THE LAST DITCH

Blog meet oop North

For the first time in years I met James Higham of the Nourishing Obscurity and Orphans of Liberty blogs for lunch and drinks (Virgin Marys for me on my health regime) this weekend. I am visiting family in my home town in North Wales. Wanting to catch up with James and — given some alarming posts he has made about his health of late — check up on his well-being, I took the opportunity to meet in the nearest English city, just across the border.

James blogs so eclectically that the inside of his mind is well known to his readers. Some of them may even feel they know too much! This is something of a paradox as he’s such a private person when it comes to the external details of his life. It’s one of the interesting aspects of our online community that someone who knew almost all of his innermost thoughts and beliefs (and not a few of mine) could walk by our table in the charming pub where we spent our happy hours together without knowing who either of us was. 

He was in good form and full of adventurous plans for the future. We had a convivial meal and gossiped a little about people we know. Mostly they are bloggers from the brief golden age of the ‘sphere before Twitter coarsened the online world, removed much of its good humour and brought it under the dangerous, authoritarian gaze of the establishment.

We also reminisced about our very different experiences in Russia. Our times there overlapped and, at this remove of time and space, we were able to get a more rounded picture of what was going on at that interesting stage in Russian history than was apparent to either of us while we were there  

We have in common a classically liberal approach when it comes to making laws (as few as possible but rigorously enforced because so few would be the truly important ones). We are both also quite socially conservative when it comes to matters of personal ethics, family, duty and personal life. James is a Christian who trusts God to deal with others moral failings, so doesn’t need secular leaders to address them clumsily. I lost my faith years ago and though I look for it occasionally have never found it again, but my morals are essentially those of the church in which I was raised. In practice that means I feel guilty about any of my actions that the church considers would disappoint God.

I lack - and sadly miss - James’ hope for justice in the afterlife and am as painfully aware as anyone with actual experience of Man’s attempts at justice of their inadequacy. Yet like him I feel immorality (to the precise extent it doesn’t genuinely injure or defraud others) is a matter for individuals, their consciences and (if they have one) their God.

James is an eccentric perhaps to modern eyes and his tastes in music are not always mine but agree with his posts or not (and often I don’t) I have always enjoyed and often learned from his writing. He’s no angel (yet) but he’s a smart cookie (former professor) and a good egg. It was a pleasure to see him being his unique self and relishing his complicated life. 

UPDATE: James blogged about our meeting here. 

Postmodernist truth

To oversimplify post-modernist moral philosophy (or more accurately, amoral philosophy) there is no objective truth. One's stance in relation to the world is determined by one's class, sexual, gender, ethnic and other "identities" and – in the most up-to-date version – by the intersections between them. I may deceive myself that my view of the world has been developed by the application of my education and my reason to my experience, but in the "there is no truth" truth of the "woke", I think what I think because I am what I am.

This idea is a smidgen of truth taken to an absurd extreme. Of course one's life is shaped by one's experiences. Any political canvasser will tell you that he can have a good guess at the likely response of potential voters by where they live, the car they drive and how they present on the door step. Had I been born into another family in a different set of circumstances, then yes –  I would have trodden a different intellectual and moral path. Those of us who cling to the ideas of my namesake's era – the Age of Reason – do understand that our background, educational opportunities and experiences have a role. We simply consider there is a moral duty to strive – by reading, study, travel, discourse and whatever other opportunities present themselves, to transcend our experiences and strive for objective truth. We are not saying it's easy to find, but we believe that it's "out there".

It's a more optimistic philosophy, I submit. Whatever your origins, privileges or dis-privileges, you can strive for truth in our world-view. Unless you are of the elect however, post-modernism leads only to despair. You are as lost to hope and opportunity as the merest medieval serf. Your opinion counts for as much as that of a slave in the ante-bellum American South.

Born into the intersecting "privileges" of being white, male and – while not rich – not poor, what I think therefore counts for less than naught. There is no way for me to live blamelessly, let alone virtuously. The closest I can come is to "be an ally",  "stay in my lane", "shut the **** up" and listen humbly to my superiors. The post-modern West is in this respect at least headed for a new Dark Age.

Let me be clear that I do not seek to cast myself in the role of a victim here. I am lucky enough to be able to laugh at this analysis. I am financially independent and fear neither employers' nor customers' opinions. I thoroughly enjoy the discomfiture of the "woke" in my circle when I opine freely. I have fun asking them to justify their preposterous faith (it's not really a philosophy, as not only has it no rational basis, but it denies the possibility of such a thing).

One of the ways in which I keep my mind alive in retirement is by studying things for fun. A local novelist has been conducting writing classes for beginners and (though I have no intent of going into print) I have been attending for the stimulation of it. This morning a fellow-student was telling us about her novel. She has written a thriller informed by post-modern "wokeness". Her main protagonist is a privileged white male who thinks he is "woke" but isn't and the story is about his dangerous journey to true understanding.

She described him as "working in the public sector" (which she clearly thought made him a moral superior of those who pay to fund it) and "aware of social justice issues." However he has no genuine understanding of how privileged he is and how his life-choices impact others who are less so. As an example, he casually looks down upon young black men in his city caught up in drug-dealing criminality but has no idea that his cocaine habit is a cause thereof.

Before you pile in, gentle readers, with critiques of this unpublished work, let me explain why it has (despite its right on-ness) yet to find a publisher. Everyone to whom she has sent the manuscript has responded in similar ways. They like the story, but they don't know why she – as a young black woman – has written it. "You don't have to write like this any more", one publisher said. "We want novels from the point of view of people just like you" said another. I smilingly observed that they had told her to "stay in her lane", but sadly she didn't get the joke. I didn't add that they wanted her to stay on the metaphorical plantation and think as her skin colour predicts. I think that jibe would have ended our budding friendship.

She is right on. She is woke. Her stance towards society is politically correct but – as a creative – she has made the fatal error of attempting empathy. It is almost as shocking for her to animate a literary puppet of a white man as it would be for me to animate one like her. Which in the anti-wonderland of wokenes is not crude, pathetic racism but in the real world is.

Isn't empathy the whole point of creative writing? How limited we would all be if we couldn't inhabit the minds of others through their stories, poems and plays. How limiting it would be to see the world only through our own eyes and interpret it with only our own judgement. But the highest literature involves a truly creative mind attempting to inhabit the personalities of a variety of other humans. Every character in Austen, Dickens or Tolstoy is informed by the author's experiences and often based on the people she or he has met, but they are not all Jane, Charles or Leo in disguise. How wooden would they all be? Actually you can answer that question (painfully) by reading the "novels" of Ayn Rand. Her characters are a series of stick figures declaiming her ideas from a pulpit. Her books work well enough as the political tracts she should have written but fail epically as literature because she had no empathy.

I liked my new author acquaintance. Her different viewpoint won't disqualify her, if she's interested, from becoming my friend. I have offered to shoot the author picture for the dust-jacket of her novel when she gets it published. I hope she will because I would like to read it. It's my duty (and often pleasure) as a rational man to refine my own understanding by learning how others see the world. It's a good job I am not going to write my novel though, because by her rules it would certainly disqualify me from friendship!

Happy New Year, gentles all!

It has been an interesting year, politically and personally. The nation is divided. It seems many of the things we thought we had in common are no longer there.  The verbal ferocity against the majority of us who voted for Brexit has confirmed that our decision was correct. It has even changed the minds of some who voted “Remain”, but has made us fear for our future in new ways. I have seen real hatred in the eyes of posh, mild-mannered West Londoners when I’ve told them I voted “Leave.” People who have neither been involved in international trade nor co-owned a pan-European business with people from most EU member states. People who don't how the EU works. People who still deny its ultimate goal - the creation of a federal state with a single tax base, economic policy, criminal code, foreign policy and army. 

In all the years we have been in the EU, I never heard anyone from Britain praise it. It was “flawed” or “misguided”  but, of course, always “misrepresented” as a political project, when it was the merest of economic pacts. Its keenest advocates said that, for all they shared my concerns, “on balance”, we should stick with it. There was never any passion at all. Certainly none from which I could ever have predicted the passionate hatred its bloodless “supporters” revealed for us when we voted “the wrong way”. 

In truth their passion is still not for the EU. It is against the ordinary people of Britain with our irritating patriotism, our belief in self-reliance and our annoying desire for our distinctive voices to be heard. The EU never needed to be worthy of their support on its merits. They would have supported ANY project, foreign or domestic, that would allow them to ignore us and routinely override our wishes.

That’s why they so often blamed “Brussels” unfairly for laws they actually welcomed. It allowed them to mask their hostility to us while hypocritically blaming “Johnny Foreigner.” In their contemptuous and inaccurate view of our patriotism they thought that would play well. It should have come as no surprise that their agent Theresa May thought she could give away every other advantage of leaving the EU – including the right to govern ourselves as an independent nation – if she only gave us immigration control her successors could quietly waive. After all we’re just racists, right?

It has come as an enraging shock to them to find it’s not enough for "the people" to be brandished as a talisman by members of the establishment while they pursue their own interests. Their mask has slipped. Their hatred of us has been exposed. All hope that, even after a flawed debate in which the entire apparatus of the state was improperly deployed for “Remain” and the full weight of the establishment and its lickspittle media brought to bear to persuade us, we might now unite as a nation around a democratic decision seems lost. 

Chesterton's Secret People have spoken, but we have still not been heard. 

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

I still hope that we will exit on time with a true Brexit; not “Brexit in name only.” That hope is founded not on their principles, their patriotism or their respect for their fellow citizens but their incompetence. They overplayed their hand in calling the referendum. They overplayed Project Fear — achieving reductio ad absurdam without any help from their opponents. They continue to underestimate us by conspiring clumsily with the other side of the withdrawal agreement negotiations. 

All we have learned since the referendum is that our ruling class despises us, our democracy comes second to their wishes and that voting may be as pointless as it has always felt. There is no leader in sight to unite the nation. The Conservative Party seems likely to disappear into history, leaving free marketeers without even that despicably unreliable voice. 

Things look bleak politically and yet I am optimistic. Unlike my would-be masters in the establishment I lived a life in business. I am confident that in boardrooms and partners meetings all over the country, calculations have been made as to how to profit from the change to come.  Business and trade is done despite politicians not because of them. I know that every major British financial institution (and many a minor one) is already inside the “passporting” regime and ready to drive its business forward by selling services that were never bought from love. If it depended on the competence of the kind of parasites attracted to government service, the British economy would have died long since. It doesn’t, it hasn't and it won’t. 

What does concern investors is the prospect of a Corbyn government. While Remainers say Brexit is driving house prices down, at the top end of the London market those who know say it’s him. Our capital is the bolt hole of choice for those from lesser lands without the (rule of) law. It’s not our cuisine, climate or low cost of living that has them owning homes here but the independence of our judiciary, which will not deport them and/or seize their assets when their tyrant rulers demand it (and our craven elite would cheerfully comply in return for corrupt favours). Since Magna Carta “be you never so high, the law is above you”. That’s our unique selling point as a place to invest, as a conduit for international investment, as a place to adjudicate disputes fairly, as a safe refuge for wealth and - in a pinch - the wealthy in distress. However the mobile wealthy are not dumb (or if they are can afford smart counsel). They won’t park assets here to be nibbled away by wealth taxes or managed by advisers coerced into being secret policeman for a hostile regime. Especially one driven by an ideology that in many cases impoverished their home countries and whose consequences they understand all too well. 

Theresa May’s is a double betrayal. First, she would deny us the Brexit we voted for. Secondly she is destroying the only political force that has any parliamentarians who respect property rights and the rule of law. Her second betrayal worries me more because I don’t give the EU long, Brexit or no. Handing the UK legislature over to economic vultures for the foreseeable future is far more dangerous than delaying our escape from its rickety structure. Yet even that, though it will be costly and impoverishing, will not be fatal. Not because Corbyn will see the light, but because his ideas don’t work. 

When I began my career as a business lawyer, it was at the tail end of the last Old Labour economic shambles. Our work then was largely driven by tax structuring. It was not possible for our clients to do projects in the hostile economic environment created by Wilson and Callaghan’s regimes and our job was to find ways through the fiscal mine fields. The best legal, accountancy and tax brains in the country were ranged along a cold war front between HM Treasury and wealth creators. To trade goods and services with each other is as natural to humans as to have sex. Labour could not hold back the tide of the market where robust Canutes like Stalin had failed.

Tyranny is economically just another cost to be priced. Markets — white, grey or black — will always wash over it one way or another. My landlord in Poland had been one of the greatest manufacturers of cosmetics during the Soviet times, meeting illegally the needs of women ignored by the Communist central planners. I lived there for several years next to what had become a legal contractor to EMI for the manufacture of CDs but under communism had for years been the largest bootleg record manufacturer behind the Iron Curtain. It had supplied “decadent” Western pop to the masses though the Party sought to deny them.  In both examples the price reflected the risk of doing illegal business. As a more current example, is a single drug user going without his fix in modern Britain, for all its illegality? No. He’s just paying more for it. 

All will be well given time because the facts of economic life are Austrian. Government is not natural to mankind, it has to be imposed by force. Markets are as natural as breathing. Which is why, though I will probably live less comfortably than I had hoped for the rest of my life, I have no plans to run away. I’m a pessimist for me but an optimist for my children’s generation. 

My own personal life has been interesting, complicated and ultimately fulfilling this year. I’m getting married again on the 26th of next month and I look forward to continuing to enjoy everyday life with my friends, my family and my new wife. Politics intrudes, often unpleasantly, but the world moves on. We must live, love and strive for truth and happiness as if the vicious parasites attracted to ruling us did not exist. For most practical purposes, they still don’t. Even in a state as damnably intrusive as ours is, the extent to which they can hurt us is limited by the  attention we are prepared to give them. 

I urge you also to live your personal lives to the full, gentle readers. I wish you all the very best for 2019. May your lives be as free of political interference as possible. When you encounter it, don’t forget to mock it furiously and subvert it as wittily and as effectively as you can!

On becoming less of a man

I am just 100g away from losing 50kg this year. I am off to the pool to swim some more to see if I can make this happen by my “official” weekly weigh-in on Wednesday. 

 

My ultimate goal, by June 30, 2019, is to lose 68 kg. Even then, by government guidelines, I will still be 12kg “overweight”. 

 

Me, the Welsh rugby team and many other males of athletic build so to hell with government and its guidelines. Not just in this respect neither!

 

Politics is show business for ugly people and government is violent extortion for those too cowardly to use their own fists. 

 

Damn them all! I am looking forward to fitting comfortably into my gilet jaune in readiness for when that time comes. 

A road trip to Northern Ireland

I returned yesterday from an impulsively-organised road trip to Northern Ireland. For those of us who grew up during the Troubles, it's not an obvious tourist destination. The names of its towns and villages meant nothing to me but violence and – Giant's Causeway apart – I had never seen a reason to go. However, the future Mrs P the Second's sister was visiting Ireland and is a fan of "Game of Thrones."  The series was mostly filmed in a studio on the Belfast Docks and on location around Northern Ireland so we decided to meet her there and visit some of those locations.

It was a frivolous idea but it led to some good fun. Mrs P2-elect and I crossed from Birkenhead to Belfast on the 1030 sailing on Friday. I wasn't too happy that Speranza travelled on an outside deck, exposed to weather and spray, but the passage was calm and agreeable enough, if a little boring. We landed on Friday evening at 1830 and were safely at our modern hotel near the docks by 1900. Within minutes we were changed and in a taxi to a splendid restaurant recommended by my cousin in the catering trade. She had told me that the chef was on the cusp of his first Michelin "macaron" and after our experience there, I can believe it.

We met my fiancee's sister's train from Dublin at the railway station on Saturday morning and set off on our (as it proved) over-ambitious tour. Our first stop was Cairncastle, where the scene in which Ned Stark lived up to his motto that "the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword" was filmed. The photo below shows Speranza near the place.


A nearby hotel features one of the "Doors of Thrones". These are made from wood from trees at the Dark Hedges (itself a GoT location – see below) felled by Storm Gertrude in 2016. Local tourism promoters turned damage to one tourist attraction into ten new ones – all at pubs or hotels near to a location used in series six. All the locations can be found here. 

From there we drove to the Cushenden Caves at Ballymena. They are open to the public but the locals didn't seem keen for us to find them. There are no signs until you have actually arrived. We persisted however and duly saw where the Red Priestess gave birth to the shadow creature. We lunched at a pub across the road before striking out, this time with the roof down, for Murlough Bay. 

This location stands in for the region of Westeros (the fictional continent where most of Game of Thrones is set) known as Pyke. Inevitably, as GoT is set in an alternate medieval reality, there's little to see but windswept hills and ocean but our tour was getting us out into some beautiful scenery and involving us in lots of healthy outdoor exercise. The roads to this remote spot were not (unlike the winding B roads we enjoyed for most of the trip) ideally suited to Speranza but she coped.

From here we drove to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge which features in GoT as the scene of the killing of Balon Greyjoy. 

We arrived too late to buy a ticket to cross the bridge, which was a disappointment, but made the walk there and back anyway to take a look and make some pictures. By this time night was falling and it was too late to go to our main destination for the day the famous Giant's Causeway. As we drove back to our hotel in Belfast however, we came up with a plan to return the next day.

We also had the chance on our way back from the rope bridge to park up near the Dark Hedges. My camera can shoot at very high ISO and so I was able to get one of my favourite shots of the weekend in near-darkness. Had we arrived in daylight it would have been crammed with tourists spilling off the coaches that were leaving as we arrived. As it was, it took me seconds to Photoshop away the few stragglers that remained.

After breakfast on Sunday morning, we drove directly to the Giant's Causeway. On well-maintained and (by English standards) lightly-used motorways and A roads it was a different experience from Saturday. The miles ticked away quickly and we arrived within 50 minutes or so despite a refuelling pit stop. The attraction is natural and free, but the National Trust is in charge and determined to rake in the cash. Essentially it charges £11.50 per person to park and kindly allow access to their gift shop and cafe where its polite and helpful staff can relieve you of more cash. The "visitor centre" is modern and magnificent and we did plan to spend some time there so as the NT is a charity and mostly (despite its political correctness and priggishness) does a useful job we decided to pay up with a smile. If you were minded to be more frugal you could drop your passengers at the entrance to the car park and they could walk for free to the Causeway. If you wanted to be really frugal, you could park the car down the road and walk in. There's nothing in the gift shop or cafe that you couldn't get online or nearby from some private business or other.

Giant's Causeway

click to enlarge

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After exploiting the NT facilities we had paid so handsomely to use,  we set off for nearby Dunluce Castle, a ruin that stands in for Castle Greyjoy in GoT, but is an interesting enough attraction in its own right. The owners clearly think so as, despite the constant GoT chatter of their visitors, they make nothing of the connection to the show. 

We then had a late lunch in the nearby town of Portrush, before heading south again towards Belfast. We had hoped to visit another GoT location, Shane's Castle, on the way back but it is part of a working agricultural estate and is only open to the public for special events. So we called an end to our GoT tour and returned to town to visit the famous Crown Bar and then the cafe of the Europa Hotel (bombed 36 times during the Troubles but a pleasant enough place to pass an hour these days).

From there we dropped our guest at the station to return to Dublin and we set off to wait for our ferry home and a good night's rest at sea before a pleasant drive home to London. Given our early start – disembarking at 0630 – and a single pit stop to refuel at a motorway service station, we were home  before 11am.

Two disappointing conversations

This week I had two conversations; one with a valued and respected friend and one with a total stranger. I found both of them profoundly disturbing. 

My friend is Jewish. In the course of a conversation over lunch he told me that he and his wife have decided to leave Britain if Jeremy Corbyn becomes our Prime Minister. Not to avoid the avalanche of new taxes to be expected from an authentically Marxist Labour government, but because he is afraid that the growth of anti-Semitism will at best go unchecked, and at worst be encouraged, by Corbyn's government.

Think about that for a second. One of Britain's best claims to be the most civilised nation in Europe is that there have been no pogroms here since that at York in 1190. I have never heard an anti-semitic remark from a British person in my life. I am sure we must have the occasional nut-job who harbours hatred for the Jews, but have never met one. Given that for a while, I was a partner in a predominantly Jewish law firm, I have had better than average chances of doing so.

I am proud of the fact that Britain has been for centuries one of the safest places in the world for a Jew to live. I was shocked to hear my friend express his fears.

This is no shrinking violet neither. He is a distinguished lawyer; a former partner in another City of London law firm. He has a fine mind, strong principles and a courageous, forthright character. He is a clear thinker and a tough negotiator. He is not a man to cut and run, so I do not dismiss his concerns at all. He is making a rational calculation. 

The second conversation was at my local petrol station. A well-dressed young black man driving a newish Audi accosted me as I refuelled Speranza. He felt I had cut him up at a nearby roundabout and had followed me to offer a critique. I don't believe his assessment was correct but let's pretend he was right because that doesn't affect my point. The conversation ran as follows (and I am rather proud that I stayed so calm);

"Do you know who a roundabout works?"

I think so, yes. Why do you ask?"

"You didn't give way to me back there"

"Really...?"

"As soon as I saw the car [pointing to Speranza, my Ferrari] I knew it would be driven by an ugly c**t and here you are"

"What did you call me?"

"You heard. An ugly c**t" [He then spelled the C word out, letter by letter]

"Charming"

"That thing [pointing to Speranza]. It's to replace a tiny d*ck. That's what it's for. Your d*ck is tiny"

As he turned to storm off, I finally lost it a little and called after him

"What kind of man speaks to a stranger like that, you uncultured bastard". 

His anger was genuine enough but it was not righteous. My impression was that I was the object of his hate not because of what I did but because of what he thought I was – rich, old "gammon". Outside the ranks of fundamentalist religions, only social justice warriors can behave so badly with such a righteous demeanour. This man was of the Left; consumed with envy and identarian anger.

Before you leap to a wrong conclusion, I an not seeking to join the identity politics jamboree. Far from it. The only "protected characteristic" I aspire to or recognise is "Human." Nor do I want legal protection from mere words. In the end, though I think he hoped I would offer violence so that he could beat me up, he did nothing but call me names. When I refused to rise to his bait (carefully calculating about how it would look on the petrol station's CCTV cameras, if I am totally honest) he walked away without converting his assault into battery.

He was throwing a tantrum like a spoiled child and a better come-back than I found in my distress would have been to laugh and ask him;

"What are you? 12!?"

What connects these two incidents apart from incivility and threat of violence? The politics of identity. An imperfect but, generally, safe country is becoming angry, violent and dangerous because the members of the British Left, in common with their comrades throughout the West, have deliberately fomented division. Their forerunners' attempts to turn class against class having comprehensively failed, they have spent the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall (and some of them have spent far longer) trying to set race against race, sex against sex, faith against faith and so forth. That explains the anger of the young man with the Audi. He saw in me, not another human, but a category of oppressor. My driving error (real or imagined) gave him an excuse (as he would see it) to express his righteous contempt. His conduct was that of a medieval knight encountering – and expressing his scorn for – an actual villein; that is a person of an inferior class.

That, combined with the Left's quest for Muslim votes by its unholy alliance with Islam in support of the "Palestinians", accounts for my friend's calm assessment of the future for Jews on our sceptred isle. To them, he's not (as he truly is) one of the kindest, noblest and gentlest of men, but an enemy. A "Zio" to his face and God-knows-what behind his back, 

This post is not a counsel of despair. To be clear, I believe in the future of our country. To be even clearer, I don't accept the stereotyping of the "Millennials" and "Generation X'ers". I know enough of both to see through that. There are unpleasant and dangerous trends in Britain's public dialogue but I accept none of them as permanent. There are straws in the wind suggestive of public resistance to this vile brand of hate-driven, envy-driven, divisive and – yes – racist politics. But we are at a dangerous juncture in our national story and many more of us than already have need to take a stand.

We will be a poorer nation if my friend leaves. We will be a poorer nation if young Audi-man doesn't grow up to see the humanity in all of his fellow-Brits. It's up to every one of us to do our best to make this land of ours safe again.

Mindrolling in Dehradun

I spent today around Dehradun (known to the British in the days of the Raj as "Dehra" and often to the locals just as "Doon"). It's a lively city of more than half a million souls and the "interim capital" of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. The official plan is to build a new capital in the mountains, but I am told that may never happen (though the plan will probably never be officially renounced) because the politicians, officials and their families don't want to move to some soulless new town.

It's not a typical tourist destination. I'm here to visit a friend. I clearly stand out a bit from the crowd, though the attention – in this very polite country – is not unfriendly. I am just the subject of mild curiosity. After looking around a bit to get a feel of the place, I lunched with my friend at a mildly hip cafe and got another taste of Indian Indian food as opposed to the British Indian food I've been enjoying all my life. As my diet precludes carbohydrates at present, my food choices have not been entirely typical; no chapatis or naan bread, no potatoes or rice. However I have enjoyed the greater delicacy of the spices and the lighter consistency of the dishes. My friend reckons the British versions have too much tomato, butter and/or cream. Presumably our first Indian restauranteurs checked out our traditional diet and decided modifications were in order. Given the more sedentary lives we lead these days and the greater care many of us take with our diets, I reckon it's time for a reboot of British Indian cuisine but I'm sure no-one will do anything so radical on the say-so of a first time visitor on only his second day! 

In the afternoon we visited the local Mindrolling Buddhist Monastery. This was founded only quite recently – in 1965 – by monk refugees from Tibet. I know little about Buddhism but I have always found its monasteries and temples attractive, soothing places. This one was no exception, though in the heat and humidity I was not quite as soothed as I might have hoped. I enjoy a bit of sunshine as much as the next chap, but I am not constitutionally adapted to it on quite this exuberant scale. I don't think I could have coped with it at all last year when I weighed forty kilos more! Despite this, I enjoyed my wander around the extensive site. I then drank a litre of water in a shady place before grabbing a taxi back to base.

In the morning, continuing the spiritual theme, I'm visiting the Hindu holy city of Rishikesh before returning to dine with my friend's family in the evening.

A different kind of road trip

It has been a while since I visited a new country but here I am in India for the first time. Most English people think we have an idea of this place. It is writ large in our history, cinema, television and literature. We've all read "The Jewel in the Crown", right (or at least watched the TV adaptation)? We all have Indian colleagues at work or Indian friends or neighbours. We all eat "Indian food" (though mostly adapted to our tastes, apparently).

This is not a trip for Speranza. I dropped her off for her annual service before heading to the airport yesterday. I will collect her when I return to England in ten days time, fettled and fitted with an Apple CarPlay system to bring her up to date. I wanted to work in a road trip though, so arranged to transfer from Delhi airport to Dehradun by car. This was a six hour trip that allowed me to see Indian life at ground level in cities, villages and countryside. I was strongly advised not to drive here and, after my experiences today, I understand why. I am a libertarian, but Indian drivers tend more to outright anarchism. They drive on the left, mostly. If a junction is coming up on the right, they sometimes decide to get into position a mile or two early, however. If a motorcyclist in a town sets off from the right side of the road, he may just stay there. When emerging from a junction, the Indian driver's trust in fate is impressive.

To be honest, I rather liked it. The further we traveled and the more I observed the local techniques, the more I wanted to have a go myself. It would have to be in a hire car though and preferably a four-wheel drive SUV – ideally of military specification. I would also like it to have a very loud horn, because that's a more important component here than the steering wheel. From my observations today, it seems that the person with the loudest horn has right of way. The driver we encountered with a Dukes of Hazzard "General Lee" type horn seemed to take even higher priority so, ideally, my hire car would have one of those.

The motorised road users were fun enough but when we left Delhi things got even more interesting. I am used to seeing cattle as I drive through the English countryside, but only out of side windows. Here you can see them from the others too. The composure of Indian drivers, who never seem to look angry or surprised no matter how fast or erratically you drive at them is only exceeded by the bovine pedestrians and their relatives pulling the bullock carts. My driver cut in on one so sharply that I thought we must spook him but Indian bullocks are made of stern stuff. I watched him in the mirror as we pulled away and he was completely unperturbed. We also encountered a goat herd and his flock. He was one of the few Indians not clutching a smartphone, though he may have had one about his person somewhere. Nothing about his dress or his demeanour contradicted the idea that he had time-travelled in from the Biblical era. In the next village another chap – in thoroughly modern dress and clutching a cellphone – was lounging in front of his home petting a goat which seemed to enjoy being stroked as much as any pet dog or cat. It was an oddly touching scene.

My favourite road users however were the serene and elegant Indian ladies riding pillion on motorcycles – sidesaddle. As the guy in charge of the machine (safety-helmeted as none of them were) dodged in and out of traffic, they sat upright and calm, one hand resting gently on the pillion. The voluminous fabric of their outfits swirled in the wind with such graceful abandon that the fate of Isadora Duncan seemed certain to be theirs. Yet they remained as poised and stable as the Spirit of Ecstasy on the front of a Rolls-Royce – even those with a child or three in hand.

The other thing that struck me on the journey was the high value Indians place on education. There were more advertisements for educational programmes than for consumer products and seats of learning (some more impressive than others) were dotted along the route. I am told that many of the students are being exploited by scoundrels whose diplomas are not worth the paper they're printed on, but I couldn't help liking Indians for their enthusiasm for learning, however naive.

As we passed over the hills on the final approach to Dehradun, the road become rougher and yet more dangerous.  A new tunnel is being built and our route seemed to be across the construction site. This did not deter my valiant driver. He tackled the unfriendly surfaces with such vigour that he managed to get all four wheels of his clunker of a Chevrolet "mommy van" off the ground at one point. If he has been driving it this way from new, it is a credit to its makers that it only looks as scruffy as it does. It had over 160,000 kilometres "on the clock" and he seemed determined to destroy it before it reaches 170,000.

We had already encountered a couple of monkeys in the villages down below but on the hill roads, they were legion. I am no naturalist, but watching their mutual familial care at the roadside was fascinating. 

I didn't see much of Dehradun before we reached my hotel. The picture below is the view from my room's window. I shall take a tour with camera in hand tomorrow. For now, I have just enjoyed the view from the rooftop bar of the foothills of the Himalayas and my first taste (in the hotel restaurant) of Indian food without the "sneer quotes". It tasted good, but less creamy or buttery than the version for English palates. On my current diet, that suits me just fine.

For the duration of this trip, I shall not be blogging about politics. Given the mess the Government is in over Brexit, I am sure that will be as much of a relief to you as it is to me!

A corset-maker by trade, a journalist by profession and a propagandist by inclination

Five years ago today in New Jersey I stood outside the home of my hero Tom Paine, author of Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.

In his day he was known as “the most dangerous man alive” though his only weapon was his pen. So mightily did he wield it that President John Adams said “Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

He helped shape the new republics of America and France; serving in the Revolutionary French National Convention representing Pas-de-Calais, bravely opposing on moral principle (anti-monarchist though he was) the execution of the deposed King and escaping the guillotine at the hands of Robespierre by pure luck. He was “a corset Maker by trade, a journalist by profession and a propagandist by inclination.”

Washington had Paine's pamphlet The American Crisis read aloud to his troops to inspire them. It begins:

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

He is the most important but least remembered of the Founding Fathers because — though profoundly religious himself — he offended the conventional (and in the case of the slave-owners, hypocritical) religiosity of the early Americans. Sadly his influence was also lost in France, where his fan Napoleon, who slept with Rights of Man under his pillow but whom Paine recognised shrewdly as “the completest charlatan that ever existed,” overthrew the Revolution.

When I stood before the images hewn into Mount Rushmore, I was probably the only person there thinking it sad that Paine’s was not among them.

I blog under his name not because I agree with all his ideas (he was as misguided in details as he was sound on principles) nor because I consider myself his equal (though he would have insisted upon that) but because he is a hero of the cause of Liberty. Also because if he were alive today the greatest of all pamphleteers (no publication has ever reached the same percentage of Americans as Common Sense) would blog and tweet to dangerous effect. I hoped my humble writings in defence of beleaguered Liberty might exert even a millionth part of the influence his had.

If only his ideas had been as successful in his native Britain as they were in his adopted America how much better the world might be today. I still hope one day we shall bring his revolution home.

A small experience of violent orthodoxy in Britain

Your humble blogger is on a diet, a health kick, a change of lifestyle – call it what you will. Always a big chap, I have carried excess weight since my mid-thirties. The late Mrs P. used to nag me about it, with kindly intent, but I was never very concerned. Of athletic build (though with no athletic inclinations) I could carry it and it didn't prevent me from doing anything I wanted. In the six years and more since she died, however, it has become a problem. My health is still sound, but it became difficult to carry my burgeoning weight around and I realised I was on a downward spiral to serious health problems as it became more difficult to exercise. 

For two weeks in January I went to a health spa in Turkey with a similarly-afflicted friend (the Quarterback or "Q", as those who followed my Great American Road Trip tour may remember him). There I was given an eye-opening analysis of my physical condition. I was over 174 kg, including 101 kg of muscle built solely by carrying the rest about. My blood sugar was terrifyingly high and if I didn't have Type 2 diabetes (as it later proved I didn't) it would be a miracle. My heart was working so hard to keep the blood circulating around my bulk that my resting heart rate was that of a runner during a race. For all its effort my circulation was poor and my legs and ankles were swollen. I needed to lose weight equivalent to that of an entire sturdy midfielder playing for the football club I follow.

The nutritionist in charge of the spa and the doctors supervising the regime there treated me like an unexploded bomb and forbade me to use the gym. As retired lawyers, it was clear to Q and me that they were concerned about liability issues if I popped my clogs on their premises. It was sobering stuff but I took the view that essentially this was a scientific problem and that it could be fixed by controlling calorific inputs and outputs. Advised by the spa staff I swam every day. Advised by Q, now renamed "Coach" or "Yoda" for his role in all this, I also decided to play games with my own psychology.

I made a commitment to my friends on my personal Facebook page to lose 40 kg by June 30th of this year and to lose a further 28 kg (taking me to my ideal weight) by June 30th of next year. Informed by some lectures I attended on the psychology of personal change, I posted a picture of Colin Firth standing outside the Savile Row shop that features in the Kingsman movies wearing a classic English gentleman's suit. I promised I will post a picture of me wearing the same suit outside the same shop on June 30, 2019 – and cutting the same bella figura. He's a little shorter and a couple of years younger than me, but of a similar build so I think it's a realistic objective. I also showed this picture to a personal trainer at my health club near my home in West London. She laughed and said Mr Firth is a member and will be amused to hear about that. I rather hope our paths cross at the club so I can persuade him to stand by me in the 2019 picture.

I lost 5 kg on the regime at the spa, and had lost more than 10 kg by the time I returned to London towards the end of January. I have been exercising regularly and following my Turkish guru's advice on nutrition and have now lost 27.5 kg. I am well on track to my first 40 kg target. On the advice of supportive friends and family, I also joined my local Weight Watchers group. The app for tracking consumption is useful and the meetings put me under more useful psychological pressure. I attend every Wednesday morning and publish my stats on my Facebook feed. My fellow Weight Watchers are all female and embarrassingly supportive. I respond poorly to that "yay! well done!" stuff and am more incentivised by avoiding the relentless mockery I can expect from my male friends if I falter, but it's pleasant enough.

I have found the meetings a bit irritating at times however. My scientific, practical approach sits poorly with the emotional way the ladies there look at the problem. When one said she'd put on weight because her husband had upset her and so she'd eaten a cake, I suggested a healthier approach would have been to throw it at him. There was a collective intake of breath and then a couple of ladies laughed and the moment passed. This week, however, the WW group leader was inviting us all to consider how our emotions affected our weight and the resulting twenty minutes of psychobabble became difficult to bear. I was biting my tongue throughout but when the leader directly asked me what I thought, I offered a couple of observations to the effect that the science still works, however you feel about it, so why even worry about emotions?

This stimulated an interesting response. An angry old woman ('the AOW") shouted that they had listened to me (yes for less than a minute after I had listened to emotional blather for twenty!) and that I should now shut up. I duly did so, even as she testily told me that I was lucky not to experience the same emotions as normal people and that my success in losing weight was therefore lucky too. The leader came up to me afterwards to ask me if I was OK, which was kind but rather proved that she too had missed my point. This was really not an issue to me. My approach works for me and I don't give a damn whether the AOW's does or not (apparently not) or how she "feels" about that. But it was a very revealing exchange.

Margaret Thatcher once said;

Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?

One often hears people make similar complaints about the so-called Millennials – the "snowflakes" who fret so much about hurt feelings that they deny others' right to different opinions. Lady Thatcher was not talking about Millennials though, was she? And the AOW was firmly in the same "baby boomer" generation as me.  Nor are the television and radio interviewers who ask wounded victims of terrorist atrocities (or footballers who have lost matches) how they "feel" about it necessarily young. Nor, for the most part are the "outraged" columnists in quite serious journals who propose changes to legislation based on hurt feelings. While you or I believe that one is no more dead or injured if the victim of a "hate crime", many people of all ages (including the allegedly Conservative Prime Minister, God help us) believe that the irrational emotions of one's assailant make a crime somehow "worse". 

Lady Thatcher's observation encapsulates the main change in public discourse that I noticed when I returned to these islands in 2011, after nearly twenty years away. The English pride in rationality and the traditional "stiff upper lip" approach to emotion has vanished to the extent that I experience living here now as akin to being on some dreadful afternoon TV show. All media presenters are more or less Jeremy Kyle or, at best, Ellen Degeneres. Whereas as a young law student I was trained that "hard cases make bad law" and that legislation should be made in a detached spirit, not driven by the passions of those close to the problem, I now hear every day the ludicrous assertion that only victims can truly hope to understand issues and that it's ridiculous to believe that a calm, rational analysis by a detached person, "privileged" by not being in a given group of victims could lead to the right outcome.

I don't care that Mrs AOW has a different point of view to me. I actually found her emotional incontinence amusing and only mention her to illustrate my point. She's entitled to be as wrong as she likes and it's only her problem if her emotional response to a practical question has made her as unhappy as she is angry. But her determination that her emotions trump rationality and that her anger somehow validates her views tells a story about our country that, in the longer term, has to be worrying.