Loose morals?

I note there is some consternation within the Government in respect of the number of young women who are becoming pregnant.

As readers may know, I was concerned throughout my life by the impact of loose morals on the welfare of many young women. However, having studied the statistics released today, I am puzzled as to why it should be regarded as deleterious for a married woman aged 17 years to give birth.

Now, accepting that I am an "old fogey", I understand that the status of women has improved considerably since we first gave a limited right of voting to some women in 1870. It has also come to my attention that moral standards have mutated in an unimaginable way.

I am told that about 42,000 girls under the age of 18 became pregnant in 2007 and that as many as half of these resulted in the induced abortion of the unwanted baby. Now this is a matter of consternation, even though it appears that the British government is unclear of what it disapproves; is it the process of abortion or the process of pregnancy? For if a young woman and her husband wish to undertake the pleasures of family life, for what reason should they be discouraged?

The response of the Government is to promote the value of contraception - which I understand to be methods for preventing conception. A sum of some twenty million pounds has been mentioned. Further reports suggest that instruction booklets have been made available to parents of growing children advising them not to discuss moral matters; I confess to perplexity about how this might assist.

It is my perception and experience that most young women are more than capable of making up their own minds when they wish to have children and whom they wish to marry. Some however are driven by poverty or desperation to trade their womanhood and their fertility; such young women need advice and assistance. Their situations cannot be changed by a pill, an injection or another artifice; nor can any moral code circumvent their desperation and misery.

WEG

A Tale of Two Sites

The government-financed news service, the British Broadcasting Corporation, has intimated to me that the Queen's ghillie has put up a display on the "Web" relating his efforts to combat the deteriorations of the political economy. Furthermore it indicates it has been done in imitation of the excellent President Obama.

There is a kind of competition that cheap magazines like to run, setting out two drawings with subtle differences. I have therefore perused the two web-sites in an endeavour to spot any differences.

Mr Brown states that the British government offers Real Help Now; President Obama talks of Recovery.

Alas, the difference is so transparent that a tiny child would suffer little hardship in placing a finger upon it. For President Obama appears to be aware that he has been trusted with large sums of public money; and he appears intent on explaining his expenditure, almost down to the last dollar. The website explains, as if to an audience of adults, that a sum amounting to some $787 billion dollars is to be disbursed in projects and pledges to account for every penny. It is a colossal sum.

Mr Brown, in contrast, lists no such expenditure. Indeed a cursory survey of his web-site suggests that his government continues to play with magic money. For instance the site refers to child benefit payments of £20 to families. A little research tells me that the total additional payment to each family is in fact £4.50. For what is the history of this payment? It is an increase for one child only announced in last year's budget by the chancellor Mr Darling, to take effect on April 1. It has now taken effect on January 1, an additional payment of £1.50 per month for three months. Even worse, the government has delayed announcing this year's budget by a full month until April so there will be no further possible increases for additional children.

Mr Brown states that pensioners have received a "£60 increase". He omits to mention that this is a £60 increase in an annual payment, that is to say an increase of some £5 per month.

Rather more disturbing is the Prime Minister's claim that some £10 billion has been committed to public investment on "schools, hospitals, roads and railways". There is no explanation, no accounting for this expenditure; indeed my own overhearing of conversations among public servants suggests to me that in some respects the reverse is taking place. Some of those responsible for government investment are being ordered to reduce it for fear of the future commitment against public revenues when existing borrowing has risen substantially. In addition spending on hospitals and school is at risk because many projects are to be financed by private companies who must raise their own capital.

I do not dispute the objective; I do question whether the Prime Minister and the Chancellor understand the difficulty in spending public money fast and effectively. Indeed it appears they have persistently underachieved their plans over the course of ten years and failed to deliver their announcements.

There is much that could be said about this but I must recall Her Majesty's frequent refrain: "Oh do not trouble me with such details, Mr Gladstone."

So most of all, this Tale of Two Sites exemplifies the difference between a liberal government and a socialist government. For a liberal government trusts the people to support good government - and is accountable to the people; whilst a socialist government demands that the people place unwitting trust in its every action.

WEG

A double birthday

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the births of two of the greatest men of my era. I refer on the one hand to the American president Mr Abraham Lincoln and on the second hand to the chronicler of animal life, Mr Charles Darwin.

In extending my sincere and profuse congratulations to both gentlemen, I must proffer a confession that to some extent I erred in judgement of both at the time of their greatest achievement.

This morning I chanced upon a discussion as to which of these two gentlemen was the greater in their impact upon humanity. It should be stated that both have most obviously had a lasting impact upon humanity, perhaps to an extent that could not be claimed for my own limited achievements.

It is nevertheless my opinion, expressed without hesitation, that President Lincoln was the greater. The course of action that he pursued was not determined solely by the hand of fate; indeed I resisted it at the time. It is a marvellous and terrible thing that a democracy should have to resort to brutal force to assert the will of the majority; it is equally terrible that such slaughter should be required in the interests of justice.

President Lincoln created a great nation out of a lawless confederation. He created a sense of justice linked to power that twice during the 20th century appears to have willingly undertaken missions to preserve the world from tyranny. This is a hard thing, even for a powerful nation, and has most obviously led his most recent successors to make mistakes, to err on the side of force rather than of justice. And yet his legacy continues, most obviously in the election of a president of African descent, a symbol of hope to disenfranchised millions around the Globe.

As for Mr Darwin, I have discussed his heritage previously. I bow to the greatness of his intellect and believe he was a gentleman of personal virtue and would have been greatly disturbed at the horrors unleashed by those who claimed to be his philosophical heirs. And yet he used the words "survival of the fittest" and appears to have had little doubt that humanity was a part of this process. I have heard that he was motivated to prove the commonality of mankind with a view to demonstrate the error of slavery. Indeed Mr Darwin alone was not responsible for philosophies that sought to set man against man and may have wished to counter them. One is reminded somewhat of Mr Marx, who worked in the British Library and, I understand, was venerated through much of the world for much of the 20th century whilst unspeakable horrors were visited upon nations in his name. It is also stated, I believe, that much of modern medicine would not exist without Mr Darwin. This seems not to be the case as he was not unique in developing his ideas, even though, it would appear, he was unusually correct about matters which were not to be confirmed until many decades later.

I do not wish to denigrate Mr Darwin's genius nor to understate the impact of his theories. It may be they have fundamentally changed man's view of himself; it is also possible that they have left humanity adrift and confused about his purpose and place in this world. Mr Darwin spoke the truth as he found it; his genius did not extend to providing guidance to Man about how to cope with such self-knowledge.

WEG

Reform!

 My youthful respect for the ennobled peers of the realm diminished in later years as it became apparent that their chief interest and predominant role was to serve the interests of few but themselves.

I have been delighted to find that my successors took up this worthy cause and about 100 years ago clipped the wings of this noble beast, a task that my generation balked at. I have been equally surprised to see the slow progress made by the socialists in bringing reform to this institution; perhaps I should not be surprised as the party of Labour appears to have entrenched itself as the party of the classes, rather than the masses. Therefore the main interest of their ministers appears to have been to create a safe haven for their comrades and, in recent decades, a place of reward for favoured friends of the party.

The scandal that has erupted this week is merely the outcome of a century of timidity; of failure to complete the unfinished business of the Glorious Revolution. For it remains the case that the first-born male of a British noble family has a vote worth 5,000 times that of a common person; indeed such a person has more power over the legislature than the Queen herself.

It is not the off-spring of noble families who are the subject of scandal this week, however; it is those unworthy appointments made by the Labour party.

I do not resent a smattering of wisdom in the Upper Chamber; nor do I resent the presence of the Archbishop or indeed the Chief Rabbi. I am perplexed that the masses of Great Britain continue to have no means whatsoever by which they can elect or appoint their representatives to this chamber; it is most peculiar that a people deemed able to select a Prime Minister (albeit not the present one) are deemed unable to recognise the rudiments of wisdom within candidates for the House of Lords. It is hardly surprising that a population treated in such a fashion should turn their attention to votes on matters of trivia and gossip rather than those of state importance.

Indeed I note the present government promised to appoint People's Peers; and yet failed to appoint a single person of common occupation or humble station.

It is heartening to hear Mr Clegg carrying the ancient Liberal banner this week; Reform! must be his clarion call.

WEG

Birthday celebrations!

I have been ruminating upon the installation of President Obama, which I trust will be the most interesting event to occur this year. Nevertheless the British as a nation look to the past, it appears, and it is gratifying that some attention is being paid to one's own up and coming birthday.

Today a programme of events was announced and it would be churlish of me not to welcome such a memorial, to quibble with the nature of the programme, the more so as it has been organised by the estimable folk who continue to manage the library I founded in the village of Hawarden, a library which appears to have taken on an exceptional character.

I am peturbed to see one whole day devoted to the study of Mr Darwin, as though the coincidence of our ages means a confluence of our views. I have discussed this matter recently and am delighted to offer respect to Mr Darwin for his scholarship and personal beneficence; the application of his theory, nevertheless, does not seem to me to have been in every respect benign.

Indeed I would prefer such a programme to be more than a historical study, rather to be a continuation of my thoughts and scholarship. There is nothing about Homer, I am surprised to see, but a delightful plan for celebrations of Bulgaria, free once again. A peer of the realm called Lord Alton, who I believe was the last Liberal MP for Liverpool, sadly now having abandoned the party, is to lecture on the cause of freedom that I eschewed, depicting me, it seems, as the Scourge of Tyrants.

It is gratifying, once again, to see modern politicians of other parties involved in the programme, all of them peers of the realm, a Lord Hattersley, a socialist and Lord Waldegrave, a Conservative. Baroness Williams and Lord Ashdown, I note, are to represent the modern Liberal Party in the celebrations.

Yet I will pray for sunshine in June, for that is when Dollis Hill House in London is to be thrown open and the people invited in for a festival, termed the Gladstonbury Festival, a name I believe to be a pun on the Somerset town of Glastonbury. I will mark the event in my diary!

I am somewhat old now so I can be forgiven for perceiving as a little odd the report today which stated that my bicentenary would be devoted to the study of the Koran. It is an estimable book worthy of study, and never more so than at the present, a book that could inspire peace as well as war, freedom as well as tyranny; but I would wish also to see study based upon the Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.

WEG
(Post scriptum: the images are indeed of the St Deiniol's Library at Hawarden, a village of many, many memories and happy recollections.)

A most excellent oration

A most excellent oration!

WEG

The inauguration

I never in my life thought I would be able to attend the inauguration of an American president, to hear them utter the historic oath, declared in public in front of the masses in a way that the traditions of the United Kingdom have never permitted.

Now today it is as if I am there, albeit still in the warmth of an English hearth. I am not jealous that the crowds milling in Washington DC and assembled in the other cities of North America far outstrip those mighty assemblies that once gathered for some reason to hear my modest words, in Edinburgh and the great cities of the north, Newcastle, Leeds and so many other places.

The election of the new president and the enthusiasm for such an event has shown that the United States continues to be a nation where democracy is strong, where indeed it has been revived. It is a sad contrast with a country where questions of governance seem to be greeted by so many people with cynicism and apathy and where few politicians seem able to offer leadership based on genuine hope.

WEG