PETER HITCHENS: I warned there would be a price to pay over Covid. Now do you believe me?
The coming years of heavy taxes, along with the inflation and rising mortgage rates we face, are not caused by some unstoppable force of nature. Nor is the wild rise in energy prices.
All these things are the direct result of government actions. They did not need to happen. I have warned against them all. And yet there is no political party, not even a minority group in Parliament, that has been remotely interested in such warnings. The whole House of Commons thinks in unison.
On every subject where it could have been right, or even divided, it has been unanimously wrong.
Perhaps those of you who have repeatedly ignored my advice that the Tory Party is not your friend, and our governments are not competent, will now finally begin to listen. And maybe those who now wave and fly the flag of Ukraine might also begin to wonder if they have been had (they have been).
In the spring of 2020, I tried almost alone to warn that the Government was making a grave mistake about Covid, over-reacting wildly like a man who burns down his house to get rid of a wasps’ nest.
I wrote here in May that year: ‘Think of Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a smiling salesman of payday loans, and you will begin to get the picture. But it will not be the cheery face of Mr Sunak that you see when the time comes for repayment, but the hard and relentless agents of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.’
In the spring of 2020, I tried almost alone to warn that the Government was making a grave mistake about Covid. Pictured, people on the London Underground in 2020 wearing masks
I pointed out: ‘Nobody has ever seen so much wild spending of non-existent money before in peacetime. Some idiots nowadays think you can do this without consequences… This is not fairy gold we are spending now on Mr Sunak’s furloughs and emergency loans. It is our future for many years to come.
‘We cannot know the exact details of what lies ahead, though I would not rule out a sudden raid on savings as well as severe local and national taxation, direct and indirect, and inflation of the currency.’
Your savings, by the way, do not need to be raided. They are being gobbled up by inflation while you sleep.
Even longer ago, on this page on April 5, 2008, I wrote: ‘I sometimes wonder if our leaders actually want to drive Russia into an angry, sullen isolation. Russians are proud and patriotic. They are as wounded by the loss of status and empire as we were in the Fifties.
‘Why rub their noses in it, week by week, by keeping Nato alive years after it should have been wound up and by threatening to extend it into Ukraine and Georgia? It is by doing things such as this that we created Vladimir Putin.’
And I predicted: ‘The next European war will be fought with gas and oil and pipelines, and it is pretty clear that Russia controls more of these things than we do.’
Even longer ago, on this page on April 5, 2008, I wrote: ‘Why rub the Russians’ noses in it, week by week, by keeping Nato alive years after it should have been wound up and by threatening to extend it into Ukraine and Georgia? It is by doing things such as this that we created Vladimir Putin (pictured yesterday).’
I could add the many times I have here warned against the supposedly ‘Conservative’ Government’s surrender to the Extinction Rebellion zealots, and the mad, irrevocable destruction by explosives of our coal-fired power stations. We did not even have the modesty and caution to mothball them in case it was a mistake. If we had kept them, they would now come in very handy indeed. Who could dare criticise us for doing so, as China and India build new ones every few weeks?
Look, I was right over these major issues of national policy, and the entire political and media establishments were wrong, because we have handed over the running of the country to ignorant teenagers who know no history and lack the character to question or doubt.
Do you think you might just possibly pay more attention to me in future?
The Living proof Britain was once a dignified place
I have found it hard to start going to the cinema again, something I used to love but which I now rarely do. I think the main reason is that there have been so few films I have actively wanted to see, or even try to see. But last week I saw Living, a small, modest but powerful film featuring that lovable actor Bill Nighy.
And I do not think it would have been half so good seen from the sofa. Set in the very early 1950s, and based on a Japanese classic movie, it is very quiet and restrained, portraying a world when we British were much more like the Japanese in our formality and elaborate manners.
The price of admission is justified by the opening credits alone – archive colour film of the London of almost 70 years ago, red buses among great dark buildings, a totally British city that I just remember, now as lost as Atlantis.
And what follows is a rather moving warning to us all of how very small acts of laziness or simple negligence can do vast damage, and of how equally small acts of goodness can transform the world. Do see it.
Last week I saw Living, a small, modest but powerful film featuring that lovable actor Bill Nighy (pictured)
Our ridiculous delusions of grandeur
Look, you cannot simultaneously be bankrupt and a great nation. Now we are in this mess, don’t let a good crisis go to waste. Admit that we have messed things up and put them right while we still can.
Surely it is obvious now that our fantasy that we are still a great and powerful country, whose NHS is the envy of the world, is ridiculous self-delusion.
Yet if we recognised the truth, we could be a much more contented place. Think smaller. Do better.
Now that we’re broke, we should cancel the absurd and futile HS2 railway, and instead rebuild the rail network we destroyed in the 1960s, with trains that do not go especially fast, but do at least turn up on time. We could also solve most of our urban transport problems by putting back the trams.
We do not need to replace Trident, a Cold War superpower weapon. We are not a superpower. Israel, which faces a real existential threat from its enemies, does not waste its money on such things – but even so maintains a small, effective nuclear force, as we could do.
Now that we’re broke, we should cancel the absurd and futile HS2 railway, and instead rebuild the rail network we destroyed in the 1960s. Pictured: artists impression of an HS2 train
As for the shambling NHS, envied by nobody except perhaps some parts of the Third World, when will there be a better opportunity to admit that it has failed?
There are plenty of alternative ways of caring for the sick. It is ridiculous to pretend that the only choice is to adopt the equally bad American system.
I’d copy the French, whose health provision is rated the best in the world by the WHO, and where (for example) they long ago abolished open wards and gave everyone in hospital a private room.
I write on Pages 34 and 35 today about the tragic mess we have made of our schools and universities.
Again, as in so many other fields of endeavour, if we recognise that we are not the best in the world, we might end up with something decent. But carry on with the fantasy, and we will go down the plughole.
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