A Spectator's Notebook

So, we are for it. I cannot say I am surprised, and indeed I feel considerably relieved, little as I have looked forward to what will be a difficult and bitter election campaign. But I do not see what alternative there was.

. Has there ever been an election held under circumstances such as these? I cannot recall one. It must therefore be unusually unpredictable. My one regret is that Mr Heath did not decide for an election on February 7, before the miners had called their strike. I strongly advocated this, and I am sure it was a mistake to wait.

Nevertheless, I predict that Mr Heath will win, and with an increased majority. Now let's forget about politics on this page for the Moment.

Wasted light

One thing the efforts to save electricity have accomplished is to show up the criminal waste — to say nothing of the insensate vandalism

Perpetrated in some country towns and villages by highways authorities acting under pressure from the transport branch of the 50-called Department of the Environment.

London has never been extravagantly lit, and the present reductions in lighting have Made driving rather more difficult and !dangerous in some streets. You have to go out into the countryside to see just how much Wanton waste there has been.

A classic example is the village of Ettington in south Warwickshire, which lies astride the 8aribury/Stratford road — a thoroughfare that carries very little traffic after dark. A Year or two ago the authorities went mad and erected very tall and very powerful yellow sOdium lamps, very close together on both Sides of the village street and even extended them at one end for a quarter of a mile outstele the built-up area. The result was a nightmare for the inhabitants and a menace to motorists, who were dazzled by the glare and then plunged into contrasting pitch blackness on leaving the village. The county

council claimed that this outrage was necessitated by the department's regulations for trunk roads.

Now only about one quarter of the lamps in thevillage are being lit at night, and the illumination of the street is just about right. It will be a scandal if the surplus lamps are not removed. And this kind of nonsense has been going on all over the place, particularly at roundabouts and road junctions. It is not only wasteful; it is also unsightly, without being particularly conducive to road safety.

Gunboat diplomacy

I have recently been sent an article published in the Wall Street Journal just before Christmas by my old friend Irving Kristol, who was once co-editor of Encounter.

A fervent Zionist, Kristol was also a very pro-British American at a time when these were pretty uncommon. I remember lunching with him in London on the day that the Suez expedition set forth, and he could not have been happier. The behaviour of Dulles and Eisenhower in the ensuing weeks made him very angry indeed.

Now, in an article headed 'Where Have All the Gunboats Gone?', he has recalled their behaviour to his compatriots and traced its consequences in the Middle East up to the present oil crisis. Remembering 1956, he suggests, American politicians have little right to blame the British and French for choosing now to rely on their own diplomatic efforts to do a deal with the oil sheikhs.

He concludes that 'gunboat diplomacy' may prove to be less a thing of the past than is generally supposed. But the only people, he thinks, who realise just how important gunboats may still be are the Russians, "which is why they are building so many of them."

Errors of speech

By way of' relief from the political campaign, I propose now to fire the opening shots in a campaign of even greater long-term importance. I hope that what I am about to say will rally support from all those who value the English language and deplore its debasement and misuse.

The present trouble began about ten years ago, with what might be considered a small and even insignificant change of fashion in our current speech. A few people — and I am sorry to say that politicians were prominent among them — suddenly started to accent the indefinite article in contexts where this was not only unnecessary but offensive to the ear. The habit spread like wildfire, and in a few months everyone called on to orate in public, from Archbishops and Cabinet Ministers to borough councillors, was doing it all the time.

"This is ay matter in which ay large number of people take ay great interest," they would say. It not only sounds ugly, it sounds wrong. Indeed, it is wrong. I thought that it would perhaps prove a purely temporary aberration, and that the misguided orators would soon weary of the fad. But it has persisted, and the only reason I can think of is that it does occasionally confer a spurious impression of weightiness and measured consideration on an otherwise unimportant pronouncement.

Not only has it persisted, but it has now led to a much worse habit, of which by far the most offensive practitioners are radio and television commentators — the sort of people who erupt into the middle of news bulletins with special stories about strikes, football matches and road accidents. The habit is that of accenting prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs in contexts where such accents are not only unnecessary but actually distort the sense.

This ghastly habit has caught on everywhere. You hear railway public address systems talking like this: "Banbury, Banbury, this is Banbury. The train now standing at platform 3 is the 13.35 for London, stopping at Bicester, Princes Risborough and High Wycombe." In the present state of the railways, the air of surprise conveyed by this announcement is perhaps less absurd than it would normally appear, but it does manage to emphasise all the wrong bits of the message.

"Conservative MPs at Westminster are now talking of an appeal to the country for a renewed Government mandate." Only the second of these accents makes any sense at all, and then only if the intention was to suggest that it represented a noticeable change of opinion. But what about this: "With the latest forecast, here is John Snooks at the London Weather Centre?" it's just plain silly.

Yet it is happening all the time on radio and TV, and even a few politicians are beginning to catch the infection. If you haven't yet noticed it, listen carefully from now on. Spot the worst offenders, keep sample counts and then write in and complain. This absurd aberration has to be squashed before it makes a total nonsense of speech communication. The flexibility and shades of emphasis in the English language must be preserved and treated with respect, not abused and made ridiculous. Rally now, before it is too late.

Angus Maude

Angus Maude's contribution of the Notebook will be interrupted during the general election campaign in which he will be defending his parliamentary seat at Stratford in the Conservative interest.