THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

It is dreadful but true that the news that 50.000 or 100,000, or 200,000 East Pakistanis, plus or minus a few thousand, had been drowned by a tidal wave interests, but does not move, men much. It is part of the un- imaginability of certain sorts of disaster, like certain sorts of atrocity. The scale can- not be readily conceived in the mind, and the Gangetic delta is peopled, to our western minds, rather than lived and dwelt in. Once you cease thinking of people as indiViduals and instead think of them as numbers (as in this tragedy) or as targets (as did bombers) or as a disease which has to be eradicated (as did the exponents of the Final Solution) you have become a bit more corrupted. a bit more barbarised. We are none of us without such corruptions, such barbarities, although politicians and generals can be worse than the rest because of the powers we permit them.

This is not simply. or even chiefly, a wes- tern failure, or a consequent of distance making the heart grow heartless. 'The res- cuers', Kalim Siddiqui reported in the Guardian,`and the government teams usually arrive too late, when there is little for them to do. They find the problems of the area so daunting that—on past experience—they shrug their shoulders and go back to their air-conditioned offices in Dacca or Islama- bad—until the next tidal wave.'

The second estate

A bizarre moment during the election oc- curred when Mr Heath was asked at one of the Tory press conferences whether he intended to resume the creation-of hereditary peers. He replied rather stuffily that that was a matter between the Prime Minister of the day and Her Majesty. It was all some- what mysterious to me, who could not under- stand why the question was put in the first place nor why Heath should get so narked about it in the second. I assumed, being in a conspiratorial frame of mind, that the ques- tioner had some arcane knowledge of a deal or deals that had been struck between Heath and some of his supporters, who were pre- pared. in exchange for hereditary titles, to place their political futures in his hands. Discussing this with colleagues a more devious, but possibly more accurate, ex- planation suggested itself. If no more here- ditary peers were created, then inevitably over a period the life peers would become, as indeed they are now becoming, the im- portant, weighty element of the -House of Lords; and it would only become a matter of time before the hereditary peers withered away into their backwoods. And what, you might well ask, would be the matter with that? The House of Lords would have be- come a Senate, and the whole nonsense of aristocracy could thus be dispensed with.

—and the monarchy

So far, so good, the discussion went. But if the aristocracy, the estate of nobility, were to wither away, then the Crown, as not only the fount of honour but as the top of the great edifice of aristocracy would find itself in- creasingly lonely and exposed. That is, with- out an hereditary nobility an hereditary monarchy would itself become an anachron- ism, and must, unpropped, inevitably topple. Ergo, if the monarchy is to be retained, it must be supported by a continually renewed hereditary peerage.

At this stage, the discussion took on a broader aspect: Is it only a matter of time before this country goes Republican?

Why no President?

Personally, I doubt it, although I can see ex- cellent reasons why we might benefit from such a change. The politics of electing, or selecting, a President would add to the gaiety of the nation; the more excessive snobberies of the country might gradually be expunged; there would be a decline in the status of the horse and the corgi; we would not be necessarily exposed to so many speeches from the consort, children and other relatives of the Head of State; and that element of the population with polite or deli- cate consciences on such matters would be spared the offence of Conservation Year ending with the ritual slaughter of birds at Sandringham. I confess myself not to being a member of the League Against Cruel Sports, or blood sports, or whatever the out- fit is called, and for all I care Prince Philip can spend the rest of his life slaughtering birds, or stags, or fish. It is the speeches I mind most. And it's little use saying that I need not listen. I keep bumping into them, as it were, while idly watching TV.

Missy's best friend

Despite the above, I regret to say that I was caught off balance a couple of days ago, with the upshot that Missy, a niece of mine, has managed to do what I have hitherto successtully prevented my wife, children and friends from doing: that is, to install a horse in a stable of mine. It is admittedly only a small horse, and she has faithfully promised to feed the animal, hose him down, and the stable out, and so forth; and I have made it quite clear that I will have nothing to with the beast, which goes under the name of Sherry. Nevertheless it is unarguable that I have suffered a major defeat.

Free the BBC!

I see that Mr Charles Curran, the Director- General of the BBC. has been defending the sac budget; and 1 do not doubt that, in its own inimitable way, the BBC spends its vast public revenues as tidily as any other great bureaucracy and even more economically than most. It is not, to my mind, the BBC'S budget that needs defending, but the BBC itself; and the question that needs to be asked is not 'Does the BBC spend its money wisely and well?' but, 'Do we need the BBC at all?'

This great cumbersome growth was never imagined by those who set up the BBC in the first place. The BBC is trying to do far too many things for any one Director-General, however able, to supervise and to think about; and, what is more, the Bac is already too powerful and could, very easily, become in the hands of an ignorant or ill-disposed government, an instrument of massive brain- washing.

Cut television loose!

It is absurd that the overseas services, for ex- ample. which are subsidised by the Foreign Office and are therefore part of the British propaganda machine, along with the British Council and the Central Office of Informa- tion, should also be tangled up with the news services which provide the British public with independent news. It is quite unneces- sary for the various local radio stations which have recently been started up to have anything to do -with the BBC. The four national radio programmes would all be better if they were hived off also, and allow- ed to go their separate ways, each, if neces- sary. with their appropriate piece of public money. We now are down to the two BBC television channels; and these also—if we must have two publicly-financed channels— should quite obviously not only be under the same roof, but should also not be under the same direction. The only equitable way for this to be arranged would, again, be to apportion to each its appropriate share of licence (or other) revenue, and then cut both channels loose from the skirt-tails of Aunty.

Given such prudent reforms the nnc would be brought down to size: that is. its job would be to compete with Independent Tele- vision News in providing news, sports and ceremonial coveraRe for the two public tele- vision channels. Some of its chief mandarins could be found jobs running a Public Broad- casting Authority with duties and powers like the Independent Television Authority. In such a manner the actual area and amount of freedom of and in communication could be swiftly and economically. and to the general good, vastly extended.

Open and closed

Dear Peter Jay, William Davis. and all the other journalists who, when they cannot think of anything better, write 'open' letters to Chancellors of the Exchequer and so forth: Will you please stop it? The prac- tice of writing open letters is sloppy and clapped out.

Yours sincerely,

The SPECTATOR