Spring 2011 Vol 29 No 3 £4.99 Contents 3 Editorial
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The The quarterly magazine of conservative thought Unsealing the Dr Hobson’s Ireland Changes Confessional Choice its Landlords Theodore Dalrymple Myles Harris Christopher Arkell Suicide on the NET Euthanasia Germany’s Worm Julia Magnet Jonathan Price in the Apple Nigel Jones Spring 2011 Vol 29 No 3 £4.99 Contents 3 Editorial Articles 17 Ireland Changes its Landlords Christopher Arkell 4 Unsealing the Confessional 19 The Bricks and Mortar Fraud Theodore Dalrymple Vivian Linacre 6 Suicide on the NET 22 An Assault on Justice Julia Magnet Jan Davies 8 Happiness by Index and Decree 24 Goodbye to the House of Lords? Christie Davies Don Briggs 10 Where Do We Come From? 26 Letter from Australia Brian Ridley John Stone 13 Dr Hobson’s Choice 28 Freezing or Thawing? Myles Harris Caroline Martin 15 Euthanasia 29 Fixated on Inner Priority Jonathan Price Paul Gottfried 16 The King’s Speech 31 Germany’s Weight of History Myles Harris Nigel Jones Columns Arts & Books 33 Conservative Classic — 42 40 John Jolliffe Cultural Amnesia, Clive James on Mark Twain 35 Reputations — 31 41 Celia Haddon Isaiah Berlin on The Prince of Wales 36 Roy Kerridge 43 Jonathan Story 37 Eternal Life on Chinese Authoritarianism Peter Mullen 44 M R D Foot on World War I 45 Christie Davies 39 Letters on Thomas Sowell 46 Penelope Tremayne on the Bagdad Railway 47 Will Knowland on Educational Theory 48 Frank Ellis on Attrition in Stalingrad 50 Derek Turner on White Shrinkage 51 Dennis O’Keeffe on the Big Society 53 Film: Jane Kelly on Of Gods and Men 55 Art: Andrew Lambirth on Books and Exhibitions 56 Music: Gerald Place on Four Late Greats 58 In Short Managing Editor: Merrie Cave Consulting Editors: Roger Scruton Lord Charles Cecil, Myles Harris, Mark Baillie, Christie Davies, Literary Editor: Ian Crowther 33 Canonbury Park South, London N1 2JW Tel: 020 7226 7791 Fax: 020 7354 0383 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.salisburyreview.co.uk (return to contents page) t is business as usual in Britain with more central democratic dream, the hegemony of the ‘progressive’ government control and the further undermining of bureaucrats. Their latest wheeze, as Christie Davies shows, Ithe traditions that have defined and sustained us, by is, with David Cameron’s blessing, to measure and plan those whose duty it is to uphold them. First and foremost is happiness. Centralized happiness is not just the enemy of the upcoming vote on alternative voting. On an estimated freedom but the enemy of happiness itself. No wonder turnout of 30 per cent, a foregone conclusion, alternative Paul Gottfried calls us to pay more attention to the work voting will ensure a minority Liberal domination of of Ludwig von Mises. Nor is happiness the lot of those Parliament until the party’s long term aim, the complete young people who commit suicide on the internet, cheered fusion of the House of Commons with Brussels, is on by their fellows, as Julia Magnet’s chilling description achieved. of this bizarre 21st-century phenomenon reveals. Nor is The replacement of the autonomy and judgment of it to be found at the therapist’s, as Theodore Dalrymple highly skilled professional people by the arbitrary authority relates in his story of the homosexual activist who reported of amateurish and over-paid central government file- a Christian therapist to the authorities for trying to cure shuffling, box-ticking bureaucrats continues apace. This is him of his sexual inclinations. apparent from Jan Davies’ tale of the undermining by that Meanwhile knocking on Ireland’s door today and ours most remote of offices, the Legal Services Commission, tomorrow are, as Christopher Arkell shows, the central of the legal aid lawyers who defend those tried before a planners of the EU dishonestly determined to use the court. There will be a Stalinist micromanagement of what economic crisis to destroy the autonomy of nations. They lawyers do from day to day. What will matter is not the fuelled the boom in Ireland with grants but when it inevitably quality of service to the client (which he or she is in a better got out of control the Irish were unable to raise interest rates position to judge) but whether the files look good, suitable and make their currency appreciate because they were trapped for a bureaucrat and with the right buzz-words like ethnic in the economic cage of the euro. The EU giveth and the EU monitoring. We may look forward to a twenty-first century taketh away. Cursed be the acronym of the EU. of the insolence of office and the law’s delay. From Myles The threat to the nations from without is augmented Harris’ account of the coming struggle of the GPs against by a threat from within as Muslims multiply and with an more central control, it is clear that unless the doctors are almost racist arrogance refuse to integrate into the culture utterly obdurate, fight very hard with sheer cussedness and of their host country. Nigel Jones’ timely account of the make splendidly unfair use of the mass media, including radical denunciation by the insightful Thilo Sarrazin of ad hominem attacks on politicians and administrators, the German politics of diversity in the face of the Muslim they will be smashed in the way other professional people threat indicates this well. The politics of diversity also have been. It will all be done in the name of providing a leads inevitably to a neglect of and even contempt for our ‘better service’; yet the indefatigable incompetence of own history and traditions. The 400th anniversary of the both central and local administrations to achieve this is King James Bible of 1611 serves only to remind us, as Peter well brought out in Vivian Linacre’s discussion of their Mullen points out, how that great work that underpins our attempts to provide housing. The big council-built tower very language has been sidelined by the authorities of the blocks of the 1960s and 1970s have been demolished Church of England. Banality has triumphed. The familiar even before the loans on them have been repaid. Now the and poetically resonant ‘pearl of great price’ has been planners are also seeking big units in the provision of legal twitched into ‘the pearl of very special value’ and ‘through aid and for GPs. More crumbling of provision is on the a glass darkly’ by ‘puzzling reflections in a mirror’. No way. Don Briggs’ description of the proposals to replace meaning has been added but beauty has been lost and the House of Lords, that great repository of independent continuity discarded for last year’s tired trendiness. minded experts, by a pseudo-elected chamber of party This then is to be our fate in the big society – gorged hacks will remove one of the last barriers to that social bureaucracies and a diminished nation. (return to contents page) The Salisbury Review — Spring 2011 3 Unsealing the Confessional Theodore Dalrymple (return to contents page) ince malice is a passion that is never too distant ‘Entering into therapy with somebody who thinks from the human heart, denunciation is a habit I am sick... is the single most chilling experience of Sthat it is not difficult to instil in a population. my life,’ the journalist told a Sunday newspaper. It During the Occupation in France, for example, the may well be that he was shocked and affronted, but French police and Gestapo received between 3 and does that mean that he was harmed? Is he bringing 5 million written denunciations. Nor was this all: his complaint in consequence of the belief that hurt Paris-Radio, for example, ran a programme devoted feelings are indistinguishable from tangible harm (a to denunciations called Répétez-le, Repeat it, that was tort lawyer’s dream)? Does he hope that as a result a great popular success. No duty is ever more joyfully of his bravery in strapping a tape recorder to himself entered into than that of doing harm to others in the the government will enact legislation making it illegal name of good. for all but the warmest feelings to be generated during Therefore the denunciation of Mrs Lesley Pilkington therapeutic encounters? by a client might be taken as, potentially, a harbinger What is terrifying in this story is the ease with which of very nasty times to come. people’s words can now be taken down and used in Mrs Pilkington was a psychotherapist who, because evidence against them. It is technologically possible, of her Christian beliefs, thought that homosexuality and indeed easy, for everyone to conduct the whole of was morally wrong; she also thought she could help his social life as if it were a series of interviews under homosexuals change their sexual desires. A journalist caution. All that is necessary is to slip one of the latest and what is now called an activist, disagreed strongly mobile phones into one’s top pocket and entrapment with her. He strapped a recording device to himself can commence. and consulted her; she openly told him that his Of course, there are occasions when entrapment homosexuality was wrong, but that she believed might be justified. If, for example, I thought and had she had a method that could change him. With his good reason to believe that a group of people were recording in hand, he denounced her to her professional plotting to commit a terrorist atrocity, I should have organisation, the British Association for Counselling no hesitation in entrapping them in the way in which and Psychotherapy. Pilkington was entrapped.