Who is House Points’ Personality of the Week? Not Lord Hutton, Andrew Gilligan or Tony Blair. Not John Prescott, Nick Brown or Charles Clarke. Not even the late Fanny Blankers-Coen.
It is the Reverend David Snuggs from Fair Oak in Hampshire. The Revd. Snuggs and his church council have cut down an ancient yew because it might poison children with its berries, injure them if they climb it, trip elderly worshipers or provide a hiding place for paedophiles. (All this comes from the Daily Mail, so it must be true.)
Snuggery – an exaggerated concern for safety – is common these days. Charles Kennedy’s advisers had an attack of it the other day. Jenny Tonge’s remarks were clumsy and a little self-indulgent. (“I think if I had to live in that situation … I might just consider becoming one myself.” And if had to live in Richmond, I might just open a wholefood restaurant.) But only a wilful misreading can make them an endorsement of terrorism.
Yet the advisers were spooked by the reaction, so Jenny had to go. Meanwhile we risk our reputation as the party that dares raise difficult issues. And people who respond to press outcries soon look weak. Remember John Major in the ‘back to basics’ era.
If you get snuggery in politics, you certainly get it on the railways. When Alistair Darling reduced the role of the Health and Safety Executive there was dancing on platforms from Exeter Central to Edingburgh Haymarket. But a debate on Monday revealed the existence of another body: the Rail Safety and Standards Board.
That debate was called by Philip Hammond (Tory MP for Runnymede and Weybridge), who wanted to talk about pedestrian railway crossings. He did not commit snuggery, but there was a lot of it about.
Hammond complained of the louder sirens that new trains have. Used at crossings, they keep people awake for miles around. And they turn out to be required by health and safety legislation.
He did not want well-used crossings closed, but it is not long since Railtrack was closing them in the Highlands without consultation and putting pressure on guidebooks not to mention others.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Otherwise we'll all be snuggered.
Just after Christmas I went to the Imperial War Museum to see their Eric Ravilious exhibition. Ravilious disappeared in 1942 while working as an official war artist. Both in his choice of subjects – harbours, steam trains, white horses cut into downland chalk – and his reticence, he was a quintessentially English figure. At the museum I came across a second exhibition, this one devoted to the Channel 4 series The 1940s House.
I remembered these two exhibitions during Monday’s debate on the Civil Contingencies Bill. This measure combines sensible reforms of local authorities’ contingency planning role with an attempt to give government extraordinary emergency powers.
I remembered them because the idea that reticence is typically English, and the Blitz spirit of getting on with life as best you can, seem so dated. Something of this ethos survived as late as the 1980s. I was demonstrating computers in London during the IRA bombing campaign. When a warning came we all searched our own little part of the building and then carried on as usual.
Already things were changing. The SAS storming of the Iranian embassy in 1980 became a cause for national celebration – they even interrupted the snooker to show it live on television.
Contrast this with the siege of Balcombe Street five years earlier. An IRA gang that had taken refuge in a London flat and taken the occupants hostage was persuaded to give themselves up by negotiation. “Patience and determination, those have been the watchwords,” said Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. That was the way we did things.
But it is 9/11 that has really changed things. Why should this be so?
The reasons lie in the psyche of Blair’s Labour Party. Its chief creed is ‘modernisation’. It is rarely clear what this means, but if it means anything it involves making Britain more like the USA.
So to New Labour an attack on America feels like an attack on Britain. Add to this the generalised insecurity New Labour has encouraged – don’t trust strangers, don’t trust parents, don’t trust yourself – and is not hard to see why 9/11 had such an effect here.
This view of the English as patient and tolerant would never have survived close examination. But the way countries see themselves matters, and we have a less generous view of ourselves today.
Worrying news from last Thursday’s questions to Defra – the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. According to Owen Paterson, the British Cattle Movement Service has lost more than 100,000 cows. Do please take a moment to check your cupboards and outbuildings, just in case they are hiding there.
The British Cattle Movement Service? Defra’s website explains. The British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) was established to manage the Cattle Tracing System (CTS). It is part of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), an executive agency of Defra. The BCMS was transferred to the RPA on 1 April 2003 following the Better Quality Service (BQS) review.
Maybe it is a result of global warming, but no one can grow acronyms like we do. This rich harvest gives an idea of the depth of government involvement in British farming. And it is not only the cows who bear the yoke of bureaucracy: all our horses now need a passport too.
Some say it is because of pressure from the Americans. The White House fears that two terrorists will hire a pantomime horse costume and board a flight, only to reveal their true identities in mid Atlantic. (“What’s that, Dobbin? You want to go to Cuba?”) Whatever the reason, all passengers must now obtain visas and have their hoofprints taken.
Others fear gangs of foreign horses hanging round on British street corners or taking jobs in catering for less than the national minimum wage. (“I didn’t order these oats.” “But is nice!”)
In Blair's first parliament there was no one more greasily loyal backbencher than Ben Bradshaw. His reward was to be made Minister of Fish, the job where you have to say things like: “I shall try to do everything that I can to encourage more people to eat herring and herring products.”
The mature haddock Alistair Carmichael talked about could have told Bradshaw that political power is seldom worth the winning. But he was young and ambitious and would not listen. So there he was, answering questions on cod-restricted zones. (“You’re not coming in here, they’re scales.”)
But I can hear loud mooing and the breaking of crockery in the kitchen. Please excuse me, I think I may have found Owen Paterson’s missing cattle.
Back to Westminster and a debate all MPs can enjoy. National debt, balance of payments, endogenous growth theory: even if you understand them, you wonder what government can achieve.
But everyone is an expert on the Traffic Management Bill if he is not too ambitious. Simon Thomas talked about the A44 from Llangurig to Aberystwyth. John Mann about Scrooby and Barnby Moor. And Brian White about Worcester Close in Newport Pagnell.
On the Conservative front bench, Damian Green was making the best of his new post. Until recently the party’s education expert, he now serves under Theresa May, the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, the Environment and Everything Else.
That is some demotion, but they say there is always somebody worse off than you and Green had discovered who it was. “Motorists in Britain are now overtaxed, harassed and too often abused,” he mourned. “It is hardly surprising that they feel persecuted by the Government – they are persecuted by the Government.” Behind him, Tory backbenchers were blowing their noses and trying hard to be brave.
It is not motorists the Tories care about so much as ‘the motorist’. They picture him as a singular figure in cravat, sheepskin coat and string-backed gloves, smelling distinctly of after-shave.
Older readers may remember seeing such people interviewed on regional television when Barbara Castle introduced the breathalyser. They blew the beer froth from their moustaches and called it “a diabolical liberty”. Younger readers… Let’s just say that John Thurso spoke shortly afterwards.
Monday’s debate showed that many want life to be like those advertisements where you have a wonderful car and there isn’t another vehicle in sight. Take John Redwood. On Vulcan… Sorry, in Wokingham, he said, there is an increasing trend for couples to own two cars.
House Points was reminded of canvassing a house in one of Leicestershire’s more exclusive villages. There were two Volvos in the drive, but the family was out – presumably in their third Volvo.
A fast car on an open road is an appealing prospect – ask Jeremy Clarkson or Mr Toad – but if everyone wants one you end up with traffic jams. Someone should explain this to the Tories. It’s why we need politicians in the first place.