Notebook

There are no doubt a hundred reasons for Slapping Mr Peter Walker, but no one has any idea which one motivated Elizabeth Young, Lady Kennet, at a meeting in Carlton House Terrace on Monday night. Nevertheless, she did slap him sharply In the face just after he had inaugurated Earthscan, a new environmental information service supported by the UN Environmental Programme. Lady Kennet may Perhaps have taken exception to his speech, Which was a shade more political than speeches usually are at official openings and on suchlike occasions. Mr Walker was naturally upset by the incident. He was to have inaugurated Earthscan jointly with Lord Kennet, who might, perhaps, have been able to restrain his wife. But Lord Kennet was ill and could not be present.

Contrary to Fleet Street gossip, the first national daily newspaper to go bust this Year was not the Daily Express but the Workers' Press. Subtitled Organ of the Central Committee of the 'Workers' Revolutionary Party', it had a rather limited audience appeal. It was also much given to lengthy denunciations of its revolutionary rivals, once taking thirteen issues to 'expose' the Class Nature of the International Socialists. All of which may explain why its circulation was seldom more than seven thousand copies per day.

The paper succumbed to standard contemporary pressures, tight credit and soaring inflation. There is a certain irony In the fact that the revolutionaries' long awaited and predicted 'crisis of capitalism' Should claim the Workers' Press as one of its victims.

The Pope's choice of Basil Hume as the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster was made on the strong personal recommendation of the Vatican's Swiss representative in England, Archbishop Bruno Heim. It did not come as a huge surprise to the monks of Ampleforth, who some weeks ago were gossiping to the effect that Archbishop Heim had entrusted Mr Norman St John-Stevas, a devout Catholic, With the task of delivering a heavy Papal Missive to the Abbot. But it seems that, for one reason or another, the letter was never taken by Mr St John-Stevas to Yorkshire, and other more conventional means were found of notifying the Abbot of the Pope's desire. It seems to have been an excellent choice, despite the fact that no monk has ever been made head of the English hierarchy before. By all accounts, the Abbot is a very nice man. He may perhaps lack the political acumen of Cardinal Heenan, but some thought that the late Cardinal carried his wordliness a little too far, and the Catholic Church could do with a more spiritual leader. There is also no doubt about Abbot Hume's genuine devotion to the cause of Christian unity, and that fact that he is a good friend of Dr Coggan can only be helpful in bringing the two churches closer together.

Hume's departure from Ampleforth leaves the Benedictine monks there with the problem of electing a new Abbot, which they are expected to do some time before the Easter holiday. There appears to be no clear successor, but one possible candidate is the present headmaster of Ampleforth School, Father Patrick Barry.

Since the last shake-up of BBC radio—and particularly since the introduction of hourly news bulletins on Radio 4 (the old Home Service)—the standard of English in use at Broadcasting House has undergone a staggering decline, as when a reporter said, of rescuers at work in a mining disaster, 'Hopefully, they will reach the hopeful hole by midday'. To some extent, of course, such barbarism can be explained—though not excused—by reference to fairly recent editorial decisions deliberately to make casualness and informality the main characteristics of news programmes. One would have hoped, nonetheless, for slightly more stringent standards on Radio 4's arts programme Kaleidoscope. Not, alas, so. One recent example was the description of a theatre director as 'well, y'know, a director who really wants to create'. The statement,

if such it can be called, was either tautologous; or supposed a common disjuncture between the two activities:Another spoke of an artist, religious in aspiration and achievement, as 'being into this Christian thing.' It was always surprising that the former Managing Director of BBC Radio, Ian Trethowan, himself a broadcaster who used English with precision, tolerated this stuff. It is to be hoped that his successor, Howard Newby, a novelist of some eminence, will correct it.

People who are shocked by Britain's decision to recognise the Soviet-backed MPLA as the Government of Angola might reflect that this does not imply any mark of favour towards the regime. The principles behind recognition are clearly defined. A regime will be recognised as the de facto government of a country if it has effective control over most of its territory and if that control seems likely to continue. International law attempts to distinguish between this and recognition de lure, where control of the country is 'firmly established.' In the circumstances, the British Government is surely right to recognise the MPLA. The decision to recognise should not depend, as a Foreign Secretai-y said in the House of Commons twenty-five years ago, 'on whether the character of the regime is such as to command Her Majesty's Government's approval.'

Governments have been known to act rather hastily in giving recognition to a new regime.. When the royalist rulers of the Yemen were apparently ousted by Colonel Sallal in 1962, America was quick to recognise the new republican 'government'. But Britain did not follow suit until much later, largely because the then Conservative MP for Inverness, Colonel Neil McLean, was travelling in the Yemen at the time and reported that the Imam remained in control of most of that desolate and mountainous territory.

In the eyes of many Conservatives, nothing damaged the Heath Government more than the decision to nationalise Rolls-Royce in 1971 and guarantee massive state support for the RB 211 engine. It was the ultimate of U-turns, the abandonment of Selsdon Man's 'stand on your own feet' philosophy, which is now to be heard again in the party. Had 'free market economics' triumphed, Rolls-Royce would have gone to the wall and many thousands of jobs, as well as unique technological expertise, would have been lost.

Five years on, Rolls-Royce have completed 520 engines under the Lockheed contract. They are worth £350 million, almost all in foreign currency. The original estimate was a loss of £195 million on 555 engines, but the company has already produced a profit of £50 million for the Government to offset against the state's original investment and will pay a seven per cent royalty on every engine in future. The engine is now recognised as one of the most successful ever designed—a tribute to British skills and workmanship deserving of far more credit than it has so far received. Even in the almost impossible event that Lockheed, as a result of its present troubles, might be forced out of business, this would not be quite so devastating for Rolls-Royce as might be imagined, since a higher-thrust version of the RB 211 has been ordered by British Airways for its Boeing 747s and Rolls-Royce earns one and a half times as much from the sale of spare parts as it does from the sale of its engines.

This story surely has a moral for the free market economists. What would have been the cost to the state in unemployment pay and the loss of earnings to the nation had their philosophy triumphed in this case? State intervention may be repugnant in principle, but a doctrinaire pursuit of market economics can surely be as disastrous as the Left's obsession with nationalisation.

Generously enough, since the event celebrates a British defeat, Britain is putting a lot of serious effort into helping the Americans organise the 200th birthday of American Independence. It is not just the visit of groups as disparate as the Covent Garden Ballet and brass bands from Welsh collieries. There are matters of great moment, like preparing rooms at the British embassy in Washington where the Queen and Prince Philip can rest for a few hours when they come in July; and the arrangement for displaying Magna Carta in the Capitol.

On the American side, the celebration is attracting mostly yawns—and some outrage, directed especially at the attempts of commercial business interests to make a killing in bicentennial year.

Among the special bicentennial goods and services on offer are: special low rate air tickets; a cake mould in the shape of George Washington's head; American Leather clothes, by the makers of English leather; a new range of Max Factor cosmetics named Red Bright and Blue; and a special fifteen-hundred-gallon septic tank made by a Californian plumbing company and painted in bands of red, white and blue.

No wonder so many Americans are calling it the Buy-centennial.

The judge in the Gay Future betting coup 'conspiracy' trial, Mr Justice Caulfield, did not seem markedly enthusiastic about the jury's verdict, which went against the accused by a majority of ten to two. Even while imposing £1,000 fines for 'conspiracy to defraud bookmakers,' the judge told one of the defendants that 'it would be absurd to classify you as a fraudulent man', remarked further that 'the degree of dishonesty was very much at the bottom end of the scale' and added that `no doubt the verdict will content the bookmakers.' We understand his reservations.

What is disturbing about the case, and the bookmakers' appeal to the law rather than pay up, is that it calls into question what has been regarded as the cardinal rule governing all betting transactions, viz, that if you cannot win, neither can you lose. Not all betting coups are successful: they depend, after all, upon the horse actually winning, which can never be guaranteed. In the case of Gay Future, while the odds were successfully manipulated and, in the event, he won easily, he had never previously raced in public over hurdles; he could have fallen or slipped at a jump (as the best horses have done) or simply felt, as these animals sometimes do, that he didn't want to race that day. The corollary of the bookmakers' failure to pay out on his victory is that, supposing he had lost, they would have returned all stakes. And anyone who believes that will believe anything.

Biologists are now convinced that, on average, the right testicle is higher than the left in right-handed men (and vice versa). But has this always been so ? Trying to find out, Dr I. C. McManus, from Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, has been scrutinising the private parts of sculptures (some ancient, some Renaissance copies) in Italian museums and art galleries. His findings, now published in that august journal Nature, suggest that right-handers were always commoner. Relevant science, indeed. What the Doctor now wants to know is why the sculptors located their subjects' testes thus. Do his disclosures represent (as he puts it), 'the true observed state of things'? Or are they a result of Greek left/right symbolism ? Long before sex discrimination laws, male children were assumed to come from the right testicle, females from the left. Higher and lower organisms ?

The pathetic Russian diplomat who filled a British army sergeant with vodka in a Kensington public house is, of course, a spy. Valentin Liachenko, assistant air attache at the Soviet Embassy, is a member of the GRU, the intelligence directorate of the Soviet General Staff, as indeed are the five other Russian assistant service attaches in London. What Captain Liachenko hoped to find out about British mercenaries in Angola that he couldn't read in the newspaper is his own affair. But the episode was very satisfying. Tribute must be paid to Sergeant John Dillon for managing to humiliate such a dreadful creature while simultaneously getting drunk at his—and the Russian taxpayers'— expense.

The Queen is due in Fleet Street next week. She has arranged to visit several newspaper offices, among them those of the Daily Telegraph, where she is expected to attend the leader conference. Lord Hartwell, so it is said, would like his admirable editor, Mr William Deedes, to turn out in morning clothes for the occasion. Happily for Mr Deedes, who is none too keen on it, the wish falls short of an instruction.