Notebook
It is not the first time that a tiny country courtroom has been the setting for exciting events. A colleague who was there recalls the confusion eight years ago when the WI, odd's press descended upon a little courthouse in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, for the inquest into the death of arY Jo Kopechne, who was drowned in an Incident involving Edward Kennedy. The s;Inie intense press competition preceded the start of Jeremy Thorpe's committal Proceedings at Minehead in Somerset. Last week the Sunday Times was in a terrible fdither. The Clerk of the Court, perhaps eeling that a newspaper expected to suspend publication within a couple of weeks should come low on his list of priorities, had rejected the paper's application to be repr1.sented and refused to receive any calls .„9n1 its representatives. But the Sunday Inies journalists, despite their under s.tandable collapse of morale and feelings of Increasing bitterness towards their own tbill,anagement, were — like the Rhodesian — continuing to sustain a posture of ousiness as usual'. Their paper was only admitted in the end after having to plead its r,ease in front of the magistrates. The Spec'iaior, naturally, is represented by my cole,agne Auberon Waugh, who will be writing auout it all in due course.
Me the evidence reported on the first .'w0 days of the proceedings was of a nature t_ct justify the Daily Mail's description of the tat as 'the case of the century'. At any e, it brought home the extraordinarY PLt.essores which the former Leader of the illiberal Party must have undergone and th"t continue to undergo. It is an awesome i °tight. Those who have been deeply in Were in this business for a long time 70ere less impressed. The principal novelty Gr them was the passing mention of Lord a_oodreare Otherwise, the Crown's case uncl Mr Bessell's evidence appeared to add pP_ to little more than a re-run of The El'..ncourt File. Indeed, one of its authors, Mr grrY Penrose, sat in front of Mr Waugh tenhfsc. ientiously ticking off each pass age in TZ Book as it was dealt with in court. 0°rPe, understandably, has been looking sombre side. A brave attempt by him 12;1 the second day to entertain the press „ _nth with a few smiles and gesticulations G"'ts brought abruptly to an end by the rdian 's correspondent, Mr David who unkindly blurted out: 'Oh my • He's putting on his showmanship act!' has been one of those weeks in which gews, read News, for a change, cry out to be N • ews, it is well known, refuses to It space itself out for the convenience of editors. It comes in sudden indigestible dollops. Although not .quite in the same category, Tuesday presented editors with a problem not dissimilar to the one which they faced on 5 October 1964, when, on the same day, Harold Wilson won the election, Khrushchev was replaced as the Soviet leader, and China exploded an atomic bomb. In normal times, it would be hard to imagine any story forcing the extraordinary mass suicide in Guyana off the front page of a popular newspaper. And on top of all that, there was the tragic Mining accident in Yorkshire. Talkingof Guyana, it is hard luck on the Maharishi that religious cults should have fallen into such disrepute. There are, of course, no similarities between the obnoxious People's TemplepfJim Jones and the peace-loving Abbey of Transcendental Meditation, which is not anyway properly defined as a cult. But the people of BuCkinghamshire may nevertheless feel some irrational unease at the news that Mentmore is to become a centre for the Maharishi's international activities.
The most blood-curdling, to me, of all the revelations brought home by Mr Nikolai Sharygin after ten years of unjustifiable imprisonment in the Soviet Union was the news that convicts in the notorious Vladimir prison north of Moscow are busy manufacturing souvenirs for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. If there were not already enough reasons for boycotting these Olympics, this should be a decisive one. There is something uniquely horrible about setting Russian dissidents to this task. 'Before all things,' wrote Baron de Coubertin Lfl launching the modern revival of the Olympic Games in 1894, 'it is necessary that we should preserve in sport those characteristics of nobility and chivalry which have. distinguished it in the past, so that it may continue to play the same part in the education of the peoples of today as it played so admirably in the days of ancient Greece.' In the workshops of Vladimir prison the decline of the Olympic ideal has reached its nadir. The size of the modern Olympics means that only totalitarian countries obsessed with national prestige — countries like the Soviet Union — may in future be willing to play host to them. It is time, as the Spectator has said before, for a major reform. Perhaps part of the answer would be to restore the Games permanently to Greece. They would have to be drastically reduced in size, and sporting bodies throughout the world would have to contribute to the cost.
A colleague of mine once successfully prosecuted a taxi-driver. I don't often have the stomach for that kind of thing, but last week I was sorely tempted. Taxis in London have become increasingly unhelpful in recent years. Many charge —illegally —extortionate sums for taking people home at night after public transport has stopped. And some will only carry passengers on routes which lead directly either to their homes or to the place where they will consume their next meal. At 2.00 am in Kensington I hailed a taxi with its Tor Hire' light on. The driver stopped and enquired where I wanted to go, but refused to take me because I happened to want to go not to Essex, where he was going, but about half a mile in the opposite direction. I proceeded to get in, despite the efforts of the driver to shake me off by accelerating in the manner of the start of Le Mans. He then offered —1 am not sure why — to drive me to a police station. Tired and uncertain of my rights, I gave up the fight. But a subsequent check with Scotland Yard confirmed that he had broken the rules. If you hail a taxi with its light on and it stops, the driver is obliged to take you anywhere within a limit of 51 miles.
A recent article in the Observer struck a responsive chord. It was about homework and described how excessive demands on schoolchildren during their evenings at home can inflict misery on households even to the extent of breaking up marriages. I am sure this must be true. Many children spend a long time complaining about their 'prep' before they start doing it, which already creates a strained atmosphere. Then, if their parents refuse to help them (and presumably schools do not want their parents to help them), they can become very fractious indeed. Resentment at the imposition of further work after a full day at school also results in the work taking far longer than may be strictly necessary. I think there is a strong case for abOlition of compulsory homework, except for music practice and the reading of books. Other forms of 'prep' should be supervised during school hours. Apart from anything else, it seems a little hard on small children that they should be expected to work uncomplainingly for far longer hours than would be regarded as tolerable nowadays by the adult worker.
Alexander Chancellor
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