DIARY CHARLES MOORE
At about 4.45 on this Bank Holiday afternoon, our dog showed signs of being ill. He shivered and dribbled; his usually happy head sank to the ground, and after a bit he sat down and more or less refused to move, even when the normally irresistible enticement of a walk was offered. I rang the vet, who said he was just on the way to the surgery about seven miles from our house and we should bring the dog round straightaway. We did so. The vet said Jip had canine flu and gave him antibiotics. He was back home and taking his pills by 6.30.
By the following morning, he was almost well. What would have happened if one of our children, rather than the dog, had been comparably ill? Given that it was, as I mentioned, a Bank Holiday, my guess is that the first medical appointment available (even in the placid rural area in which we live) would have been about now.
The fact that human beings are treated worse than dogs by the National Health Service is probably the main reason behind the anger in this otherwise flat election. We still know shockingly little of other countries' medical systems, but we have at last realised that the NHS is anything but the envy of the world'. Many will know foreigners who get straight on a plane home if they need serious medical attention; some will know British people who go off and get an operation abroad. Almost all of us will know someone who has suffered from at least one of the following in the NHS: poor diagnosis; the neglect of the old; dirty conditions in hospital; rudeness from hospital staff; and, above all, waiting, waiting, waiting. The reason that this does not happen with vets is that you have to pay directly each time you use them. It would be fascinating to see what would happen if Labour were to promise to set up a National Veterinary Service, free at the point of use. The idea would be hugely popular (vets' bills, after all, are high). The Tories, though mumbling about its practical dangers and cost, would not dare oppose it flat out. The vets would block it only until satisfactory financial arrangements were made. The doggy/horsey/catty equivalent of Aneurin Bevan would make his name, and there would be a year or two of joy. After a short period, however, trouble would start. The budget would bust. Waiting-lists would be needed. The tabloids would be full of heart-rending stories about budgies who died because no one answered a 999 call. Euthanasia, though increasingly popular for human beings, would be regarded as a scandal for animals (`MURDER ON THE NVS!'). Vicious disputes about priorities would break out, with pet-owners claiming they were discriminated against in favour of
working animals, or vice versa. Tony Blair would launch his party election campaign from a pet rescue centre. It would emerge that the Downing Street cat had gone private in order to jump the queue. I like to think that this analogy illustrates why the NHS is a disaster that needs wholesale reform, but I'm sure nothing much will happen. The only way ahead is to make sure that one's own ailments are treated by a vet.
Aleading figure in the art market was heard recently to complain that his three grown-up children were not going to bother to vote Tory this time. 'My children are only interested in three things,' he said. 'Hunting, f* "ing and smoking marijuana, and Ann Widdecombe wants to ban all three.'
I . t seems very unfair that William Hague t seems very unfair that William Hague should so often be cited 'on the doorstep' as a reason for not voting Conservative. Mr Hague is intelligent, moderate, brave, decent and lacking in the amazing character flaws of most leading politicians. But there may be a little-considered reason why he might seem unconvincing to the potential Tory voter, It is simply age. No one so young has ever won an election for the Conservatives in the era of the universal franchise, and no electorate has ever been so old. This is the first general election ever in which all three party leaders have been in their forties. This means that about half of the voters have seen more of life than they have. If the playing field of age is more or less level, the candidate with the most experience, not to mention children and hair, has the advantage.
Being roughly the same age as the leaders (older than Hague, younger than Blair), I feel rather differently. Both Hague and Blair remind me of people whom I knew at university. Hague is the one whom I would have looked down on for 'hacking', as we called university politics, but who then turns out to be much funnier and nicer than expected. Blair is the one of the two I would more likely have known socially, meeting, perhaps, among the fairly small group of non-evangelical chapel-goers. No doubt I would have been charmed, but I hope after a bit I would have noticed that eager, goodygoody conformism so characteristic of my generation, that knack of 'doing well by doing good'.
My father was 70 this year, and for the occasion we unearthed a diary that his father kept at the time of his birth. After describing his first visit to the baby ('Our little son was not handsome'), my grandfather then gives a brief summary of the state of the nation in 1931: 'King George V reigns. Cosmo Lang is Archbishop of Canterbury. Ramsay MacDonald is Prime Minister. The Labour party is in power. The Liberal party is small and divided, . . . ' The continuities of educated people's complaints are reassuring. Look at the media: 'The Press of the country is in a poor way except for the Times [that might have changed] and the Daily Telegraph. The Morning Post is not so debased as the remaining daily papers which are contemptible. Another bad influence is the cinema which tends to impose American standards of crude sensation and American forms of speech.. . . 'And the environment: 'Everywhere the main roads are being remade with a disregard for beauty that is lamentable; the finest trees are cut down ruthlessly.' There is worry about globalisation: 'The chief anxiety of the time is the state of trade which is very bad all over the world, though why abundance should produce want as the economists proclaim is difficult to understand... . It is evident that Protection will be the issue at the next general election.' That election, held in October, produced the National Government: 'The majority of the government is overwhelming,' wrote my grandfather, 'nearly 500 — to be attributed probably in part to the hearing of the various leaders' actual voices by the wireless'. Spin, even then?
Charles Moore is the editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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