A Spectator's Notebook
It seems clear that his withdrawal from the race for the Tory leadership will not deprive us of Major speeches in Sir Keith Joseph's developing campaign on the re-thinking of Conservative politics in particular and the political myths of our time in general. At Leeds last weekend he laid his finger yet again on a crucial cause of the British economic malaise — the Stagnation which proceeds from overmanning in some areas of industry and undermanning in others, a state of affairs sustained by a dreadful Will to stagnation based on a philosophy of an unjustified right to work. Since Mr Heath and the Tory Whips make every conceivable effort to keep Sir Keith out of major House of Commons debates, it is clear that we can expect to hear most of his output around the country. Already there have been three major speeches, finer in themselves than the fine speeches which preceded the drafting of the Conservative manifesto of 1970 and which so deeply influenced it, and there are, I believe, more to Fome. Until the business of the wretched Heath is settled, it is desirable that Sir Keith should speak as often as possible: his.actions at least show that some part of the party is alive and thinking.
The greatest of his time
With the death of Walter Lippmann one of the brighter lights of American political philosophy went out. Lippmann had been ailing for some years, and he had been unproductive during that time. But, during a career that stretched in its effectiveness from the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Lyndon B. Johnson, the combination of insight and organisation Which marked his best work, though it deepened in maturity, never varied in its high quality of luminous intelligence. Lippmann was a deeply conservative thinker but one who, having chosen to make the newspaper column and the short book his particular channels of communication to the public and its leaders, learned to phrase his conservatism in deeply pregnant and influential phrases and constructions. He was the best friend of the Atlantic Alliance, and perhaps the only analyst of American foreign policy in this century who understood fully the true interests, cultural as well as political, of his country's friends. It is deeply to be regretted that the last years of his Writing career coincided with the folly of Vietnam, even if the deep pessimism which lay behind all his _political and educational activity Must have been confirmed by that fact. I-Ippmann had a great mind, and was certainly the greatest journalist of his time. There will not be another like him.
The Giffen paradox
The latest attempt by the Scandinavians to raise the price of newsprint is yet another blow to the newspaper industry and will probably be met with another cover-price rise. In my Private newspaper account I have noticed a curious effect as prices rise, an effect which has been recognised in economics as the `Giffen Paradox.' For instance, if the Daily Telegraph, a Paper for which I have a guarded admiration, rises in price it is the Daily Express — which May not have raised its price — which I shall cancel to effect overall savings.
The Giffen paradox contradicts, in certain circumstances, the law of demand — that less is bought as prices rise. If an article, such as the Daily Express, is an 'inferior good' in the language of Giffen, a substitution effect works so as to change demand in the opposite direction to the price change. Admittedly the Giffen observation was concerned with bread or potatoes at the time of the Irish famines and simply confirmed that more bread is bought as prices rise, contrary to the general idea that demand varies inversely with price. However, I Cannot help feeling that if Lord Hartwell and the Daily Telegraph group were brave enough to decide to raise their cover-prices steeply, they might find that they make a lot more money and drive the Daily Express and the Times, and possibly even the Guardian, out of business, even though those papers maintained their prices. The higher price may mean the greater sale.
Joke over
Nearly six months have gone by since our medical correspondent, Dr John Linklater, drew attention specifically to the problem of a falling birthrate coupled with a rising proportion of elderly citizens (Every granny a wanted granny' Spectator, July 13) but, 'at that time, the World Population Year was reaching its climax in Bucharest and our ears were ringing with the slogans of the Family Planning Association and its Countdown campaign.
Authority would now seem to have caught up with cdmmon sense, and the views then given in The Spectator are now echoed by Lord Shepherd, the Minister for Population Control, in his announcement that what we really need, if we are not to run into age group imbalance, is a population boost. We saw, after Bucharest, that the Iron Curtain countries were, in fact, increasing their populations in order to facilitate industrialisation, that the countries of the Third World were doing likewise, and that the situation in China was under good control (The great population hoax', Spectator, Sept 7). What, then, was the Countdown campaign about? Why was it necessary for Mr Dick to persuade an archibishop, six bishops and other worthy dignitaries to exhort us to pray to God to back the Family Planning Association? Would it not really be less embarrassing if the Anglian hierarchy were in future to confine themselves to traditional Christianity, instead of trying to jump on every trendy bandwagon, like a crowd of adolescent youngsters?
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