The Spectator's Notes
CHARLES MOORE Damocles was the courtier who told Dionysius the tyrant that his happiness was complete. Dionysius ordered Damocles to his banquet and sat him under a sword suspended by a single hair for the whole of dinner. I hope David Cameron is doing the same to any adviser who shows Damodean tendencies. It is absolutely true that the Tories have done well, and that their leader has done better than any of them. This is the first time since John Major won the election of 1992 that any Tory leader has passed the second big test in his role (the first being to become leader at all). But almost all the volatility in the polls in the past fortnight was Tory volatility. Labour support remains steady, and at a level which, if replicated on the day, would still win Labour the election. The rise in Tory support comes mainly from the Liberals. Mr Cameron has worked quietly but hard to achieve this, but now there is time for the party to get rid of Ming Campbell. Clegg — or even perhaps Huhne — versus Cameron would be a tougher contest for the Tories. And Labour's one success in its grotesque game this month has been to smoke out some Tory policies earlier than Mr Cameron wanted. So no, it's not 'jolly gloating weather'.
In fact, Labour is nowadays so ready to steal any policy which the Conservatives put forward that they must feel tempted to propose reactionary ideas as a tease, to see if there is anything too extreme to be picked up. What about the creation of new hereditary dukes (the title of York is taken, Mr Brown), or the restoration of the stocks on village greens? But at the same time as being copied by Labour, Tory policies are also excoriated by them, so the Conservatives need to be ready with a second barrel in each proposal. In the case of inheritance tax, it would be good to make the arrangements more philanthropic. Could you, for example, accumulate an inheritance tax exemption by giving to charity in your lifetime, piling up points for your giving from which your heirs would eventually benefit? People like doing well by doing good.
Ihad thought the phrase was 'bottling out', not 'bottling it', but either way, it derives, according to the experts, from rhyming slang. 'Bottle and glass' is a part of the body. The phrase 'losing your bottle' has, in the careful expression of the dictionary, `the connotation of temporary incontinence associated with fear'. Perhaps if anyone had known this, the BBC would have banned the words on air.
Arecent inquest recorded the death of Genevieve Butler, a woman in her twenties who threw herself from the fourthfloor internal walkway of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. I have followed this terrible case because Genevieve's parents are friends of ours. It raises many issues about the mishandling of mental health care too large to be discussed in a note here, but one smaller point should be made. When Genevieve, who was in a psychotic state, jumped, she was being taken outside to smoke, in accordance with the no-smoking policy which is now law. A great many mental patients like to smoke. If they are not allowed to do so, they become much more anxious and desperate. If they go outside to smoke, they will generally need supervision. This involves greater risk and is a waste of nursing time which could be avoided if they could smoke in designated indoor areas. There are other recent cases, I gather — e.g. a fall from a hospital window in west London and a stabbing of a nurse in Essex — where the smoking ban created extreme and avoidable strain. Smoking harms the body, we know, but can we be so absolutist when it comes to the troubles of the mind?
T t is 20 years since the Great Storm, and 1 people are rightly pointing out how much good it did for the environment. As Stephen Budiansky puts it, 'The "normal" state of nature is not one of balance and repose; the "normal" state is to be recovering from the last disaster.' It is the sudden shift of things which opens up new habitat — new light on a forest floor, a new niche in a rock, new movement caused by high winds or high seas. This being so, shouldn't more attention be paid to the beneficial effects of climate change? This week I heard some Eskimo on the radio moaning, in the well-schooled terms of victim culture, about the threat to her people now that it is possible to get through the Northwest Passage, thanks, allegedly, to global warming. But surely the change will bring advantages as well as problems. All prophecies of climate doom assume no adaptation, either by the natural world or by human beings. But adaptation there will be: it is nature's way.
Qn the night of the Great Storm, a Friday, we were on the sleeper to Scotland, and so, for the worst was in the south, we missed it. That Sunday, we attended morning service at a Presbyterian church near Loch Rannoch. It was like an Ealing comedy parody of Scottishness. The minister invited us to pray for 'the folks down south who were not insured' in the hurricane. As an afterthought, he suggested that we might also remember those who had died.
T have always loved trees, and may even, 1 occasionally, have hugged them when no one was looking. But only recently have I developed much interest in knowing about them. A new book by Will Cohu, Out of the Woods: The armchair guide to trees (Short Books) is well designed for people in my condition (though I wish its illustrations were more comprehensive). Cohu argues that it is best to see trees in winter: 'For, as with the human body, the external form of a tree is shaped by its skeleton and thinking about the latter is a help to knowing the former. Naked trees are in many cases more articulate and interesting than are trees in their cabbage-like summer forms.' It is an arresting thought. So winter woods are one great array of nudity, and we who walk in them are like art students at a life class. I shall tread more carefully.
Steve, a retired farm labourer and our neighbour, died last week. He was almost the last veteran of the second world war in our village. I asked him once if he had liked being in the army. (He served in North Africa.) 'Of course,' he said. 'You would have been mad not to like it' He and his comrades set up an excellent little local society which collected memorabilia, photographs, bits of shot-down Messerschmidts, etc. Steve was a pacific man. It is interesting, but not at all unusual, that such gentle people found uncomplicated happiness in soldiering. Strange, but true, that the war made young men unaggressive after it, and that the absence of war makes them so much more violent today.
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