A friend of the royal family’s lamented the other day that
the Princess Royal, for reasons about which he could only speculate, has declined her mother’s offer of a dukedom and, therefore, a place in the nobility for her son and his heirs. This does seem an extreme act of selfeffacement by one who, unlike some of her tribe, works extremely hard and doesn’t insist on using the company helicopter just to nip out to Tesco. Also, thanks to Mr Blair’s brilliant reform of the House of Lords, even if her son became the 2nd Duke he would not inherit the right to sit in the legislature. It was allegedly fears about Sir Mark Thatcher ending up in the Lords that dissuaded his mother from taking the earldom that was her due when she left the Commons in 1992. Thanks again to Mr Blair’s brilliant reform, there would now be no danger of that either. I am fed up with the standing insult to our greatest living statesman that she should occupy the same rank in the peerage as people whose qualification for the Lords is that they once shared a flat with Mr Blair. With her 80th birthday coming next October, I trust an appropriate gesture can now be made to rectify this unacceptable state of affairs.
Of course, by the time that great day comes, there might even be a Tory prime minister to bestow upon her the marquessate that is clearly hers by right. Sadly, polling suggests that while Labour’s vote is collapsing it is either going to the Liberal Democrats — God help us — or adding to the already substantial numbers who will stay at home. Voting should not be compulsory, since the right to abstain on the grounds of the atrociousness of all available candidates was one of the reasons we fought two world wars. However, what about a short Bill, to be enacted in the next couple of weeks, to render null and void any election in which the turnout was less than 50 per cent, and to trigger another one three weeks later? The public would soon become fed up and do the necessary.
The collective mental illness that is our government surpassed itself on 1 March when, by rewording the licence for shooting, it was made illegal to shoot winged vermin unless one had tried to scare it off first. This effectively ended the shooting of pigeons, crows, jays and other pests, as you only have to cough near them and they are off. This outrage came to public attention because of a piece in the Daily Telegraph by Charles Clover, the doyen of Fleet Street environment correspondents. Farmers and shooters immediately campaigned to reverse the decision. They succeeded within days, a rare victory for people power and one for which Mr Clover deserves much credit. I must declare two interests. The first is that I shoot the banned species with abandon, and the second is that Mr Clover and I were best men at each other’s wedding and are thus virtually related. It was painful to me, therefore, to read the Times’s countryside correspondent — who had taken four days to follow the story — claiming that the ban was overturned thanks to the Times. We all know that those who take credit for the work of others are deeply insecure, and this is manifestly true of institutions as well as of individuals. I suppose the vulgarity of bragging and lying like this was an inevitable consequence of the Times going tabloid, and losing proper journalists like Sir Simon Jenkins. It now conspires to lack the intellectual weight and ideological sense of its Sunday counterpart, the wit and charm of its stablemate the Sun, and the sheer downright honesty of the News of the World.
We shooters are told to give away birds to make others realise the deliciousness of eating game. It is certainly mad that game birds are ridiculously cheap, hugely plentiful, and yet nobody apart from a few restaurants wants them. Many shoots I go on ship them off to France, where they can’t get enough. Yet surely game has a part to play in the campaign being run by Mr Jamie Oliver to stop our children turning into blobs by eating disgusting fat-packed school food. If they must have gimmicks, what about pheas ant nuggets and partridge twizzlers, packed with real, low-fat, organic game? QuIils mangent de la perdrix, as Marie Antoinette probably wishes she had said.
AsI reach my mid-forties I fear the time to give up eating is near, and I start to formulate a plan to retire from it in the not-toodistant future. I suspect it is only because my childhood was not blighted by twizzlers and nuggets that I have lasted this long. My retirement will be from recreational eating, and instead I shall stick to the necessary intake that makes for boring repasts but long life. This will also benefit those who dine with me, as none of them will die from passive eating. This may be a Sinatra-style retirement, with a long farewell tour and the odd comeback. However, it cannot happen until I have achieved my aim of eating in three three-star Michelin restaurants on the same day. My friend and fellow Spectator contributor Leo McKinstry has agreed to help me in this arduous project, which has the working title of ‘Two Fat Bastards’. Sadly, there are only three such eateries in England, and none of them does breakfast. So before we go to Bray for lunch and Gordon Ramsay for dinner, where do we get the bacon and eggs? Who serves the best breakfast in England?
Iam getting increasingly aggrieved by meaningless notices. An item of children’s clothing recently bought from the once great Marks & Spencer warns that if you set fire to it while a child is wearing it, he might get hurt. A box of tea from Tesco carries the pompous statement ‘Usage occasions: for everyday use, and for special occasions’. Films now specify next to their certification that they contain ‘moderate psychological horror’, presumably in case any heartattack victim who thought he was off to see Bambi sends in the lawyers. (And if horror isn’t psychological, what is it?) Yet all these are capped by the ubiquitous ‘No dogs except for guide dogs’ signs in shop windows. If you have a guide dog you won’t see the sign anyway. And do guide dogs shun the repulsive and disease-ridden practices that presumably cause other dogs to be banned? Why, as a nation of animal-lovers, do we exclude dogs? In France no restaurant is complete without some snorting, farting mutt under the table. What is the health hazard? I have lived with Bert the Dog for some years now and (despite his gold-medal-winning halitosis) I do not feel my death being hastened as a result.
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