Back to the pub, with Peter Hitchens | Interview

Peter Hitchens we're in person we're in the pub after our last conversation you desperate to get back we're here now what was it just mm-hmm well I certainly I felt one of the things that I've really struggled with during this pandemic is loneliness or not being in that social fabric being out just being around people you don't know I mean how have you found it there's a significant mental side to this lockdown isn't that still humanizing yes and for people who are still reasonably healthy and young it's a nuisance and deprivation but for people who are old and on the verge of becoming seriously old and end constantly in danger of becoming ill and immobilized being stripped of all these exchanges and chances to rub shoulders with other people is disastrous this is what Professor citrate bhakti said at the very beginning very eloquently a professor at the University of mites in Joanie's at the very beginning of this it's it's going to be devastating to the old the loneliness that we impose on actually government as well telling people they can't touch their children that's a growing trend isn't it these interventions I might could I get a point of Guinness please yes would you like pizza well I don't know do you have anything in the 3.5 abv said well if you've got us a German Reinheitsgebot lager that I can have a bottle of a small beaker but I don't want to do that everything about 3.5 at lunchtime I've had the old tradition of Fleet Street what is one of the things you've missed then had have you felt that lack of social context that new social misanthrope anyway and I'd be very lucky with my domestic arrangements well this has been going on so that's not been my problem my problem is is one of of having what I bring out is fairly strong political antennae as seeing that in the in the circumstances in which we find ourselves first of all this completely improper interference by government in areas of private private dealings of private trust and Trust is absolutely central to civilization and the almost total lack of opposition to this but it hasn't been felt people have put up with this and I think we this is a transformation for the worse of our society from which I don't think we should ever recover and we we are going to shortly and it's no one realizes yet because we're still in the the lovely smooth shallows that lead to the lip of Niagara we will thanks might find when the economic crisis comes that our failure to be a failure to be politically active and resistant to this imposition will cost us a great deal because because the economic crisis will be again a very major pretext for the deprivation of losing so there's so many various areas of intervention that we've seen from the economy to the area of private life that you're mentioning but if you could drill into that lack of opposition that you're met you're touching on it just hasn't been there and none of the none of the brakes works I think very early on as somebody said where are the brakes on this thing they haven't been with you you could pump on the brake mark Parliament and when to the extent that any of this was put before pond which is very very likely there's almost no opposition to accede immensely ambitious demands for it for extra power for the government no debate no opposition no vote the opposition itself Her Majesty's opposition his leader is paid to oppose the government has never opposed if he's merely criticized its implementation of the policy which he has accepted much of the media have entirely accepted the official version that because the virus is so serious and without examining the seriousness of the outbreak because it is so serious these measures are justified but when someone like Lorde sumption a man of such intellectual candlepower that he was selected for the wreath lectures by the BBC only last year a distinguished historian a former judge of the Supreme Court beyond doubt one of the clearest and most effective thinkers and indeed public speakers a long time when he barely gets on to the BBC and even and then early as as far as I'm really at the time when what he said was most urgent on a small radio for program called the world one apart from the idea I searched in vain for any mentions of his very important protests made on on the major TV bulletins or on or on the Today programme where adults have been when even he can only get into the margins of the media then it seems to me that this is worse than a failure this is people actually trying to avoid giving prominence or importance or a platform to opposition this isn't a free country in effect anymore well get will go further into this the barman has just told me they don't have any out beers of that strength that you just drank if they've got a bottle like or not Corona no better cure than a corona in the air yeah Cheers good see it and you too that's on the money okay so yes and we were talking about this I mean you could call it the establishment you could call about the you call it the orthodoxy of opinion in this country what do you think that speaks to do you think that speaks to a broader malaise with our political system do you think it's something specific to this issue I don't know you know how instinctively I know how how much you'd like your instincts I've learned to trust my I regard the state and its power as like weeds in a garden if you the gardener's job is to keep it cut back to make sure it doesn't become too powerful to make sure that the plants which do grow the benevolent France the benevolent plants the fruitful ones or the beautiful ones and to keep the weeds down and I've always regarded the state's tendencies in to to to seize more and more power over our personal matters as like the sort of line weed or Japanese knotweed which he erupts you know you have to keep cutting it back and it's a natural tendency of power to grab more power you know the expression never let a good crisis go to waste absolutely and there are people who say this is all planned is rubbish and I think anybody planned this and I think this is viruses and natural occurrence alike and blaming China as it seems to me to be garbage if you could prove it to be true then prove it to be true but until then it's just a sort of thing that you that in terms of people have to later one side what is undoubtedly the case there is confronted with an opportunity to seize extra power over our lives the unrelenting pursuit of power do you think Boris Johnson's leadership as a manifestation of that well if you say to seize a Paris her pursuit of office and these people are in office they're not in power they and this is particularly the case now if you don't understand what it is you're doing you aren't really empowered how can they not be powerful if they're not yeah they have the power of the stage but they are they are simply sitting there on top of a machine which is doing things for their hands that they were panicked into this there all kinds of rumors or stories about how the panic came about but the fact is they did panic they suddenly decided they were gonna go for the these extraordinarily radical measures of interference and of mass house arrest and crashing the economy which they adopted which a few days before they didn't appear even to be contemplating there's something there's a pattern and having set this thing in motion they can't stop it they can't they because they to achieve this they spread enormous amount of fear and the only way they could ever undo that fear if there is any way they could undo it at all would be by admitting they made several mistakes standing up in public and saying we're terribly sorry we made a terrible mistake this virus is not as serious as it said it was the danger is not as great as we said it was the precautions taken against it were disproportionately excessive we have made a terrible mistake and when did you last hear a politician say anything like that so they can't or won't do that so they must continue with this and it's like it's like the other metaphor for this is that when I was first involved in politics you could walk into Downing Street you can stand outside as I did one day in 1973 it stand outside the door Dinah Street and shout very slowly and then he could walk off and it was it was open at both hands bit by bit over the seventy's and eighty's Newton barriers appeared and there of course came the age of modern terrorism when huge elaborate and Byzantine gates were erected and I thought when those when those went up I thought they'll never come down yet because however little terrorism the Raiders for the rest of the history of the world nobody will have the nerve to say let's take these gates down in case something happens and he is then blamed for what laughter the gates going it's the same with these precautions as soon as you put them there it's also possible for anyone to advocate removing they're trapped by their own rhetoric and their own actions into an endless unfinished eternal misery in which we don't have to it's um I would be inclined to say that it's the mark of a good leader to be able to change your position in face of new evidence absolutely yes which is one of the reasons whether so for you good leave it and what about Boris Johnson is it peace in our time or Churchill Ian our darkest hour we'll fight them on the beaches Churchill had had many thoughts and anybody who knows anybody know Jesus but he was an enormous voracious reader particularly of history and of literature and therefore he knew at secondhand an awful lot of things those that are important to know new things which is important for a king but interestingly by the way dad ago who was also from anywhere three books a week and couldn't stop to go after many many clashes which actually concluded that he wasn't actually very intelligible which I think may be true but he was he was magnificent he had terrific instincts on the one crucial occasion when it mattered most water well he did the right thing he was physically brave he'd experienced an enormous amount but mentally in that bright but Johnson Susie doesn't even begin to enter into that same class he fantasizes about being Churchill but he is no chill he's he's much more like bitty liar than he is language teacher do you think there's any way that he could in your eyes come out of this favorably well the damage is aerobic and we done yeah I mean I I described the actions of the government the beginning is that like those an incompetent doctor who allocates his patients leg to cure about flu the problem with this is that although it's funny as a cartoon or as joke in fact if anybody did that it would be a gigantic tragedy and a huge piece of incompetence and in fact what this government has done particularly to the economy but also I think to Liberty in the political system is irreversibly destructive and tragic and the camera not so much there are many actions which cannot be undone they've spent more money than exists in the world and then they borrowed more money that exists in the world to make up for the fact that they've destroyed what was already a very troubled economy and whilst the national focus is on the pandemic we've now passed the date by which we can request an extension for a departure from the European Union well that looms that's yeah I know but it's good to dissolve in inter trivia compared and what's going to happen but of the meanwhile the huge great national boiler behind that the needle is sweeping round to the red zone the alarms are beginning to shriek I've ever seen what should we do what button to be pressed which tab to return which lever did we pull that in there because role within the economics is that it's all about the past people know what worked in the past nobody knows what this plan so nobody has a clue you've described British soon act as a payday lender in one of our previous conversations that's what you called him but he's viewed very favorably he's viewed as making a success of this crisis he's only considered successful that's the old joke the man who hurls himself off the top of the Empire State Building is asked as he passes the 34th floor downwards how things is so far so good but the the only reason why refuse you know he still has his reputation for success is that is that his actions have not reached their end halfway through people are still talking up the Sun that multiplication sign here divisions sign on and when people actually finally taught them up and see what the Sun is all this then it's a disaster but for the moment I political reporters like to play this soap opera game who's up who's down who's in who's out and it's quite obvious that Johnson's reputation is fallen greatly in there so it it's just one of the things they do to build up the reputation of a rival or potentially successful but the mathematics the simple arithmetic which willows can understand remains and the physics the gravity remained I'm afraid the resistible no I disclosed he's not even genius the follow up not sound for 30 years of inducing prosperity under his stewardship brilliant gamers helmsman ship with the follow-up is then how isn't it not just in the economy but in terms of private life I guess the big question in from the economic side of things is how are we going to pay for it where will the money come from the obvious thing which would which is almost always happen on every occasion this kind before has been a very very strong inflation if you have a enormous debt the only way you can really cancel it does if you inflate without resistance it's great for the government and it's great for everybody who's in debt but for the people who foolishly saved for pensions or indeed saved at all its catastrophic if you of those people are often the the bedrock of civil society the middle classes say if you propose to impoverished level classes you can expect bad things to happen it's a couple of things I'd like to catch up with you on before we finish since we last spoke black lives matter protesters were spread across the country you were at one in Oxford tell us about that well it wasn't really black lives matter protest Tiguan it was it was a it was a much demanding the removal of statues successful run it was rise my school was it sorry my neck for a job well talk talk to me about what you saw when you were there no I I get such a lot of our deserves abuse that I'm quite happy to take bit of I deserve credit I mean I those have been too great for one great thing weather on Twitter that I'd refused to take the knee I haven't I would if I refused to take anything I would refuse to take the buttock because everyone sat down on the streets to to commemorate George Floyd and I didn't sit down I mean it had many reasons I didn't say that I didn't sit down and though there were this picture of me not sitting down there came some promise they a week later there was another one of his generation which I found out about my standing table Monty and they got so bored they'd they'd they'd they'd laid themselves that's such a long route which at one stage took them to a completely deserted shopping center they got so bored that they started shouting at me and that was all not terrifying to me I II I'm not sure what I used to be I used to go on demonstrations that's what much more frightening than that that's exactly where I was going to Peter well perhaps as a reporter on those generations but also in your time as a student radical I wanted to ask you mmm had in in those days when you were you were apart the protest you were part of that group which if shouted it yourself would you have shouted at a reporter and I think I'd be too busy i these these things they were that in those the great thing I do surgeons in this is that we were not expressing generally accepted views we would generally there was demonstrations and actual demonstrations of impotence or were in my day you were you were a small group of people who had a set of opinions which he wanted to get across and nobody the people passing by on the street the individual police officers who saw you almost certainly the journalists who were nobody agree with you you were you you were outcast and they could on occasion turn quite nasty as well bad people came to them I went to the famous Battle of Grover Square and much 60a and that I still can't I tried it I can't remember how I got there I can't remember how I got back this wasn't because I was stupefied I just cannot my memory it's just a gray haze on either side what I can very clearly remember I can close my eyes now and I can hear them beat of the hooves of the police what's his charging when it turned nasty which he did very suddenly they were in the square bit of shouting did that it suddenly and it was I I got away very lightly I just couldn't get hurt a lot of people got hurt and a lot of people got scooped up and arrested me and there were other occasions I mean there was occasion wearing them after the Bloody Sunday massacre in York when we lot of us went out from the University and into the center of the city and we protested outside of the Army recruiting office between obvious target and I don't know how it started but it became quite as serious frightening Millay I don't think any of us had wanted to start I still don't know but it's often people as say people with an interest in in causing trouble hitch themselves onto demonstrations and do so but they can get quite frightening these were not these were police for processions good-natured good-tempered harmless you have a very serious oh this is this is a real gas man yeah yeah filterless but red well I don't have the filter in there because it sticks out about a foot in front and it's it's quite you've ready debt are you gonna put it on YC why not uh first I mean I though I have to tell you what I feel severe distress as I do so so I would keep it okay very good look at that it's terrible I mean I the severe distress is genuine I thought the idea of being compelled by any government to wear some sort of muzzle across my face is is extremely distressing it makes me very angry you haven't told me what to wear since I was about 15 you coming back to that sources actually on my face haircuts etc let's delve into this a little bit because your position is they shouldn't be telling you what to wear the Royal Society have come out today the president of the Royal Society in said that wearing masks should be akin to wearing a seatbelt but your be you're opposed to it I mean why the whole point of the roads of site is that our holds the scientific method surely and if the randomized control testing if he's in the interview on the radio which he supported the wearing loss he says he was against randomized control now I was destroyed but no there is a huge amount of stuff which you can find including a very extensive paper done for the dental trade four years ago in which they concluded that the the use of going right back to the original use of masters I think in the beginning of the 20th century they they conclude that the arguments for the very weak there's also been a very a very concise article by dr. John Lee won The Spectator website on the mask issue in which he sums up the arguments for and against and his conclusion which seems to me to be the the most persuasive is that it's there is a very much divisional opinion on this and on the basis of that you cannot compel if there were people say well it's like seatbelts the Guardian came out with the lead of the other day saying it's this is it it's it's not wearing our masters I don't worry so well this ridiculous the there is no question at all that seatbelts save lives the evidence is incontrovertible nothing of that standard exists for the wearing of a nappy on your face but why not if if it can make a difference if even if it's a small benefit why would you not just wear the mask my whole life has been one of taking proportionate rational risks and almost all the things that I've enjoyed or achieved in life and being resolved taking risk and I write a bicycle forgiveness a four times a day in busy streets this is far far far greater danger to me in my view in riding that bicycle than there is in going about the streets in fear of coronavirus I did I do not think there is a major danger that I would catch dreaded virus from from being in the same office with somebody else for traveling on the same train assembly is not wearing a nappy on my face I choose to ride the bicycle because I think the benefits of doing so both severe to society in general far outweigh the dangers of doing so do you wear a helmet when you ride your bike yeah same reason it doesn't need to be the the case for it is extremely weak there we are they can take a witness you where you want to be but do you want to wear a styrofoam bowl on your head go ahead I won't come and pull it off I took I think what it is it's it I don't I don't quite know how you ride your bicycle but I ride mine in an upright position probably most of the island not much faster than 10 or 11 miles an hour and I have to tell you when I come off it my head is not gonna be the bit hits the road well I know from experience actually what hits the road was it shoulder your shoulder yeah I've been knocked off as well but we're getting distracted Peter Hitchens thank you so much for your time I enjoyed the conversation enormously thank you likewise Thanks you

Channel: PoliticsJOE

Views: 218,789

Keywords: UK politics, British politics, Parliament, Government, Westminster, peter hitchens, lockdown, COVID-19, interview, british pubs, coronavirus, peter hitchens 2020, peter hitchens interview, peter hitchens coronavirus, christopher hitchens, covid-19, wuhan, china virus, 5g cell towers, coronavirus conspiracy, national health service, civil liberties, free speech, conservative party, peter hitchens question time, peter hitchens brexit, peter hitchens talk radio, peter hitchens debate

Id: 5gitDjwQAi8

Length: 24min 38sec (1478 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020