SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
, J. W. M: THOMPSON
Sacred cows aren't just cherished objects : they're cherished, expensive, useless objects. People have used the term very loosely in recent days, allowing it to mean hospitals, schools, roads, and so on. This has the disad- vantage of obscuring the fact that there are genuine sacred cows at large. For example, the national habit of thoughtless genuflection before anything vaguely termed 'education' hints strongly at the presence of much mooing futility in this region. Malcolm Muggeridge performed a useful heretical function in daring to suggest this in his brisk farewell to the students of Edinburgh this week. The cult of 'education' has debased the process, at one level, into a mixture of welfare benefit and specific against class distinction. We have brain- washed ourselves into bracketing it with material comforts like central heating or the telly; it's a lovely jam to be spread ever more thickly as the gross national product expands.
The result is that it's scarcely decent to wonder whether the present approach is really the most rewarding one, whether it isn't in fact blighting the lives of a lot of young persons, who are driven along like Grand National runners in an educational race they ought never to have entered. Yet there are other approaches: see Professor Williams's article elsewhere in this issue. One irony is that snobbery, in the worship of degrees, 'university status,', and all the other trappings of the ritual, has flourished wonderfully alongside what is meant to be a mighty march towards equality. If the postpone- ment of the higher school-leaving age causes some people to think a little more critically about all this, it won't be anything like the sheer disaster Lord Longford appears to think.
I sometimes find it pleasant to remember the admirable William Cobbett's satisfaction with his own 'education' (he was working in a hop- garden at the age of eight), because it saved him from being 'as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster School, or froth any of those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities.'
Decimal point
In preparation for the change to the metric system, the Ministry of Housing has just issued a circular entitled 'Metrication of House- building.' Metrication' is ugly. In view of the Prime Minister's announcement on Tuesday, isn't there a case for preferring 'decimation'?
Sacred monster
As I expected, the only cut I positively hoped for didn't happen. We are still helplessly com- mitted to providing hundreds of millions of pounds for the development of the Concorde. One day, I like to think, sanity will prevail in the matter, but evidently not yet. This monster will bring no benefits worth the name. What it surely represents instead is a threat to decent living standards for millions of people. It is the supreme symbol of our feeble-minded failure to assert that human values are superior to the self-generating demands of technology : yet Mr Wedgwood Benn purrs over it and flatters the French for allowing us to share it with them. It would be a lamentable excess at any time. The fact that it is to be encouraged to swallow the nation's wealth at this particular lime is preposterous almost beyond belief. After all, there isn't even the usual short-term argument that the thing is likely to make money.
Yours truly
`When Lyndon scratches his ear, he's telling the truth, when he raises his eyebrow he's tell- ing the truth, when he moves his lips he's lying, goes the current Washington wisecrack.' Thus Ferdinand Mount Writing in this journal from the United States last NoveMber. On Saturday I thought I would sample the BBC's rid, 'satirical' teleVision programme, At the Eleventh 'Hour, and I confess I was rather startled to see this same `sour joke borrowed and 'ferociously employed at Harold Wilson's eXpense at 'the WilsOn credibility test.' That the Piime- Minister should be called an in- corrigible' liar in the interests of light enter- tainment is a-noteworthy deParitire even by the' present" relaxed standards of 'public 'Ser- vice broadcasting.' Since practitioners of this kind of topical 'joking are always eager to detect the 'movements of bandwagons, the second-hand insult no 'doubt has some value as an indication of the ruin Of Mr Wilson's reputation in the eyes of the trendy. All the same, I imagine Sir Hugh Greene is already sorry that it was permitted. The BBC has had a hard enough time in the past defending its independence from political pressures on serious issues. This little incident, I am quite certain, guarantees a much harder time in the not distant future.
The view from Whitehall
In an excellent comment on Tuesday on the' revised Stansted airport plan (revised for the umpteenth time), The Times, after reviewing the outrageous history of this affair, concluded : `Stansted is assured of lasting notoriety as an example of how not to manage the technologi- cal revolution.' Unhappily, on the very next page there was a nasty glimpse of him stub- bornly the bureaucratic villains of the tale have refused to learn the lesson provided by this example. 'A Board of Trade official' was cited as indicating that Stansted was 'the now unalterable choice' of site for London's third airport. Is there no way of instilling into these impudent officials a proper respect for demo- cratic processes? Far from being 'unalterable,' the choice can perfectly easily be altered when it comes before both Houses of Parliament for approval next month or thereabouts. The men whose contempt for the public has produced this abortion of a plan may or may not be correct in assuming that Parliament will obediently rubber-stamp their proposals. At least they ought to realise that the formal pro- cedures of democracy have still to be obsetyed whether they like it or not.
Hail Harold
'Mr Wilson and Mr Jenkins, supported by Mr John Silkin, Government Chief Whip, will use every argument and stratagem to bring their backbenchers into the "aye" lobby .. .' (Finan- cial Times, 16 January.)
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