it's been an education, if you'll pardon the terrible pun, to experience life inside a London comprehensive.

There was, as one might expect, the hubbub of activity, shrieking and squealing that there always has been in the corridors and playgrounds. What really struck home though, were the sullen, defeated, tired faces of the teachers. Some of the older ones had the look of a clapped out alcoholic about them. There was no evidence anywhere of respect for authority. The teachers' faces said it all. Well-intentioned souls most of them, but hopelessly naive about the need for them to exert authority over their charges. Why, oh why, do I waste my time with these kids? Why don't they want to learn? Why do they make every effort to belittle me and make my life a misery? Naivety abounds, and it has not yet been challenged.

The teachers are their own victims. Well-meaning, well-educated teachers were at the forefront of encouraging the changes in schools which have done so much to weaken discipline (and thereby reduce the ability of teachers to teach uninterrupted).

I do hope that there are some thinkers out there in the teaching profession who are sceptical about modern teaching methods, and I hope that they are young teachers rather than old crusties. How refreshing it would be if a few young teachers had the courage to blast away the self-delusion and state the unutterable truth about modern schools.

To finish, have a look at this. I'm really going to miss the Duke of Edinburgh when he's gone. He can really hit the nail on the head now and then:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4355696.stm

2005-10-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

Why do the losers keep winning?

Several bloggers have already passed comment on a recent BBC poll which formed part of the "who runs your world?" season.

The aim was to pick a fantasy XI to run the world, from a selection of "thinkers", "poiticians", "economists" and "wildcards" - i.e. people who don't fit into the first three categories. Why the inverted commas? Well, I know it's a wee bit pedantic, but I certainly wouldn't describe Richard Branson as an economist. And similarly, there are some people who I would not even have considered to be "thinkers" or "politicians".

Anyway, back to the point. The concept of the global "election" and the list of eligible candidates provides a textbook example of the institutionalized mode of thought which now prevails in the BBC, and in most universities.

First, let's take the very concept of the "who runs your world" season. A season of programmes, so titled, might sound like an interesting exploration of, say, the relationshipsbetween church, state and individual in various countries throughout the world. However, even if one were to adumbrate the concept in very vague terms, it's obvious that it's a sitting duck for any anti-capitalist hack with a right-on socialist agenda to push. And, lo and behold, the BBC, which normally has a bit of a soft spot for soft furry creatures has got a bit too excited, whipped out the 12-bore and blasted away at the sitting duck with a gusto that would make even the Duke of Edinburgh feel a tad uneasy. The essential, but unstated idea of this season of programmes seems to be to promote the Beeb's socialist agenda. Have a look at the list of programmes here. I'll provide a few programme titles just to whet your appetite:

WRYW: The Interview - Are corporations dangerous?
Who Runs Your World? Live in Washington - Does the US run the world?
Meeting Ameria's religious right - The power of the Christian religious right in the US

I'm half surprised they didn't go the whole hog, rope in the likes of Tam Dalyell and George Galloway, get a few anti-capitalist NGO's on board, a bit of further publicity from Ken Livingstone and give us a great big taxpayer-funded Jew-bashing, anti-capitalist jamboree. Just imagine it. That avuncular sage, the Viscount Stansgate, giving a "fireside chat" evening broadcast on Radio 4 about the "oppression" of the people of the "occupied territories", followed by a poetry reading from Tom Paulin before bedtime. Then wake up next morning and it's a news report from the "occupied territories" by Orla bin-Guerin on the Today programme. Given such an abundance of eager Jew-bashers, Christian-bashers and anti-American conspiracy theorists, the BBC rather missed an opportunity.

So, if you'll excuse my digression, the first point to note is that the concept of the series of programmes makes them very vulnerable to having a good deal of spin put on them by people with an agenda.

Secondly, the list of eligible candidates reads like a who's who of the moonbat left. Noam Chomsky? I've yet to meet an apolitical person who has ever heard of Chomsky; why not balance the list by giving us the option to vote for Mark Steyn? Eric Hobsbawm? - why can't we choose Paul Johnson or Niall Ferguson?

Predictably, the former terrorist St. Nelson of Qunu won the contest. It really is amazing how few people have ever thought critically of Mandela, especially BBC journalists, who should be capable of critical thought. Why is no one in this country aware of the communist nature of sections of the ANC?

Might the bias be due to people who work for the mainstream media having an agenda and an axe to grind? Unlike the MSM's hallucinations about Jews and Americans pulling the strings of power, the theory that there is some sort of institutionalized group-think muddying the waters of media discourse and obscuring the view has an instinctive ring of truth to it, and it is at last being written about and talked about. The Spectator, Telegraph, Melanie Phillips and others have noticed this too. And of course, there is the excellent Biased-BBC. So, perhaps I might end on a positive note, but then, as I mentioned in a previous post, some things are a matter of mass and momentum, and right now, us critics are small in number, we're gaining speed and snowballing along. Let's hope that history will be our court of justice.

2005-10-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Spread the good news!

He's back at last. Scott Burgess, he of the Daily Ablution, astute arbiter of journalistic verity, aristarch among critics! Welcome back, Scott!

http://dailyablution.blogs.com/

2005-10-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Secret of England's Greatness

Is not the bible as Thomas Jones Barker's portrait of Queen Victoria suggests. I've been thinking about the greatness of Victorian Britain and the Britannic inheritance for a while now, after a couple of visits to the National Portrait Gallery. The "Expansion and Empire" room, dominated by Jones Barker's portrait of Queen Victoria presenting a bible to one of her African subjects is a refreshing antidote to the all-pervasive defeatism and propensity for self-abasement of today's Britons. The room contains portraits of various characters who were associated with Britain's imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century. Most of the gentlemen pose with a look of urbane dignity that seems ridiculous today. Indeed, I recently sat for a sepia photograph with fellow members of a sports team and we sniggered and giggled while trying to maintain mock-dignified Victorian poses. Even attempting that look of solid, gentlemanly earnestness was enough to send us into fits of laughter. We were all educated young men, almost all of us were English. We were aware, deep down, of our country's imperial past, and the chances are that most of us had grandfathers, great grandfathers and great-great grandfathers who would have felt no such uneasy self-consciousness if asked to pose for a portrait. In fact, the look of dignified earnestness would have come naturally to them. For us young Englishmen, who have had any pretensions to dignity, uprightness and gentlemanly behaviour sapped from us by the rotten and pervasive influence of a political ideology of "libertarianism" shared by MPs of both left and right, such pious posturing seems hilariously quaint.

In fact, "libertarianism" is a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps it's really a blend of nihilism and libertinism, which had its origins in the triumph of science and rationality and the horror of man's capacity for barbarity. Masked as a "rights and freedoms" issue by the likes of Roy Jenkins, this indulgent, promiscuous culture has eroded our capacity for earnestness. Why be earnest nowadays? We're all caught in the rat race, looking out for number one and focused purely on improving the material prosperity of our own lives and those of our close family. Any attempt at leading a life of moral integrity is ridiculed. Most youngmen can't look at a priest or a Scout leader these days without laughing subconsciously at their ridiculous attempt at piousness (perhaps the glut of writing about the guilt and sexual dysfunction caused by a Catholic education and the paedophile priest and Scout leader scandals have something to do with it too). Why bother with the effort of piety and self-sacrifice when you can just throw caution to the wind and engage in the wild promiscuity, binge drinking and drug taking with everyone else?

Acceptable behaviour and prevailing attitudes are really a matter of numbers and momentum. If there are enough people who believe that civility, self-sacrifice and other virtues are worthy ideals, then the majority of the citizenry will go along with them. This is the problem today. Examples of moral virtue are few and far between; they tend to be concentrated among the elderly. People who attempt a life of virtue are obstructed at every turn. Confounded and battered by the overwhelming hostility to their attempt at leading an edifying life, many of them simply give up and accept the prevailing circumstances. Witness the pitiable state of the Church of England. Like a cuckold husband, the Church reponds to falling attendance by prostrating itself before the people, and instead of standing firm by the fundamental tenets of Christian belief, it waters down the interpretation of the Bible in an effort to appease its leftist establishment critics. One suspects that most cuckolds eventually figure out that becoming more emasculated and impotent in the face of rejection is not a good strategy for boosting one's attractiveness. Those in charge of the Church of England don't appear to have grasped this, and perhaps it's one of the few areas where we could learn something from the Muslims, whose religion has none of the self-flagellatingly soppy defeatist drivel attached to it.

It was the capacity for self-restraint, the uprightness and the unashamed piety of the Victorians that made England great. Those values still live on in our subconscious, and appear occasionally, but only to serve the purpose of being mocked by the smug ultra-secularists and libertines. Perhaps the ferocity and duration of their assault on those values indicates that there's something powerful in them that they find objectionable and dangerous.

I suspect though, that the sheer emptiness and pointlessness of life in modern Britain is causing us to approach a turning point. It's clear that this smug mockery of earnestness and piety can't go on forever. Sometime sooner or later the self-satisfied satirists will run out of energy and some of the old earnestness and "piousness" will return. The question is, under what guise. A Christian revival isn't on the cards. Perhaps secular nationalism, but I doubt it. Our best hope is a revival of the liberal, free-trade, democratic tradition of the Victorians. The basic ingredients are there; disenchantment with the emptiness of modern life and a subconscious awareness of our glorious past. The difficulty is to mould them into a viable political idea which could work in the twenty-first century.

2005-09-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

More repression needed (I'm not being sarcastic)

Take a look at this:

"Clarke proposes 'community jails'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4258968.stm

And this:
"Clarke shifts focus to prison policy"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4261666.stm

and if, like me, you prefer your news straight from the source without it being filtered by the BBC, here are his actual words:
[Home Secretary's speech to the Prison Reform Trust, 19th Sept 2005]
http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/pdf%20files/Where%20Next%20for%20Penal%20Policy.pdf

Charles Clarke proposes that prisoners serving short terms should be housed in prisons close to home if possible, to better enable them to maintain links with friends and family. He also says that we need to provide educational services in prisons. Not just to give the prisoners basic literacy and numeracy skills, but to allow prisoners to be educated to a "higher level". Apparently we must move away from the idea of prisons being "universities of crime". Hello? Who ever thought that was what prisons were supposed to be? And how exactly does Mr. Clarke think that, by giving so many benefits to prisoners, he is doing anything to counter this commonly held assumption.

I would venture to argue that there is a link between how tough the prison regime is and the attitudes of the people towards criminal behaviour, and how much the criminals, or potential criminals, fear prison.

Let's suppose I were a teenage boy, fresh out of a bog-standard comprehensive without a single GCSE, having a predilection for binge drinking and regular bouts of violent and anti-social behaviour. In short, a fairly typical young man from a poor background. Suppose also that, since gangs of criminals are prominent and well-known on the council estate on which I live, it would be very easy for me to start associating with the bad boys and thus begin a life of crime. In fact, it might better be said that for many poor young men, taking a route towards a life of crime is an easy decision to make. Resistance to it, which usually requires qualities such as self-esteem, willingness to work and politeness, doesn't come easily these days because the old working class values are no longer taken up by the younger generations.

For the young man on the council estate, given the choice between a life of crime, with the associated risk of imprisonment, and a life of hard work and self-restraint, it's no wonder that so many choose to become criminals.

Surely we ought to make them fear prison more, not less. I don't advocate bringing back corporal punishment (except perhaps in schools), but why not deny the prisoners contact with family and friends (many of whom might well be criminals or ex-cons themselves), deny them televisions and radios, deny them fancy exercise facilities and make life in prison a bit more undesirable but without treating them inhumanely?

Of course, longer sentences would also be required, and we're told there is overcrowding. Well, excuse my blinding stupidity, but why can't we build more prisons? They don't have to be expensive apartment-block style things with gyms and swimming pools. In fact they should be the opposite. Small, cramped cells. Tiny windows with bars. I suppose, since this is the twenty-first century, we might be kind enough not to require slopping out. Anyway, the point is, these prisons would be unpleasant places to be. And who knows, perhaps when our hypothetical young man is deciding whether or not to steal a car, he might decide not to if he feared the prospect of a few months (or years) behind bars.

Thus, more repression is needed. A sense of shame needs to be instilled within society. It ought to be shameful for anyone, regardless of their class, to be sent to prison, and the prisons themselves ought to be places that young men fear, not because of the savage behaviour of the inmates but because of the boredom of being stuck in a cell for years and the opprobium of the whole of society being heaped upon them.

2005-09-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

I left work at about quarter to six, and made my way to the tube. Once on the central line from Bond Street, I found a seat where I was sandwiched in amongst other people who, from their age and dress, were clearly office workers on their way home.

Next stop and the lady sitting on my right left the train. Her space was immediately filled by a teenage gangsta wannabe. He was a hooded South Asian young man who, by the look of him, was about 16 years old. He slumped himself into the seat, but soon the urge to converse with his chums who were standing by the doors needed to be satisfied.

"I had a hard days work. 'free 'undred quid me got today. Lootin', lootin' man. I used me 9 mil."

"Yeah right man, you can fuck right off and suck your father's testicles"

[other youths giggle]

"Wot! You sayin' I'm lyin'? Come 'ere you fucker, le's sort this out"

"Fuck off."

"You suck testicles."

Of course, by this stage, the surrounding adult passengers were burying their heads in their newspapers and books. I particularly enjoyed watching the grimaced and awkward response of the 50-something Guardian reading male sat opposite me. His chubby face went through a wonderful spectrum of contortion and relaxation for the 10 minutes he was present. Were the youths going to mug him? Or maybe they were just walking the walk and trying to be gangsta whilst enjoying the fearful response of the respectable members of society.

What were we to do? There were ladies present. Now, you might object to my fuddyduddyness and say that in this day and age such language is normal, even in the presence of the fairer sex. Well, perhaps. But that doesn't mean that it's right. And even if no ladies were present, would such language be acceptable? No it wouldn't. Being a citizen of London and an occasional visitor to building sites, I can appreciate that when groups of men are talking, they often like to engage in a bit of bawdy chat, foul language and jokery. But this conversation had none of the charm that the banter of the working man has. There was nothing light-hearted about it. It was more like being a fly on the wall, listening to a young man desperate for the approbation of his peers protesting that his stories about violent mayhem were real. Forgive my bourgeois naivety, but would his yearning for a sense of belonging and self-worth not be better satisfied by him joining the boy scouts, going to university, getting a job, or doing something productive which doesn't harm the rest of society?

So, although I was eager to stand up and say in my most imposing voice "language, young man!", I did as any normal Londoner would, and effected a look of intense concentration on my book, although I'm sure I wasn't the only one in that carriage who really had their mind on the youths.