The The quarterly magazine of conservative thought Children of the First Amendment Deutschland über Damned Blues Brussels Theodore Dalrymple Matthew Walther Jonathan Story Sir Patrick Moore Sexual Stalinists Salmond Fishing Jane Kelly Stephen Baskerville Vivian Linacre Spring 2013 £4.99 Vol 31 No 3 Contents 3 Editorial Articles 4 Sir Patrick Moore 16 Salmond Fishing Jane Kelly Vivian Linacre 6 Fishy Rights 18 Bad Samaritans Christie Davies Jane Kelly 8 Deutschland über Brussels 19 Goldwater, the would-be President Jonathan Story John Phelan 10 Children of the Damned 21 The Religion of Climate Theodore Dalrymple David Wemyss 12 First Amendment Blues 24 Murder by the Danube Matthew Walther Helen Szamuely 13 Sexual Stalinists 26 A Canadian at the Bank Stephen Baskerville David Twiston Davies 15 Rowan Williams 28 The Biochemistry of Belief Brian Ridley Will Emkes Columns Arts & Books 37 Anthony Daniels 30 Conservative Classic — 50 on Gabriele d’Annunzio Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited 38 Nigel Jones 32 Reputations — 39 on Joachim Fest John Buchan 39 Celia Haddon 35 Roy Kerridge on Otters 36 Eternal Life 40 Lindsay Jenkins Peter Mullen on Obama’s America 42 Christie Davies on Mary Whitehouse 43 John Jolliffe on T S Eliot’s Circle 44 Alan Medenhall on American Conservatives Subscription payments by cheque should be sent 45 Penelope Tremayne by post to on Syrian roots The Salisbury Review, 46 Merrie Cave 5 Turnpike Court, Woburn Sands, Bucks, on Elizabethan spies MK17 8UA 48 Brian Eassty on Persecuted Christians Changes of address or other enquiries should be 49 Film: Merrie Cave sent to the same address or by phone to on Medical Films 01908 281601 50 Music: Gerald Place Credit card payments by phone remain the same on Arts Funding 0207 226 7791 51 Art: Charles Thomson or on Trash Art 01908 281601 54 In Short Editor: Myles Harris The Managing Editor: Merrie Cave Consulting Editors: Roger Scruton Lord Charles Cecil, Jane Kelly, Christie Davies, 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 he National Health Service is bankrupt, kept GP or visiting a hospital should produce evidence going by money printing, long-dated IOUs they are known to the tax man, while visitors from Tand imported cheap labour. Real income is countries who do not have reciprocal arrangements falling, while claims are out of control. In 1948 it with us should produce insurance at passport control was assumed that most people would not live beyond or be turned away. Matters could be further improved seventy, today they live into their eighties and longer. by small up-front payments. An administratively Officials believed that treatments would get cheaper. simple method would be to oblige everybody to pay Most illnesses these days, usually the most expensive, £5 per visit to a GP or hospital, the money going to occur in the last years of life, and the bills are mighty. the Treasury. At a (life saving) stroke fifty per cent of However, unlike a commercial insurance company the chairs in hospital casualties and GP waiting rooms where you pay more as you get older, it is the other would empty. way round in the NHS. None of this is done because many key administrative Politicians now say that the only solution is to make posts in the NHS are held by officials who would give pensioners pay more. Whether Labour or Conservative a good name to the Mafia. Their job is to conceal that wins at the next election heavy taxes will be imposed we have been paying into a Ponzi scheme which makes on pensioners’ properties, their free travel will be taken Bernie Madoff look like a shining light of the Plymouth away, pensions delayed, and when they die many will Brethren. They are utterly without scruple, appearing at have their property seized by the state. the gates of hospitals, in which hundreds have died due This is sheer cowardice. The collapse of the NHS to maladministration, to announce ‘that lessons have lies entirely at the door of NHS administrators and been learnt’. They then return to their desks to persist lying politicians. Three million immigrants have been in activities that have brought this state of affairs about; smuggled onto the NHS’s books since 1997. Because strangling the NHS in bureaucracy, closing wards most of them are poor, they pay no premiums. Many and hospitals, firing clinical staff, using taxpayers’ have large families and it is common for any relatives premiums to pay the most pressing debts, awarding still living abroad to be invited over for free treatment themselves vast salaries, and writing off future debt as well. There has been no attempt to stop the latter against wishful thinking. Many of these creatures go practice, quite the reverse. A few months ago GPs on to lucrative jobs in companies lending long-dated were asked not to ask for paperwork from patients to money for new hospitals (known as PFI contracts) at prove eligibility. Everybody from everywhere is to rates comparable to loan sharking. be given ‘immediate and necessary’ treatment free. They should be dismissed; some should be in jail. In practice this means almost any condition except But they are paid to lie by their masters in Whitehall. cosmetic surgery, and even then some get it free. And If we threaten to take away Milliband and Cameron’s while hospitals abroad demand paperwork, many power at the next election, and pensioners can, (they British hospitals merely ask patients if they have lived have the casting vote) we may see people arriving to here more than a year. A simple yes (in any language defraud the NHS being turned away at passport control from Mongolian to Tuareg), is sufficient to guarantee while everybody else takes a P60 when they visit the outpatient treatment; really serious inpatient illnesses doctor. Then we might hope for a day when old ladies are almost always ‘immediate and necessary’. Treat are fed in all our hospitals, not forced to drink water first and cross your fingers for the money. from flower vases, and babies’ mouths not taped shut This is ridiculous. Residents registering with a to hide their cries from officials. The Salisbury Review — Spring 2013 3 Sir Patrick Moore, 1923–2012 Jane Kelly he division of thinking between left and right He did everything he wanted to do in life because he hasn’t been so clear since the 1640s, and is was born before the great age of constraint in which Tparticularly obvious in the Cavalier persona we now live. He had no qualifications, no particular of Patrick Moore, who aside from his obsession with pedigree and was always just himself. He was that the planets created an ironic persona based on one thing that many Englishmen once admired and secretly joke; the mad professor, and it was a huge hit with the aspired to be, a true eccentric who got away with it and British public. became extremely successful from pursuing his hobby. He attracted a mass audience by his tremendous The Sky At Night, which began on April 26th 1957, self-taught learnedness and his jokes. He once when he was 34, was the world’s longest-running TV appeared dressed in a spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, series with the same presenter. By pursuing his own pretending to be a Martian. To make the point that interest with obsessional freedom, Moore did more we should not assume other planets to be lifeless just than any other man to interest the public in astronomy because their conditions were different from Earth’s, and space travel. At the same time, he was an excellent he declared in an alien voice: ‘I am surprised to see you cricketer, golfer, wrote music, appeared in Gilbert all. I had thought & Sullivan, and y o u r t h i c k played a mean atmosphere and x y l o p h o n e . excessive water He was even w o u l d h a v e rewarded for prevented life h i s l o v e o f from evolving tobacco. In 1983 here.’ he was elected In the interest Pipeman of the of explaining Year. He was science to the fat, loved food, m a s s e s h e didn’t approve a c c i d e n t a l l y of slimmers, and became the first never bothered man to swallow with women. If a fly on live TV. only he’d owned He was happy to use his comic powers to take swipes a shed, he would possibly have been the happiest at other, more earnest public figures: ‘Somewhere in Englishman of the previous generation. But all this the universe there could be a complete carbon copy came at a price. of Anthony Wedgwood Benn – although I sincerely When he died, on December 9th, last year, The hope not.’ New Statesman published an obituary entitled: ‘Sir He prided himself on being a complete amateur, Patrick Moore: A great and bad man.’ Adding for who, it seems unthinkable now, never went to school good measure: ‘The astronomer inspired many, but or had a proper job. ‘Since the war I’ve never worked,’ we cannot whitewash his sexist, xenophobic and he told me happily when I interviewed him in 1997, homophobic comments as the outbursts of a quirky old at his home in a 17th century cottage in Selsey, where eccentric.’ Having installed a complete irony by-pass, he lived for most of his life with his mother and cats, they wasted no time in lacerating the recently deceased surrounded by a garden sprouting telescopes.