11111E SPECIRTOWS 110111ES
CHARLES MOORE
Now that our editor has found Liverpool on the map and made his pilgrimage of apology there. I wonder what it is about the place that means that people have to apologise to it. Many towns and cities in Britain are insulted by outsiders from time to time, but it seems to be Liverpool alone which claims the right to exact contrition. The truth is that Tunbridge Wells is abused much more often than Liverpool. Hardly a day passes without someone thinking it amusing to write about bigoted colonels in Tunbridge Wells 'spluttering over their breakfast' about some piece of political correctness. -"Disgusted" of Tunbridge Wells' is part of the national repertoire of unfunny comic clichés. In fact, Tunbridge Wells is a rather enlightened place, the only town in a 30-mile radius with good bookshops and cafes and junk shops, the nearest in the south-east you get to bohemian, apart from Brighton. Its colonels are very broadminded. Like Liverpool, it is beautiful. Unlike Liverpool, it does not have a fragile sense of self-worth.
Given that the origin and structure of the European Union owe so much to Catholic social teaching and habits of mind (Ian Paisley always points Out that it is the Treaty of Rome), it is strange that Rocco Buttiglione, nominated as security and social justice commissioner, is being blocked by Euro MPs because of his views on homosexuality. He takes his stand on the Church's teaching on sexual matters, and says that his view of what is a sin is entirely different from the question of what is a crime, and is therefore nothing to do with a public appointment. He must be right about that — and if he isn't, conscientious mainstream Catholics, Orthodox, evangelical Protestants, Jews and Muslims will all be excluded from European government. But Mr Buttiglione's own remarks do bring out the confusion that surrounds the subject. Homosexuality is a sin, he says. His Church does not teach that. Before Vatican II, the very concept of homosexuality hardly featured. 'The sin of Sodom', along with 'oppression of the poor', was one of the four sins crying out to heaven for vengeance', but that is an act, not a disposition (and one that heterosexuals can also commit). The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, produced by the present Pope, was the first to tackle the question of disposition. It says that homosexually inclined people `do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sip of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.' They are 'called to chastity', it says. No doubt such language is absolutely infuriating to a good proportion of homosexuals, but! don't see why it should prevent people like Mr Buttiglione from bossing us about in the European Commission. Another of the sins which cry to Heaven for vengeance is 'defrauding labourers of their wages'. Now that really is a serious problem in Brussels.
Uunny how subversiveness works through language whatever people do to keep it down. The word 'gay' was adapted to its present meaning to make people feel more positive about homosexuals. Among the young, it has become, as a result, a word of mild general abuse. 'He's so gay,' they say, or 'He's a big gay', and it means something like the old word 'cissy'. The newer, preferred word for homosexual is 'batty'. Time to write to the papers pining for the innocent era when that lovely word 'gay' meant homosexual.
cientists have decided that the great L./ white shark needs protection from unscrupulous traders,' says a BBC announcer. Why is it always that way round? I long for the day when the BBC reports a decision by traders to protect the great white shark, or whatever, from unscrupulous scientists. It's a much bigger problem.
f you're in a bit of a tight spot these days — criticised, impugned — the thing to do is to take refuge in Nelson Mandela. I first noticed this when Bill Clinton, in his memoirs, described the attacks on him over Monica Lewinsky and said that, like his friend Mandela, he had learnt how to forgive his enemies. In his recent, worst-selling memoirs, Greg Dyke tells us that after he was forced out of the director-generalship of the BBC following the Hutton report, he visited Robben Island, scene of Mandela's former incarceration: 'My tears flowed quietly, tears for what had happened on that horrible island, but also tears for what had happened to me in those three days in January.' And here is Martha Stewart, domestic goddess, doing time for lying about a stock-market trade. 'Many, many good people,' she says, 'have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela.' Who'll be next to invoke the living saint'? Carole Caplin? Mark Thatcher?
T n the growing row about 'access' to 1 universities, it is interesting to discover that no rejected applicant from an independent school is ever told that he or she has been turned down because of his schooling. Other reasons are always ,Oven. Yet we know that some universities have been pursuing a policy of anti-private school bias, and that the government is encouraging such a policy. So on top of the unfairness is dishonesty. The reason for this is that any applicant so discriminated against would probably have a legal human-rights remedy. How long can such organised deception be sustained?
It has been reported that several European lawyers and other experts are refusing to help with the investigation into Saddam Hussein's mass murders because he may, if convicted, suffer the death penalty. What a perfect example of priggery — the preference for being perfectly 'principled' over doing some actual good.
peter Moore (no relation), who died earlier this month, was one of those editors, not a common breed, who do some actual good. He was editor of the Grimsby Telegraph (no relation) for 20 years and trained up many of those, often on the Daily Telegraph, who are now Fleet Street's brightest and best. His greatest world scoop happened in May 1993. Norman Lamont was chancellor of the exchequer, and on the skids. Old Mrs Lamont, widow of a Grimsby doctor, lived on in the town. The Grimsby Telegraph, hearing rumours of Norman's imminent departure, sent a reporter round to his mother. Oh yes, she said, he'll resign later today. Peter had to make a snap decision that the story was reliable in order to get it into the late morning edition. He did so, and it was. In the next day's edition, the paper had another exclusive — the only interview in the world with the fallen chancellor.
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