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Even Wimbledon's joined the rush to smash the family
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column
Nobody seems to have asked for it. No real reason was given for it. But female players at Wimbledon will no longer be referred to as 'Mrs' or 'Miss' by the umpires. It will just be bare, unadorned surnames. Why is this small thing so dispiriting? Because it is by a thousand such small things, imposed by faceless people, impossible to prevent, that our world is being changed beyond all recognition.
I will be told that it is trivial and that it does not matter. But if that is so, why did they bother to do it? Because it matters greatly to them, just as the incessant, relentless imposition of the metric system matters greatly to them. Oppose any of these things and you will be told that you are fussing about trivia.
But you didn't start it. They did. And see the expression that comes over their faces if you accuse them of obsessing over trifles. And that is why it should matter to you. These titles symbolise a great deal.
Wimbledon has done away with titles for women . Above all, they refer to the distinction, once enormously important but now more or less abolished, between those who were married and those who are not. The force behind this is the same force that caused the British State to seek out and destroy every possible mention of the words 'husband' and 'wife' from official forms and documents. You would have thought that this stately old practice might have been allowed to continue in picturesque, old-fashioned bits of biscuit-tin Britain such as Wimbledon, in so many ways a museum of pre-1939 middle-class suburbia. But no. The thing about totalitarians is that they have to control everything, that everything must be brought into line.Every last trace of the old regime must be discovered, erased, painted over, demolished or chiselled away.
The process is still not quite complete. Marriage, that fortress of private life, has pretty much been destroyed in this country.It still has an official existence, but the authorities give it no privileges or help, and the law waits like a vulture to pounce on every united home, and impose a high-speed divorce at the first sign of trouble.The whole way in which we deal with each other has been transformed by this sort of change. The main beneficiary has been the all-powerful State, which now reaches into what were once our personal lives in ways that would have been quite shocking even in 1980. And the main sufferers, as always, are the abandoned, neglected, baffled, misled, miseducated children, so many thousands of them, with no secure place to turn to, just more freedom than they have ever been shown how to cope with.
Farewell to my friend Christopher Booker
A sad farewell to my old friend and frequent ally Christopher Booker, never afraid to defy the many stupid orthodoxies of our time, and to endure and enjoy the resulting abuse which is often the dissenter's main reward. He died at home last week, full of years and surrounded by his family, leaving behind a great body of courageous and original thinking as his monument. He would have been delighted to see that, even after his death, his spiteful enemies were still attacking him. But, oh, I shall miss him.We all will.
I wish the Beatles era WOULD vanish
What if almost all trace of the Beatles disappeared, as happens in the silly but sometimes enjoyable new film Yesterday? If only, in my view. Yes, some of the songs are OK, but as those around at the time well remember, it wasn't really about the songs.The teeny fans screamed so loud at Beatles concerts it was impossible to hear what they were singing or playing. Like the whole weird era from 1963 to about 1970, it was a convulsion of something else, and a lot of it wasn't very nice.If, as in the film, a nice young man started playing old Beatles songs to people who'd never heard them, I suspect the world we have now – which long ago moved into far rougher, noisier tastes in music – would ignore him. The same thing would happen to the early works of a lot of now-famous authors and artists if they were re-released into the world quietly without hype. What really still needs to be explained is what exactly was behind the collective madness of the 1960s, which blew the lid off Western civilisation. It wasn't a song about Yesterday.
Al's criminal ignorance
On and on they go about police numbers. First it's Al Johnson, whose campaign to lead the Tory Party has all the depth and carefully-costed honesty of an Oxford Union Presidential struggle. Then it's a gaggle of police chiefs, moaning about cuts and lobbying for a national force, an unthinkable menace to liberty in a free country of this size.Mr Johnson plainly knows nothing about policing, as, like almost all politicians, he has never studied it. He thinks there are still things called 'bobbies' on a thing called the 'beat'. Crikey, as he might say. Only a member of the liberal elite could possible think that. The moaning police chiefs presided over an accelerated collapse in police effectiveness, especially their arrogant, catastrophic decision to stop enforcing the marijuana laws, for which we pay daily in violence and madness.They likewise have little to say. They all embraced the useless form of policing that involves waiting for crime to happen and then reacting inadequately to it.
They are just the same as the teachers' leaders whose response to the 50-year demonstrable failure of comprehensives is to call for more teachers and more money, but the same methods. If you are doing the wrong thing, a million extra staff and ten billion pounds won't make it work.
Freedom begins at home
I utterly support Hong Kong's peaceful protesters in their battle to defend their liberty, though I am highly suspicious of the violent, masked thugs so oddly allowed to smash up a government building while police stood by mysteriously. But can a modern British government give them any real backing? Do they care much about freedom or the rule of law? Remember, this is the Government which sacked Sir Roger Scruton, without a hearing, from an official post on the basis of a smear in a Left-wing magazine. Sir Roger used to take great risks in aiding free thought and speech in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. But as he wrote in this paper last week, organised and potent attacks on free thought in Britain today 'bring uncannily to mind those official documents our Czech colleagues were called upon to sign which denounced this or that innocent person'. 'The witch-hunting hysteria has returned with a vengeance, not in Eastern Europe but here,' he added. Most frightening of all was the verdict of his old Czech friends, who know tyranny when they see it, on the recent witch-hunts in Britain: 'My Czech colleagues said, 'Yes, it is starting again.' And by 'It' they really did mean It.' They really did. We should really listen.
An urgent, necessary change in the law to protect the innocent. Please help to bring it about.
Please back Sir Cliff Richard in his excellent campaign to stop the naming of suspects before the authorities have enough evidence to charge them.This nasty practice is destroying the presumption of innocence and enables false accusers to ruin the lives of innocent people at will. His petition badly needs tens of thousands more signatures. You may sign it here:
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
July 7, 2019 Comments (100) Categories: China , Cinema , Crime , Culture , Feminism , Jury Trial , Liberty , Marriage , Political Correctness | Permalink
Latest bright idea is that teachers should not have to do literacy and maths tests.
Posted by: Mrs.B. | 13 July 2019 at 09:11 AM
@ PH
If you want to study the threat of nuclear annihilation theory in greater detail you could start with an old Guardian article, Pop in the age of the atomic bomb. There are better sources out there but this is short enough for a busy journalist to read in the course of his working day.
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 12 July 2019 at 11:19 AM
@ Pat Edhouse
There's a wealth of evidence in the form of popular music lyrics from the 50 and 60s to suggest that threat of nuclear annihilation was a major contributing factor. One example is the song "Do you hear what I hear?" written by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne. Most people listening to that song think of it as a Christmas song about Jesus. People who think that should check out Wikipedia and other sources to learn the truth.
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 11 July 2019 at 10:38 PM
@ Brian Meredith.
A final thought on what I like to call artistic What-iffery.
Had Sir Christopher Wren been knocking about just after WWII, St Paul's Cathedral would have been left standing after the blitz, but it would have been a different St Paul's to the one designed by Wren. If 20th century Wren had been tasked with the rebuilding of London post-World War Two, it is interesting to speculate on what London would look like today., and whether Wren would have demolished St Paul's and had it rebuild in his own 20th century style. And, if he did, what the new St Paul's would look like today.
Yes, it's strange isn't it. When a rock star 'borrows' from a classical composer we call it plagiarism, but when classical composers 'borrow' from each other and they did, it's either ignored, denied or simply explained away as mere coincidence, but that's a topic for discussion at some other time
In case that other time never comes round, I'd just like to add my two penn'orth and I think one of the really big differences between theft by pop stars and borrowing by classical composers is the question of attribution. Many times works are given titles such as Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme by Paganini, which is in itself a valid artistic endeavour and very different from crediting yourself with sole authorship, as is the norm when memorable bits of tunes are simply ripped out of symphonies and concerti by pop composers. Ironically many of these pop song writers are very quick these days to rush to litigation to sue young songwriters and producers for millions of dollars at the mere sniff of a resemblance to something they wrote fifty years ago. As ever, once the boot is on the other foot, everything changes.
In the case of Marvin Gaye's 'Blurred Lines', even the 'rhythmic feel' of the piece was alleged to be plagiarism and the plaintiffs won because the judge felt that there was "not an absolute absence of evidence" of similarity between the two songs (I had to read that twice), which seems about as flimsy a case as it's possible to imagine and a very bad legal precedent since it implies that the onus is on the defendants to prove their innocence rather than for the prosecution to prove guilt, which would be a terrifying prospect were this concept to be extended to other types of criminal trial.
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 11 July 2019 at 11:18 AM
@ Mike B
Yes, it's strange isn't it. When a rock star 'borrows' from a classical composer we call it plagiarism, but when classical composers 'borrow' from each other and they did, it's either ignored, denied or simply explained away as mere coincidence, but that's a topic for discussion at some other time.
Search: Plagiarism among the classical composers.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your views. Perhaps we will all get the opportunity to discuss this subject in greater depth on some future thread.
Posted by: mackenzie | 09 July 2019 at 01:06 PM
Thanks for that illuminating observation of a building site in Bangkok. I've never been further east than the Med. myself so it was interesting to read how societies with a strong work ethic respond to the demands of a changing world when they are not saddled with a disproportionately loud cohort of 3rd-wave feminism-infused females who have all been taught to feel entitled to be gifted the top jobs just 'because'.
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 10 July 2019 at 07:02 PM
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 09 July 2019 at 10:52 AM**How often do we hear of some new campaign to end the "shamefully low numbers of women employed in civil engineering' or whatever? But only ever in the context of senior/supervisory positions in that industry. Never any mention of the gross gender disparity in the number of labourers on a construction site.**
Ditto for the Metropolitan police. I'd wager that Cressida Dick was kept well out of harms way during riots, and close quarter incidents - as would her female counterpart in the fire service 'Dany' Cotton - (probably never been to the top of a ladder to clean windows) never mind 6 storeys up on a ladder tacking blazing smoke and flames with a heavy fire hose blazing smoke. Sat watching in the ops room or making the tea and sandwiches in the fire engine
Posted by: William | 10 July 2019 at 01:19 PM
You wonder what was behind the "collective madness" of the 1960s. When I see documentaries about that decade music, fashion, the Pill are all cited for changing attitudes and they all had a huge influence but one event is rarely mentioned, the 1962 Cuba crisis. I was 18 then and wondered if I would see my next birthday. We had been living in the shadow of the bomb for a while, read books like Neville Shute's On the Beach and laughed nervously when comedians on variety shows made jokes about what they would do when they heard the four minute warning. Most towns had nuclear shelters and civil defence teams and during those days of tension between the US and USSR, we wondered who would have access to them. Maybe this event influenced the 1960s attitudes more than any other.
Posted by: Pat Edhouse | 10 July 2019 at 01:19 PM
Yes, I too saw that BBC-4 rerun of The Faces' TOTP appearence, where they were (sort of) miming to a record which wasn't even a Faces record, which is why it came to mind when I wrote about Buggles. Those archive recordings shown on Friday nights are a reminder of just how ubiquitous miming was back then. Even the Old Grey Whistle Test – which every one of my contemporaries I have spoken with thinks they remember it as a live show – has more than its fair share of rubber cymbals and drumsticks visibly not quite touching the drum head. It looks hilarious now.
Thank goodness for the Jools Holland Show, which, for a long time was composed entirely of live performances, although I am becoming increasingly suspicious that this aspect has become diluted in more recent series, with at least some of today's acts incorporating recorded elements, together with the inevitable click track which that demands, in order to augment the live playing and singing. These days of course this is not confined to TV. Many "live shows" in theatres and arenas will use technology to ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak.
As I was a child of the 60's and 9 in 1963. We rolled snow to make a massive snowan in a road blissfully free of cars and work vans.
I do not remember anyone saying that more choice for women meant we would need to undermine marriage in the tax system and remove support for marriage in family allowance.
I don't remember as a young married mum anyone thinking that the many women who were married should not be able to use their title and not be castigated by yet to come,by vociferous women for doing so.
Or that having a family at a young age would be frowned on.
The forms could br adjusted to give those who choose to not state status of relationship can omit the information.
Just as those players who don't mind Miss or Mrs. could still choose to be known by that title.
In the 60's I do remember it was about choice. No way was there any ideals that if you chose to marry young, enjoy the freedom to choose to rear your own child at home, while hubby worked, that shouldn't continue, not be made more difficult to do so, by removing a tax that rewarded self responsibility.
I do remember that being self reliant and self responsible was the message.
No way that schools would take on more than teaching, with relationship lessons. Would remove the common sense of teaching young practical lessons, nor sell so many playing fields.
I never would have thought I would see the report that children are not able to reach reading levels expected in my childhood, nor start school, with low vocabulary and parents not talking to them preferring, Facebook or gym sessions, tanning or phones glued to ears while out and about and seeing so many overweight people and young.
Yesterday, all those troubles seemed so far away.
I remember Lynn Anderson and '" Rose garden" when courting.
@ mackenzie
I am in total agreement with the comments and observations expressed by both Ernest and yourself but I reiterate the view that arguing over which music genre is better than another without framing the debate in its proper context is a bit like arguing over who was the better gender impersonator, Vesta Tilley, Julian Eltinge, Danny La Rue or Ehud Barak.
"Wimbledon has done away with titles for women "
It's a good job the way Serena Williams is playing. Did you see her doubles match with Murray? The guy who was serving to her was smashed off court with virtually every return. I think after that we all know who is wearing the trousers in this partnership.
Posted by: Martin | 09 July 2019 at 09:32 PM
@Brian Meredith
Thanks for your information re Hans Zimmer. I realised that he wasn't a member of Buggles and I had just presumed that he was asked by them, as a friend to play the keyboards on the 'Radio star' video. Your mention of him miming the playing I suppose shouldn't have been a surprise as it happened a lot on TV shows and videos back then. As for John Peel - I remember it very well, in fact I saw it recently on some BBC4 music programme that they show on Friday nights, it's name escapes me for now. I also seem to recall that Ray Jackson received the Musician's Union sum of £15 for his contribution, playing the mandolin solo, and was not credited on the album sleeve for doing so.
@Kevin1 9th July 2019 at 12:22AM
No doubt, neither Shakespeare nor any other poet whom you mention can compete with Basho for the greatest haiku ever written, as they never attempted to write one, but do you doubt that they could have adapted to that form, had they so wished?
I do not think, though, that the allegory with popular and classical music is a good one. Classical composers, such as Beethoven, learned their trade by studying, sometimes with established composers. (in Beethoven's case, Haydn, among others) and mastered counterpoint, dynamics and the other intricacies of composition. They were, first and foremost, trained craftsmen and their artistic greatness was founded on a bedrock of learning. They could not have produced their masterworks without that foundation.
It simply would not be possible for composers of popular music to produce anything o the scale of Beethoven's Eroica symphony or Mahler's Resurrection symphony, as they do not have that grounding. Some popular composers who wished to advace have recognised this. George Gershwin, for example, even after he had achieved huge success in the field of popular music, took himself off to France in order to receive lessons from Ravel. The latter is said to have asked Gershwin how much he had earned during the previous year and when Gershwin told him, replied that, in that case maybe he, Ravel, should take lessons from Gershwin.
I am not knocking popular music; I enjoy it. Indeed, I have just spent hours listening to the Byrds, including their song 'She Don't Care About Time', which, quite shamelessly, lifts Bach's 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring' for its instrumental interlude. Barry Manilow lifting Rachmanninoff's Second Piano Concerto for 'All By Myself' is yet another example of such pilfering. I even recall some rap song (I have no idea what it is called, or who performed it) which used to be played at my gym some years ago, in which Borodin's Polotsvian Dances from his opera, 'Prince Igor' was incorporated.
Still, neither Bach, nor Rachmaninoff, nor Borodin, was around to complain
Posted by: Mike B | 09 July 2019 at 05:50 PM
@Gordon Kerr 9th July 2019 at 03:53PM
"---- it has been confirmed by both the Supreme Court and the ECofJ that we're a sovereign nation".
Gosh, that's a relief. Has Jean-Claude Juncker also confirmed that the European Commission is a bastion of liberty and has Donald Tusk confirmed that the European Council is a repository of democratic values?
If so, we can all sleep a little more easily.
Do grow up.
If you want an opinion on this matter from a truly great jurist, read that of Lord Denning in the 1974 (yes, that long ago) case of 'Bulmer v Bollinger', in which he referred to the incoming tide of EU law:
"--- it flows into the estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back, Parliament has decreed that the Treaty is henceforward to be part of our law. It is equal in force to any statute".
A devastating rebuttal, from a great and independent thinker of the lies, deceit and 24 carat BS with which we had been fed by Ted Heath and his cohorts a short time before and which has been borne out time and again over the following forty five years.
Now, at last, we have an opportunity to discard that odious treaty and its subsequent incarnations. Let us hope that we take it.
If Britain is not free on 1st November, there more than likely - hopefully, will be no need for 'pro-democracy protests' because whoever becomes the new Prime Minister very soon will not be able to recover from it and neither will his so called Conservative Party.
Posted by: TERENCE R COURTNADGE | 09 July 2019 at 09:39 AM
But we are free at the present, it has been confirmed by both the Supreme Court & the ECofJ that we're a sovereign nation but if brexit arrives on 1st November we'll be at the mercy of countries wanting to dump their goods on us. Just look at today with Trump throwing his weight around telling us who should be in our diplomatic corp.
Wait till we're begging for a trade deal!
Posted by: Gordon Kerr | 09 July 2019 at 03:53 PM
On the subject of children changing gender, there is currently an interview on RT TV which is both harrowing and riveting.
Sophie Shevardnadze interviews a man whose ex-wife has custody of their 7-year-old son and is trying to force him into a sex change. Even in Texas, it seems the courts are backing her.
If you don't have RT TV, the programme is available on their website. The URL is obvious, then click on Shows, then on Sophie & Co.
Posted by: Bill | 09 July 2019 at 02:56 PM
**Posted by: TERENCE R COURTNADGE | 09 July 2019 at 09:39 AM**
" because whoever becomes the new Prime Minister very soon will not be able to recover from it and neither will his so called Conservative Party..."
Well whatever - it's not going to go smoothly. Hunt is obviously the same as Theresa '29th March' May - and Johnson has too many enemies waiting to scupper him. In the House most MPs are going to ignore their constituents democratic vote on Brexit - so that leads us to not a very nice place - and an even 'un-nicer' place - where there is a possibility of Corbyn getting into power. When the plebs get out on the streets the press will dutifully label them as 'right-wing' ists…….. and if it is BJ holding temporary power he may be tempted to use the water cannons that he bought when he was mayor of London. So much for pro-democracy.
Who would have thought that Hans Zimmer who was the keyboard player on the new wave band 'Buggles' hit "Radio Killed the video star" in 1979 would go on to become such a critically acclaimed writer of film music.
Posted by: mackenzie | 09 July 2019 at 10:49 AM
The keyboard player on "Video Killed the Radio Star" was Geoffrey Downes, who with fellow studio musician and producer Trevor Horn went on the join progrock bandYes shortly afterwards. Buggles was always an imaginary 'group' as opposed to a real touring band, and whose 'existence' extended only to pop videos, in which all the supposed participants are miming anyway. Hans Zimmer appears briefly in the video, miming at a keyboard in much the same way that John Peel sat on the stage pretending to play the mandolin part (actually played by Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne) on Rod Stewart's Maggie Mae when The Faces mimed their way through that record on Top of the Pops.
Your take on female construction labourers is dependent where you live in the world.
A couple of years ago I met my daughter in Bangkok when she was working in Viet Nam at the time. Opposite one of the hotels we stayed at was a construction site, where a new hotel was being built. I was astounded at the amount of female labourers who queued every morning at the gate just as the site opened for work, dressed in jeans, boots and over-shirts, some with helmets, others not. My astonishment grew as I watched some of them pushing barrows of cement and bricks to various points across the site. whilst others climbed the bamboo scaffolding with hods of bricks and other building materials. No gender disparity on that particular site.
John Heath,
"those who believe they can escape their obligations to the nation and the race by remaining single will pay subscriptions to the SS at a level that will cause them to prefer marriage to bachelordom". - Himmler (Henry and Hillel, 1977, p49)
I would of course add that the Nazi conception of marriage bore little or no relation to that of the trad-con. The Nazis encouraged promiscuity amongst their recruits for the sake of siring 'aryan' children, as well as making divorce easier for 'racially pure' older men who could further propagate their genes with younger women.
My only point is that the means are fundamentally the same, state coercion in the private affairs of citizens via taxation. A 'tax allowance' given to one person will always amount to a tax on the person not receiving it, the difference being 'tax allowance' is a sneaky and somewhat cowardly way of penalising someone. If 49% of uk adults are married, I would be interested to know if the unmarried 51% take kindly to being treated as second class citizens in the tax system.
Posted by: Wayne Ashcroft | 09 July 2019 at 12:22 PM
How often do we hear of some new campaign to end the "shamefully low numbers of women employed in civil engineering' or whatever?
Posted by: Colm J | 07 July 2019 at 10:24 PM
But only ever in the context of senior/supervisory positions in that industry. Never any mention of the gross gender disparity in the number of labourers on a construction site.
@Kevin 1
Your comments with Ernest are interesting. For what it's worth, I think that what Ernest says is probably true that a Bach or Beethoven born now would have dabbled in pop music and lost interest in it. What I believe they would have done is to have focussed their attention on writing music for film or theatre, which would enable them to fulfil their artistic expression and musical creativity. There are already plenty examples of people whom I would describe as extremely musically talented former 'pop' musicians who have done so. Who would have thought that Hans Zimmer who was the keyboard player on the new wave band 'Buggles' hit "Radio Killed the video star" in 1979 would go on to become such a critically acclaimed writer of film music. The same could be said of Vangelis (Bladerunner) who started his career as the keyboard player with the band Aphrodite's Child. There are plenty of other examples, too long to list here of former pop musicians changing the course of their musical career to move into film music (some of which I believe stands on par with some of the greatest classical music). I believe had Bach and Beethoven been alive today - that is what they would have done.
Kevin 1 writes: "And I believe the same logic applies when people foolishly compare the works of popular music writers with the works of writers of classical music and vice versa."
This just means that Mr 1 is not a real conservative. Comparing modern works from any field of endeavour unfavourably with those of the past is the God-given right of all conservatives. Even saying such a thing has Mr 1 halfway to Islington.
Posted by: R King | 09 July 2019 at 10:07 AM