DIARY ALAN WATKINS
There were the usual complaints at Truro from Labour and Alliance politi- cians about 'cuts in services'. Only one, as far as I know, has seen — and said — that Mrs Margaret Thatcher's Britain depends on a strong Welfare State. He is Mr Tony Henn, who is rather out of fashion these days. There may or may not have been cuts in education, health and roads program- mes. What seems to have happened is that the extra money has gone to the employees rather than to the customers. But what is indisputable is that unemployment has been made bearable, probably violence kept under the lid, by social security and the dole, supplementary and unemploy- ment benefit. These have been paid for through the sale of North Sea oil and of public assets. The oil has gurgled down the plug hole to pay for Mrs Thatcher's unem- ployed. Meanwhile she and Lord Young are trying to turn us into a 'service eco- nomy'. As Mr Paul Barker wrote the other day, this really means that young persons will be underpaid to sell disgusting ham- burgers to other young persons, more Young persons being employed to clear up the mess afterwards.
Sunken ships symbolise eras in a way in which incinerated aeroplanes do not. The Titanic evokes the innocence, vulgarity, wealth and optimism of the years before the First World War more powerfully than the war itself. The Torrey Canyon encapsu- late the mid-1960s, the high tide of Wilson- Ism, with its special committees which somehow disappeared before they had been constituted, and its initiatives which trickled into the sands. The Herald of Free Enterprise is almost too perfect a summa- tion of the Thatcher years, with their strident commercial competitiveness and — a curious phenomenon clearly observ- able in the passengers on the Channel ferries — their combinatidn of private affluence and, equally, private squalor. It may be noticed that maritime disasters of this nature do not end the era sharply but simultaneously typify it and mark the beginning of its end. On the precedents, therefore, Mrs Thatcher is depressingly safe for another two or three years.
Saturday's England and Wales match Was the nastiest encounter in this series since Mr Paul Ringer of Llanelli was sent off at Twickenham in 1980 after 15 mi- nutes. It would not necessarily have im- proved matters on this occasion if PC Wade Dooley of Fylde had been sent off after five. He should have been dismissed from the field, nevertheless, as an act of abstract justice. We know what happened: he is in no position to assert that the defendant broke his nose, fractured his cheekbone and damaged his eye by unfor- tunately falling down stairs at the police station, your worship. I am sure that on the beat at Blackpool PC Dooley is the gentle giant so beloved of our popular prints. But, after the almost equally brutish French match two weeks previously, it was man- ifest that he and some other English forwards should be either dropped or told to mend their ways. It has been evident for much longer that Mr Richard Hill of Bath is quite unfitted to be a national captain. Principally I blame the selectors and the coach, Mr Martin Green. The concentra- tion on brute strength and on 'psyching up' — raised, clenched fists, 'We're going to win,' and the rest of the nonsense — which England now particularly favour was bound to lead to the scenes we witnessed at Cardiff. What is remarked less often is that the forwards are not only fitter but fatter, accordingly more prone under the laws of physics to do one another serious mis- chiefs. When England last beat Wales at Cardiff, in 1963, their prop Mr Nick Drake-Lee of Cambridge was 12st 71b. Today his equivalent, Mr Gareth Chilcott, the Japanese wrestler from Bath, is at the same height of 5ft 10ins more than five stones heavier.
In last week's Spectator Mr Peter Jenkins took me and two other friends to task for not writing columns or articles about the Labour Party's discrimination against jour- nalists working on Mr Rupert Murdoch's papers. I plead guilty, up to a point. Mr Jenkins raised the matter with me over lunch (not the one which Mr Roy Hatters- ley unprecedently declined to attend). I promised to write something but, in the event, did not. I had previously attacked, on this page, the Labour local authorities that were refusing to take Mr Murdoch's papers, and would have written similarly about Labour and the journalists if I had still been doing the Diary. But the subject did not — does not — seem to me to justify an entire column. It was a silly episode which displayed the humbug of the Labour Party. The affable Mr Michael Jones of the Sunday Times still frequented the par- liamentary lobby and Annie's Bar, where he was treated (in all senses) with reciproc- al geniality by the most senior and re- spected members of the People's Party. Likewise with other Murdoch journalists, both at Westminster and in the conference hotels. At the Fulham and subsequent by-elections, the exclusion was simply dis- regarded by the party. But the lobby journalists were humbugs as well. When Mr Neil Kinnock first announced the pro- scription, the lobby chairman rightly announced that it was against the rules and that Mr Kinnock would no longer be welcome to address meetings in the lobby room. The lobby then reconstituted itself to meet weekly at 5.15 in the Leader of the Opposition's room, under the chair- manship of Miss Patricia Hewitt. She has the distinction of being the only person to have reported me to the Press Council, for something I wrote about the NCCL. The result was a draw.
Since last autumn we have had a ginger tom, who was given to us by the people next door as a kitten. He is the first cat I have had for over 30 years. He is less affectionate than curious and gregarious, following me around the house, with a special fascination for running water, in bathroom and kitchen. Visitors, after admiring his looks, usually go on to say: `Of course you'll be having him . . .er. . .?' `No,' I reply. 'He has his life to lead just like everyone else. Besides, I want a proper animal.' But he'll make an awful smell.' Worse things in life than smells.' Women are especially keen on castrating cats. There is, I read in the papers, a poor, crazed former model, Miss Celia Ham- mond, who collects passing cats, castrates them if they are male and then maintains them in her residence. I doubt whether picking up, mutilating and imprisoning domestic animals is lawful. After all, they may belong to somebody else. Vets are also enthusiastic castrators. They are cer- tainly rapacious chargers of fees. Our local man had the brass neck to charge £18.50 for a flu injection. This means that I should be better off administering six cat injec- tions than writing this entire Diary. Most of the people taking their pets to the surgery were manifestly not affluent. If Mr Kinnock wishes to regain some popularity, he should promise to bring domestic anim- als within the health service — or, better still from the viewpoint of his PR people, to establish a separate Dumb Friends' NHS. That will be yet another subject for Mr Bryan Gould to supervise.
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