T he abolition of inheritance tax has always seemed attractive to
me for a reason which most economists and politicians would despise: it would create a larger class of people free to do nothing without being a charge on the state. Although the work ethic is a wonderful thing, it surely benefits our culture if there are some people around who do not subscribe to it. They introduce a gentler note into society and are more likely to be independent-minded. Such people become extremely irritating if we workers have to pay for them through social security or subsidy, but they do no harm if they live off the income from their own capital. If you look at 'Recent wills' in the Daily Telegraph, you find an average of roughly 40 dead millionaires in England and Wales per week (surprise, surprise, Scottish sheriffs seem to allow dead Scottish millionaires to be more secretive and go unpublished). The fact that very few of these leave more than £3 million leads one to suppose that the really rich have worked out ways of evading the bulk of the tax. In Tuesday's paper, the chart-topper was Christopher John Rolphe Pope, of Dorchester. Dorset, who left £3,710,824, but more typical was Walter Angus Murray, of Ottery St Mary, Devon, who left £934,906, including £250 to the East Devon Pony Club. or Cynthia Joyce Rattenbury, of Barnstaple, also Devon, who left shares in her estate of £903,499 to, among others, 'God Digital (TV Channel)'. If such sums fell untaxed into the hands of individuals they would not make them plutocratic, but they would assist a certain ease. Wouldn't we all like that for our heirs, particularly if we have not enjoyed it ourselves?
As soon as the Tories launched their attack on the 'compensation culture' (see David Davis in last week's Spectator), the I3BC found a fine array of disinterested parties, such as compensation lawyers, who said what a bad thing this attack was. The statistics showed that claims were dropping, they said. As if to prove them wrong, along comes the news that the Gentle family, whose soldier-son Gordon was blown up in Iraq, has announced, through lawyers, that they are seeking compensation from the army for their son's death. There may, of course, be special circumstances as yet undisclosed, but on the face of it this is a classic case of the damage the 'culture' brings. It is inevitable that the threat of such suits makes the military take unreasonable care to protect itself. Think, for instance, of the
much-praised readiness of British troops (in contrast to the Americans) during the war last year to patrol without wearing helmets. The justification for this was that it inspired a much greater confidence in the local population, and when I went round Basra with the Black Watch after the invasion and compared it with the Americans in Baghdad, it seemed to me to be true. But berets and hackles obviously endanger soldiers more than the carapace of modern protective technology, so no doubt they will have to go.
rr he justification for the poor Gentles' 1 horrible denunciation of Mr Blair for the death of their son is that he had to fight in a conflict based on lying to the House of Commons and the country. This makes it different from the second world war, it is said. It doesn't, Even if it were true that Mr Blair lied (which I don't think it is), the political and moral failure that led to the Iraq war seems tiny compared with the mistakes made in appeasing the dictators in the 1930s. Soldiers do sometimes have to pay with their lives for the errors, even for the misbehaviour, of politicians. If they cannot accept this sad fact, they should not volunteer. Those who give massive publicity to the attitudes of the recently bereaved in such questions are actually being unkind to them.
C am Taylor-Wood's striking photographs of Hollywood stars in tears reminded me how odd it is that we generally expect the subjects of photos to smile. This is a mid-20th-century development. I can scarcely think of a single Victorian picture of a smile, and I do not believe that the long exposure is the only reason. When the future Queen Mother married the future King George VI, her mother-in-law, Queen Mary, is supposed to have criticised her for smiling at the cameras, seeing it as vulgar and false. A woman I once met who was brought up in Norway before the war told me that they were all told not to smile at people they didn't know well, for similar reasons. Now you can always tell who is the famous person in the room by the way he or she ignores the others present and smiles lovingly at the camera. How one longs for those wooden faces of old, as in those ads that say, 'Forget facts, figures?'
T ndeed, smiles are no longer enough — 1 rictus laughter is often demanded. Look at prospectuses for schools, colleges, banks, holidays, charities. On the front of our telephone book, for example, is a picture of three teenagers laughing with the hugely opened mouths that a laugh is now supposed to involve. Sometimes in such pictures the laughing kids put their heads together and seem to laugh down at you as if you were trapped beneath them on the ground. It is also considered necessary that large numbers of those laughing be black. This makes obvious sense if it is a brochure for an aid agency in Rwanda, hut! have in front of me the 'Action pack' for an admirable organisation called Action in Rural Sussex (AirS). On the first page, three of the five children's faces visible are black. In the drawing showing people happily drawing up a Parish Action Plan, five of the 23 villagers depicted are black or brown. In the advice on setting up a farmers' market, a black woman, shown serving what looks like lettuce, provides the only face. Yet the black population of rural Sussex must in fact be less than 1 per cent of the whole, and I have never seen a black seller at a farmers' market, One guesses that AirS, which does excellent, practical, non-politically correct work, knows that it will not get the necessary support from 'government' unless it ethnicises its county.
Visiting the gallant W.F. Deedes in V hospital in Ashford at the weekend (the patient is doing well, by the way), I noticed the striking boards of a firm of estate agents. Instead of the usual design of the name or initials, there were large photographs (smiling, of course) of the partners of the firm. One was a pleasantlooking woman, one was a smooth young fellow like a Tory candidate, and the third was a more thuglike man with a shaven head. If we now have a personality cult of estate agents, the expected end of the housing boom cannot be long delayed.
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