DIARY
Business unfinished, contracts un- signed and cheques unissued by the end of this week will remain in limbo until half- way through January. One could blame the annual bacchanalian hiatus called Christ- mas on Harold Wilson (as much else) for having made New Year's Day an official part of the debauch, but the melancholy fact is that it is celebrated everywhere in the English-speaking world and is as de- pressing in the one place as the next. Sensible pagans would advocate its shift to the end of next month, making it a true mid-winter break, but the sentiment indus- try would lose the connection with the birth of Christ. In truth it has no more to do with His birth than the Easter bank holiday has to do with His death on the Cross. Must Christ be crucified twice a year?
It is too late to speak of the censorship of television, unless HMG intends buying some of those satellite-destroying missiles which the Americans have invented. Soon we will be bombarded by transmissions from outer space which no government agency could hope to intercept and which will easily be picked up on undetectable receivers the size of footballs. Some pretty vile stuff will no doubt gain common currency but some of us will be able to get consolation from the Arts Channel which is promised by W. H. Smith. Some also, I suspect, will acquire a taste for pornogra- phy of the milder sort which may surprise them. I can understand the present fuss about violence on television but not the fuss about sex. (There is hardly any.) In the street, one often sees yobboes attempt to assault one another, employing techni- ques of oriental combat ill-learnt from the BBC, and hopes that they are too incom- petent to practise them on the innocent. Pornography has no such didactic effect. It Is more often emetic than anything else. I fell in with a most charming group of PQrnographers in New York some years ago and I can assure you that the work they were doing had no effect whatsoever on their moral character. One man had fallen in love with his future wife while on the job. She hit him when he proposed mar- riage, though he had done so under the most romantic circumstance possible. I have often thought this story could form the basis of an excellent television play, but I do not think I could sell it to the BBC.
Wen it came to the crunch at the UN last week it transpired that we have pre- cisely three friends left among the indepen- dent states of the world. Only Oman. Belize and the Solomon Islands voted against the impudent suggestion of that (Evelyn) Waugh-esque body that we
STAN
GEBLER DAVIES
should negotiate with the Argentines on Argentine terms. The loyalty of the Omanis and the British Hondurans, as they used to be known, is touching but may depend upon their reliance on us to defend them from external threat. Why the Solo- mon Islanders? The inhabitants of this South Pacific archipelago paradise num- bered at last count 244,000, comprising mainly Melanesians, Polynesians and Mic- ronesians, with some small sprinkling of Europeans. They retain, after seven years of independence, a multi-party democracy and keep on the Queen as head of state. An admirably thrifty people, they do not indulge in the extravagance of diplomatic representation in London but refer all enquiries to the Prime Minister's office on Guadalcanal. They are in external associa- tion with the EEC, from whom I hope they manage to milk whatever they wish. Should these excellent people, our last true and unselfish friends in all the world, ever want any favour, I trust we shall rush to their aid. God preserve their liberties.
would not wish to depart this page (P. Worsthorne is back next week) without proposing a mild constitutional reform, which is that all clients and servants of the state should be disenfranchised. I would include in this category civil servants, municipal employees, miners, Sir Peter Hall and the recipients of Art Council grants. Myself, Jeffrey Bernard and Richard West applied for literature grants some time ago. West was to advance the cause of the Habsburgs and Bernard was to write a searching probe into the history of public houses. I was to explain in the course of a historical novel that every misfortune that has befallen my fellow Irishmen was entirely their own fault I thought I might get my £3,000 since Fay Weldon, one of the adjudicatrices, is a person whose own work I have praised lavishly and in public. I was disappointed (so were the other two) but I see nothing wrong in trying to screw money out of the state for my own artistic purpose. By devouring 43 per cent of the national income and abolishing private wealth it has made private patronage impossible, but art cannot survive without patronage. The state ought therefore to cough up lavish subsidy or else stop grabbing every penny in sight and wasting it on its own excesses. In return for a modest competence, I am willing to relinquish the vote, on the grounds that no servant can reasonably expect to have control of his master's purse. Should this principle not apply to all servants?
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The trouble with the Tory Party is not that it defers to saloon bar opinion but that it takes no notice of it. The Sunday trading measure is a gesture in the right direction but the first armed robber to be hanged would get the party a couple of million votes. Mrs Thatcher knows this very well but has never been able to overcome the opposition to humane gestures like this which exists among her own back- benchers. This deadwood must be re- moved and replaced by persons who are willing to legislate for hanging and the opening of pubs in the afternoon, another measure worth ten per cent in the polls. This backbench surgery can only be accom- plished, however, by a mass campaign of `entryism' such as has galvanised the Labour Party. Joining the Tory Party is a relatively simple and cheap process. Labour charge the unemployed and pen- sioners the scandalous sum of £2.15 as annual subscription fee and mulct 'the waged' to the tune of £8.50, but the Conservative Party will settle for 50p.
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