DIARY CHARLES MOORE
Eany in the week, several of us from the Daily Telegraph were given a delicious breakfast (yogurt with figs in it) by Gordon Brown at No. 11. I tried to assail the Chancellor with our claims that he is picking on the middle classes in his desire to increase public spending, but, as usual in the presence of this brilliant political steamroller, I forgot most of my killer facts as he explained how he had putan-end-to-Tory-boom-and-bust. Back in the office, however, my colleagues at the features conference left me in no doubt about their feelings. If they had been pips, they would have been squeaking. The collapse of private pensions, the prospect of more National Insurance to pay, stories of higher tuition fees at some universities and stamp duty on selling as well as buying houses, council-tax rises, congestion charges in London, and public services so bad that they spend whatever extra money they can find trying to opt out of them — the atmosphere was unforgiving.
Dear Daniel Johnson, paterfamilias of the middle-class equivalent of the Cratchits, was particularly eloquent. His large family has been mugged and burgled, and their carpets are so worn out that they have agreed to appear on television in a series called Home On Their Own, in which Ulrika Jonsson evacuates the parents from the house and gets it redecorated free according to the taste of the children. I watched last week's episode in which a likable couple from the North-east came back to find a rainforest in the bathroom, a voice-activated lavatory seat and a moose head in the livingroom whose eyes revolve when the parents start smoking. The Johnson family goes on air this Saturday. How many more middleclass people will be reduced to appearing on television before Gordon Brown recognises the extent of our suffering?
We had a lovely time staying in Aldeburgh recently with Craig Brown and Frances Welch — Brendel at the festival, swimming in the sea a few yards from their house, good talk. But nothing gave greater pleasure than the books which Craig thoughtfully left in the guest bedroom. This is the full catalogue: Kim II Sung The Non-aligned Movement is a Mighty Anti-imperialist Revolutionary Force of Our Times; Barbara Cartland Love at the Helm: The Crossroads Cookbook; Simon Bates My Tune; The Duchess of York Budgie: The Little Helicopter, Debrett's Book of the Royal Engagement; Two Lives: The Political and Business Careers of Edward Du Cann; Reg Kray Thoughts, Philosophy and Poetry; The Wit of Prince Philip; Enoch Powell Collected Poems; Chris Smith Creative Britain; Joan Collins My Friends' Secrets; Inspired and Outspoken: The Collected Speeches of Ann Widdecombe; Anthea Turner Fools Rush In; Doris Stokes Voices of Love; Roy Harity How To Pick Up More Girls; George Carey Spiritual Journey: Pilgrimage to Taize with Young People; Tim Rice Oh, What a Circus.
At Canary Wharf, where I work, there are large screens near the lifts showing the stock prices. I find my heart always lifts a little when I see the arrows glowing red and pointing down. As a human being I want prosperity for all. But as a journalist I want trouble.
The current financial turmoils are bad enough for their victims without euphemising their sufferings. The prevailing expression 'We've had to let lots of people go' is infuriating. If someone tells you he's letting you go, just say, 'Oh, that's all right. I'd rather stay.'
0 ne of the secrets of happiness is that boredom can be enjoyable. It could well be that there is nothing more boring on earth than a hunt puppy show. All that happens is that the huntsman calls his chosen young hounds out of the kennels, throws small biscuits in the air to persuade them to present themselves neatly to the judges, and then repeats the process for what feels like several hours. The judges compare the almost invisible differences of the hounds' conformation, and then the winners are announced. Proceedings end with a large tea at which the Master makes an inaudible speech. Our local hunt's puppy show took place last Sunday. It was raining and cold. The judges stood gravely apart, considering the sport's sacred mysteries under their bowler hats. The rest of us, in flat caps or, in my case, an ill-judged straw affair, gathered in the mud and complained about the climate, the government and the future of farming. Perfect contentment.
Last week, I dined at the Goklers Green home of Dayan Ehrentreu, a refugee in childhood from Hitler, and now the head of
the Beth Din, the orthodox Jewish religious court which pronounces on such questions as what is kosher. Like all truly pious people, Dayan Ehrentreu is completely undisapproving, and evinces a detached and amused interest in the doings of the secular world. He explained to me many things, such as the difference in Judaism between a priest and a rabbi, and the reason for Jewish disquiet about post-mortems. On one thing, however. I was able to inform him. He said that hunting was frowned on in Jewish law because causing deliberate suffering to animals is forbidden and in hunting the fox is torn apart alive. I explained to my learned host that it is torn apart dead, having been killed instantly by a single bite to the back of the neck. This gave him pause: may I have prompted a reinterpretation of centuries of teaching?
Dayan Ehrentreu's evening contrasted sharply with an equally unusual dinner a few weeks earlier, perhaps the least kosher of my life. My wife and I were invited to stay at Chatsworth. On the first night, each guest found himor herself confronted with a small object before each place at table. It turned out to be an Old Master drawing: Caroline had a Rembrandt, I a Claude. Nothing could trump this, we thought, and so we were interested by Debo Devonshire's air of suppressed excitement before dinner the next day. As we entered the dining-room, we saw two footmen and a burly man in a green shirt adjusting three open glass tanks on the table. In the middle tank was a handsome hen and her chicks. In each of the others was the sweetest pair of Tamworth piglets, two sleeping in their straw, two squealing excitedly. There was a slight danger that the piglets would break out and interfere with the dinner of Barbara Walters, the famed American television interviewer, who was also a guest, so the man in the green shirt bore them away after the first course. The whole thing seemed to us a high point in the history of Western civilisation.
What's going on in the Murdoch organisation? The old Don himself gave an interview to the FT recently in which he reiterated his opposition to the euro. In every other respect, however, the group is more admiring than ever before about New Labour. The Times, in particular, scarcely lets a day go by without a splash along the lines of 'Government will cure poverty by 2003' or 'Brown makes moonbeams out of cucumbers'. Have Rupert and Tony or, more thrillingly, Rupert and Gordon, reached some sort of understanding about things like set-top boxes and cross-media ownership in return for a Geoffrey Dawson-style editorial fearlessness?
Charles Moore is editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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