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When I was growing up in Russia, the dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote a pamphlet, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?. The Soviet Union did, barely, but Amalrik didn’t: he emigrated to Spain and died in a suspicious road accident.

That happened in 1980, but the writing was already on the wall. And in December, 1984, it became legible.

That one month holds the key that opens a chest of secrets. For those with eyes to see and brains to interpret, the events of December, 1984, explain the subsequent history of Eastern Europe, Russia, glasnost, perestroika, post-communism – the lot.

By analysing that one month I knew straight away that the much-vaunted collapse of the Soviet Union was merely a game of musical chairs, with the KGB bumping the Party off the seat of power. Conversely, those who missed the significance of that month – a group that included most analysts – accepted the subsequent developments at face value.

What was merely a transfer of power from the Party to the KGB was hailed as a triumph of democracy and even – by particularly inane commentators – as the end of history. Since Western governments use such analysts as advisers, they were caught off guard when the KGB, fronted by Col. Putin, took over Russia in 2000 and created a kleptofascist regime presenting a greater threat to the West than even the Soviet Union did.

Four events evenly spread throughout that month had no business being practically simultaneous. Yet simultaneous they were, vindicating the ironclad rule of intelligence analysts: if coincidences number more than two, they aren’t coincidences.

On 2 December, Army General Hoffmann, East Germany’s Defence Minister died of cardiac arrest. On 15 December, Army General Oláh, Hungary’s Defence Minister, died of cardiac arrest. On 16 December, Army General Dzúr, Czechoslovakia’s Defence Minister, died of cardiac arrest. On 20 December, Marshal Ustinov, Soviet Defence Minister, died of cardiac arrest.

Since it’s statistically improbable that four defence ministers of communist countries succumbed to the same diagnosis during 18 days of the same month, one has to doubt either the cause of their deaths or its natural, unassisted aetiology.

A doubting Thomas will put those events in the context of communist history and crack a knowing smile. For throughout the entire history of the Soviet Union (and therefore its satellites), the army and the secret police were at each other’s throats.

The pitched battle was like a kaleidoscope, with today’s winners instantly becoming tomorrow’s losers and vice versa. The Party was able to control the hostilities, acting as a referee in a sporting contest. When either side became too powerful, the Party threw its weight behind the other lot.

Thus in 1937-1938, the army was getting ideas above its station. The Party pushed the button, and the NKVD, as it then was, went into action. Practically the entire high command, some 40,000 ranking officers, including three of the five marshals, were wiped out.

Marshals and generals were savagely tortured, with NKVD interrogators urinating on their heads as a final nice touch. Those who survived the torture (Marshal Blyuher, for one, didn’t) were then dispatched with a bullet in the nape of the neck.

The army got its own back in 1953-1954, after Stalin died. Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, was charged with… well, the usual things: espionage, attempted coup, placing the MGB (as it now was) above the Party. The Soviets then presaged the MeToo movement and livened things up by also charging Beria with a whole raft of sex crimes. Those were so numerous that one wondered how he managed to do any work at all.

It was the army, led by Marshal Zhukov, that arrested and executed Beria. It was also the army that inundated Moscow with tanks to prevent any resistance on the part of the MGB (as a little tot, I was impressed by the roar of those machines driving through the city centre).

Once in control, the Party, ably assisted by the army, proceeded to arrest and eliminate hundreds of top MGB officers, some of ministerial rank. The KGB, as it then became, had to lie low until 1980, when its head, Andropov, ascended to the post of General Secretary, effectively dictator.

It was in the subsequent few years that the KGB began to lord it over not just the army, but also the Party and therefore the country. As the only part of the triumvirate that had regular contacts with the West, the KGB came up with a blueprint for a more flexible system, one that could appear less threatening to the West and hence able to request and receive vast subsidies.

The other two powers didn’t go easily. Two of Andropov’s closest lieutenants, Politburo member Kulakov and Byelorussian boss Masherov… I almost wrote ‘died under mysterious circumstances’, but let’s not equivocate: they were killed.

Andropov himself died in 1984, with foul play also alleged. But, as the standard Bolshevik eulogy went, ‘Our comrade died but his cause lives on’. The relay baton was eventually passed to Andropov’s appointee, Gorbachev, who several years later was to go down in history as a great democrat. However, there were many indications that the army reacted to the advent of the new order with hostility.

The KGB, and its clones in other Warsaw Bloc countries, had to act decisively – after all, the brass might have been short of brain, but certainly not of brawn. The traditional competitor of the secret police had to be put down quickly.

Hence the pandemic of cardiac arrests simultaneously befalling the military leaders of four communist countries, including the Soviet Union. After they were buried with honours, both the armies and the communist parties fell in line.

The only exception was the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu, who turned his nose away from the wind of progress. He wasn’t going to go without trouble, like, when the wind turned into a hurricane sweeping old-fashioned communist dictatorships away. That’s why Ceaușescu had to be shot in the gutter together with his wife – the only communist leader who perished in the regime change for being slow on the uptake.

Those developments signalled the victory of the KGB that emulated Julius Caesar by scoring a triumph over the other two members of the triumvirate. At first it ruled through two Party leaders that had close links with the KGB throughout their careers: Gorbachev first, then Yeltsyn.

Then, in 2000, the FSB, as it had become, decided to abandon subterfuge and rule directly through one of its middle-rank officers, Putin. To what extent its sister organisations in Eastern Europe have relinquished control is open to discussion.

Suffice it to say for now that things in that part of the world are seldom what they seem. Hungary and Poland, for example, may belong to the EU and Nato just like Germany and France, but take my word for it: they aren’t just like Germany and France.

Decades of communist rule sully a nation so thoroughly that a scrubbing operation, even assuming that it’s undertaken in good faith, must take even more decades. And if it’s not undertaken in good faith… oh well, let’s not go there.

The EU sees the Oxford-AZ vaccine as dangerous – to the EU.

Like all political contrivances brought to life by fiat and therefore lacking historical legitimacy, the EU regards life solely through the prism of politics. Or, more specifically, of its own survival.

Since Britain’s apostasy sets a bad example for others, the EU has to see her as an existential threat. An enemy, in other words. Once that assumption is made, an elaborate scorecard comes into existence.

Britain’s successes are chalked up as the EU’s failures and vice versa. And on that card, Britain’s record of Covid vaccination pulls her way ahead of the EU.

The warped logic of European federalism hence demands that Britain’s success be made less striking, and the EU will try to achieve that goal at any cost – including the cost to the lives of its own citizens.

It’s only in this context that the EU’s total or partial rejection of the Oxford-AZ vaccine can be understood. Outside the political realm, the vaccine is perfectly usable, meaning it saves thousands of lives.

It’s perfectly usable, but is it perfectly safe? No, it isn’t – for the simple reason that we in this world aren’t blessed with medicines that are 100 per cent safe. Even everyday analgesics, such as aspirin, ibuprofen and paracetamol can kill some people under some circumstances.

In fact, as few as eight tablets of paracetamol have been known to produce a lethal outcome, and over 150 people die every year of a paracetamol overdose. (A note to aspiring suicides: don’t use the drug for that purpose. You’ll die of liver failure, which is a ghastly way to go.)

Nevertheless every year medical authorities all over the world approve many drugs for prescription or OTC use. To get its drug approved, the manufacturer has to present heaps of evidence proving that the benefits of the drugs far outweigh the risks.

Even so, the law requires that every possible side effect, no matter how unlikely, be listed in the in-pack leaflets. These documents can be long and scary, with death often mentioned as a possibility. It’s easy to get frightened and shun the medicine, especially for people who played truant when arithmetic was taught.  

For the issue of drug approval is decided on the basis of statistical data correlating clinical success with the incidence of side effects. This may be higher or lower, but it’s never nonexistent. If a drug has no side effects, it has no effects, which is why homeopathic medicines enjoy their sterling reputation for safety.

So far the Oxford-AZ jab has been administered to 20.2 million people, of whom 79 (51 of them young women) have developed a rare type of blood clot and 19 died. This is tragic, but it’s no reason for the hysterical scaremongering campaign whipped up by the EU’s functionaries, such as Manny Macron and Angie Merkel.

As far as they are concerned the evidence against the vaccine is overwhelming, but it’s political, not medical. The trouble with the Oxford-AZ vaccine isn’t that it’s too unsafe, but that it’s too British.

Hence Manny, Angie et al. are prepared to deny their own people a potentially life-saving treatment to prevent Britain’s success from becoming even more spectacular. And they have an attentive audience.

Most people respond to data with their emotions, not reason. That’s why so many, for example, refuse to fly. Yet those same people will happily drive across the continent, even though the risk of doing so is exponentially higher than with flying.

Crossing the street, even in a quiet part of town, presents a much higher risk than an Oxford-AZ jab, but such arguments are futile in the face of a massive propaganda offensive. Manny’s and Angie’s scaremongering is louder than the quiet whisper of statistical evidence.

Europeans aren’t even deterred by the weathervane turnarounds performed by their peerless leaders. First Manny declared that the Oxford-AZ was lethal to the over-65s. Then suddenly it was fine for the wrinklies, but a real killer for the under-55s. Then Manny stated publicly that, though he himself was in the threatened age group, he’d gladly be vaccinated with the British poison.

Nevertheless the vaccine has been banned for the under-55s in France and the under-60s in Germany. And Holland, Norway and Denmark have banned it altogether.

Our own regulatory agency, MHRA, understandably undeterred by the British provenance of the vaccine, has taken a sensible position, and I thought I’d never say this about a government medical institution.

While stressing that Oxford-AZ vaccine has saved thousands of lives and is continuing to do so, MHRA advises that “careful consideration be given to people who are at higher risk of specific types of blood clots because of their medical condition”. And even the European regulator recommends the same approach.

But this is medical advice informed by evidence and reason, not political propaganda animated by hatred of Britain. The EU mandarins and other fruits are prepared to sacrifice lives at the altar of a corrupt political idea – and we’ve seen that sort of thing on the continent before.

Writing in Le Figaro, the novelist Michel Houellebecq put it in a nutshell: “A civilisation that legalises euthanasia loses every right to respect.”

In addition to being correct, this statement is topical. L’Assemblée Nationale, the French parliament, is this week debating this very issue. I don’t know if that body listens to public opinion, but if it does, the motion is likely to pass.

For 96 per cent of France’s population are in favour of legalisation, preferring assisted suicide to physical suffering. The supporters of euthanasia cite ‘compassion’ and ‘dignity’ as arguments in favour, and Houellebecq is merciless to them.

Whenever compassion is invoked, he writes, “the lies are palpable”. And with dignity, “they become even more insidious”.

Dignity is increasingly understood as a capacity to act, with any loss of the latter spelling diminution in the former. This, writes Houellebecq, veers far away from Kant’s definition of dignity as a moral, rather than physical, concept. In fact, morality doesn’t seem to enter into the argument at all.

Fair enough, the Catholics, as well as the Jews and the Muslims, oppose euthanasia, but Mr Houellebecq correctly thinks they’ll lose this argument, as they’ve lost all others. In any case, the media close ranks and refuse to report any religious objections.

With this article, and many others he has written on this subject, Houellebecq has entered into my good books, a distinction his novels failed to earn. In fact, until a few years ago I hadn’t even heard his name, which, according to my French friends, punched a gaping hole in my erudition.

At first, I thought they were talking about the writer’s near homophone, the English centre forward Danny Welbeck. Since none of them was known as an ardent football fan, I was quite taken aback. Having at last realised the depth of my ignorance, I then tried to redeem myself by reading a few of Houellebecq’s novels.

I found out that, on balance, I still preferred Danny Welbeck. The novels struck me as floridly overwritten, rather gynaecological pornography with some astute social observations drowned in pseudo-philosophical musings. Then again, Houellebecq can’t help being French.

However, even in his novels one can only detect lapses of taste, never those of intellect. He is undoubtedly an intelligent man, which he showed yet again in this article, unencumbered as it is by the slightly forced artistry of his novels.

Mr Houellebecq is distinctly unimpressed with the examples of euthanasia provided by the countries where it is already legal, namely Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. He doesn’t specify what it is in particular that fails to impress him, but such things must be numerous.

Doctors in the Benelux countries have been vested with divine power over life and death. In Holland, some 6,000 people were euthanised last year, and Dutch health officials proudly announced that 92 per cent of them were terminally ill.

However, if my arithmetic serves me right, that means that some 500 people were killed simply because they didn’t feel like living any longer. And even that requirement wasn’t always observed.

One woman, for example, first stated her desire to die, but then changed her mind. She was killed anyway – no self-reprieves are allowed. The doctor involved actually went on trial, but the tendency is unmistakable. In any case, the doctor was only charged with not following proper bureaucratic procedure, not murder.

Houellebecq realises that in due course any restrictions on euthanasia will disappear one by one. It’s clear to him, as it should be to any sensible person, that, once euthanasia has become legal, sooner or later it’ll become compulsory, with the state deciding who deserves to live and who must die.

This is what happens when man no longer recognises absolute morality given by an authority infinitely higher than any human institution. Kant’s categorical imperative is a poor substitute, and the humanist morality of anthropocentrism is no substitute at all.

It’s a harrowing thought that the birthplace of Catholic scholasticism, a country whose landscape is punctuated by thousands of glorious Romanesque and Gothic churches, is being sucked into the moral mire of modernity so rapidly and irretrievably.

One just hopes that those French parliamentarians for once ignore vox populi and listen instead to vox dei. Nothing in recent history suggests they will.  

An ability to write on unfamiliar subjects with supreme confidence seems to be a job requirement for today’s journalists.

As if to prove this point, David Aaronovitch reviews Sean McMeekin’s book Stalin’s War with avuncular condescension. Looking down on the historian’s work from the vertiginous height of his own ignorance, Aaronovitch describes McMeekin’s take on his subject as “nuts”.

Ideally a reviewer of an expert’s book should himself be an expert on the subject. Barring that, he at least ought to be an enlightened layman familiar with a broad range of current scholarship.

Even a relatively uninformed reviewer may still write a decent piece, provided he sticks to generalities. What he must never do on pain of coming across as an arrogant ignoramus is mock the author’s research and conclusions.

Aaronovitch treats this requirement with blithe disregard. He correctly identifies McMeekin’s book as “an argument” and then tries to establish his own credentials to engage it. Alas, he only establishes his lack thereof.

“For a layperson I know quite a lot about this war,” writes Aaronovitch, “but even so there was something in almost every chapter that I hadn’t seen before, whether it was the 1926 occupation by the Red Army of Tannu Tuva, …or the reliance of the young Soviet Union on the sale of artworks to finance its debt.”

I submit that no one who didn’t know those two facts, especially the second, is qualified to review a book on Soviet history. That’s not being “a layperson”; that’s being ignorant.

And, out of interest, what debts was “the young Soviet Union” trying to finance? One of the first things the victorious Bolsheviks did was repudiate all the debts incurred by the Russian Empire. The sales of artworks that started under Lenin and proceeded apace under Stalin, pursued quite different ends. Their purpose was to produce another source of hard currency, to be used as an aggressive weapon.

Lenin swore by a world revolution, with the Soviet Union acting as the catalyst of simultaneous workers’ uprisings in all ‘capitalist’ countries. The Bolsheviks didn’t believe they could hang on in Russia and were preparing to decamp to European countries, which Lenin believed to be ripe for a revolutionary outburst.

To that end, the Bolsheviks quickly robbed Russia of all her wealth accumulated over centuries – not just numerous artworks from museums, churches and private collections, but also the gold, jewels and hard currency kept in institutional and private accounts in Russian and foreign banks.

The money was supposed to grease the wheels of the impending revolution to be fomented by the Bolshevik immigrants. (McMeekin described this wholesale robbery in his earlier, brilliant, book History’s Greatest Heist.)

It was then that the Soviets developed their unmatched expertise in money laundering that still stands them in good stead. They were creating various brassplates and offshore havens for parking their loot. Yet neither did they mind eschewing laundering and using their personal accounts.

The New York Times revealed at the time that in 1920 alone 75 million Swiss francs was sent to Lenin’s account in a Swiss bank. Trotsky had $11 million in just one US bank, plus 90 million francs in his Swiss accounts. Zinoviev kept 80 million Swiss francs in Switzerland, Dzerzhinsky had 80 million francs, while Hanecki had 60 million francs and $10 million – the list went on and on.

However, by the time Stalin took over, two things had become clear. First, workers of the world didn’t wish to unite under Soviet banners: communist uprisings in Germany and Hungary were quashed with ease, while the greatly outnumbered Poles uncooperatively stopped the early Soviet thrust at the gates of Warsaw. But, on the plus side, the Bolsheviks unexpectedly got entrenched in the Soviet Union.

Hence Stalin revised Lenin’s doctrine. If Lenin believed that a communist revolution would succeed either everywhere or nowhere, Stalin came up with the theory of a communist victory in a single country, namely Russia.

Yet, contrary to what Aaronovitch thinks, he didn’t abandon the idea of a world revolution. Stalin merely switched from reliance on indigenous forces to the strategy of imposing communism by direct conquest. To that end he had to create an unstoppable military juggernaut capable of rolling over Europe.

That’s why, rather than sitting in foreign banks, the hard currency had to be used to finance history’s greatest construction project: turning Russia into a unique combination of a boot camp, concentration camp and armament factory.

The wealth flowing out of Russia now had to come back in the shape of Western technologies, turnkey factories, machinery and weapons. Rather than financing some mythical debts, the money was now used for that purpose only.

Having thus established his ignorance, Aaronovitch forged right ahead to prove his effrontery as well. Here he invoked the authority of popular TV comedies to take issue with McMeekin’s version of events:

“The Second World War is usually characterised as being Hitler’s war, because as we and Basil Fawlty all know the Führer started it by invading Poland. Sean McMeekin’s contention … is that in fact it was Stalin’s war. The murderous Soviet dictator wanted there to be a conflict between Germany and the other capitalist powers, connived to bring it about and succeeded; planned to invade Germany before Germany invaded him…”

This notion “provoked in me the greatest number of NOs I’ve ever scribbled on the pages of a proof. The first of which came on p50 with McMeekin’s assertion that by 1938 ‘the ultimate aim of Soviet foreign policy – the weakening of capitalist regimes by any means necessary and the concomitant global expansion of Communism – remained the same’ as in the revolutionary days of Lenin.

“This is questionable, to say the least. I am reasonably certain that a consensus of historians of the Soviet Union in this period would argue that Stalin’s doctrine of socialism in one country subordinated everything – world revolution included – to the survival of the Soviet Union, with him at its helm…”

Aaronovitch knows next to nothing about the subject on which he is enlarging with his reasonable certainty. In fact, McMeekin is supported by all historians who have no vested interest in peddling Stalin’s version of the war.

This was that of a Soviet Union quietly going about its peaceful business, only to be treacherously attacked by the Nazis. In their naivety the Soviets didn’t even prepare for the war properly, which explains their initial setbacks. However, the heroism of the Soviet people and their devotion to the cause of Lenin and Stalin eventually prevailed, if at a great cost.

In reality, the Soviet Union was militarised to an extent never before seen in history. It wasn’t for peaceful – nor indeed merely defensive – purposes that by 1941 Russia could field a greater force than the rest of the world combined: 303 divisions, 23,000 tanks (some without analogues anywhere), 17,000 warplanes, 220 submarines, 40,000 artillery pieces plus mobile rocket launchers kept in strict secrecy.

It wasn’t for defensive purposes that the entire Soviet industry had been working in a wartime three-shift mode since the early 1930s, something Nazi Germany began to do only three years into the war.

It wasn’t for defence that Stalin pushed through his 1939 Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, effectively an alliance dividing Europe between two totalitarian dictatorships. It wasn’t for defence that the Soviets pounced on the former Russian territories of Finland, East Poland, the Baltics and Bessarabia – and also Bukovina that had never belonged to the Russian Empire.

It wasn’t for defensive purposes that Stalin supplied Hitler with all the raw materials without which Germany wouldn’t even have been able to defeat Poland. Nor was it for defence that Stalin replenished the dwindling Nazi supply of bombs raining on London.

As to Stalin’s intention to attack Germany once she got bogged down in a European war, ideally after landing a force in the British Isles, this is amply documented in current histories, those produced after the Soviet archives were opened ajar. On this a consensus of historians, even such conventional ones as John Erickson, does exist – irrespective of Aaronovitch’s ignorance of it.

Historians only argue about the planned timing of the Soviet onslaught and the length of time by which the Nazi strike beat the Soviets to the punch. The range varies from one day (Mel’tuhov) to a couple of weeks (Suvorov, Hoffmann, Bunich) to a month (Solonin) to several months (Erickson et al.).

In the past few weeks the Russians have reclassified all the war archives, barring historians’ access to tens of millions of documents. What does Aaronovitch think they have to hide? If those documents proved Stalin’s – and Aaronovitch’s – mendacious version, the Russians would be advertising them in every media.

As an ex-communist, Aaronovitch must feel some residual affection for his former spiritual beacon. He refuses to accept that Stalin’s role in history’s most devastating war was at least as pernicious as Hitler’s – and nor is he familiar with the scholarship proving this fact.

However, his reservoir of youthful communist aggression hasn’t been depleted. Hence he has the effrontery to describe as “nuts” a historian who has forgotten more about that war than Aaranovitch will ever know.

I’m surprised he used such a restrained term. How about “hireling of Wall Street”, “jackal”, “parasite”, “scum” and other terms of scholarly debate straight out of the communist lexicon? I’ll be pleased to provide a full list.

Easter is a happy holiday, a time for laughter and joy unsullied by troubles, problems and annoyances. So let’s rejoice together, laugh together and celebrate together – let’s be together.

For on this day in particular, we ought to remind ourselves that: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Happy Easter, wherever you are, whatever you believe and whatever language you speak!

Christ is risen!

Le Christ est ressuscité!

Christus ist auferstanden!

Cristo ha resucitado!

Cristo è risorto!

Kristus on üles tõusnud!

Kristus er oppstanden!

Xристос воскрес!

Chrystus zmartwychwstał!

Kristus vstal z mrtvých!

Cristo ressuscitou!

Kristus ir augšāmcēlies!

Christus is verrezen!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!

Krisztus feltámadt!

Kristus är uppstånden!

Kristus prisikėlė!

Kristus nousi kuolleista!

Hristos a înviat!

INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Denise Coates, the CEO of the online betting service Bet365, paid herself £469 million last year, a decent wage any way you look at it. More decent, in fact, than the combined incomes of the remaining 99 CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies, and they are no paupers.

Comments on that record pay are replete with words like ‘obscene’, ‘undeserved’ and even ‘criminal’. Yet libertarians among us won’t cede their ground to egalitarians quite so easily.

They argue that the company has made its profits legally, and it’s nobody’s business how much its founder paid herself. Miss Coates is an icon of free enterprise. Her company paid taxes on billions last year, and it employs 5,000 people. If anyone deserves a lifetime statue, it’s Denise, not Greta.

If I had to come down on either side of the argument, I’d probably go with the libertarians. Their views partly overlap with mine, which is more than I can say for the egalitarians.

However, ‘partly’ is the key word there. I find doctrinaire libertarianism almost as objectionable as its opposite.

Unwavering commitment to free enterprise über alles often takes morality out of the argument, reducing it to unvarnished utilitarianism. Yet utilitarianism tends to refute itself even on its own terms.

For example, libertarians wish to legalise drugs, first marijuana, then even the hard ones. They insist on people’s right to control their own destiny and health. If a chap has no fear of addiction, then by all means he should be allowed to mainline heroin or smoke crack if he so wishes.

Yet the social consequences of decriminalisation are unpredictable and therefore frightening. It’s possible that drug use would increase so much that herds of addicts would be roaming the streets, making them well-nigh uninhabitable. This isn’t the kind of possibility that conservative, which is to say intelligent, people are happy to bet against.

Proponents of legalising drugs argue that levels of addiction wouldn’t increase, while organised crime would be crippled. But gambling, which used to be another mafia pursuit, punches this argument full of holes.

Organised crime is flexible: if one income source goes legal, it intensifies the other sources, or explores new ones. As to the volume of the activity decreasing once it’s legalised, there are 469 strong arguments against this. That’s how many millions the online bookie Denise could afford to pay herself last year.   

Our secular world equates morality with legality. If, say, necrophilia were legalised tomorrow, we’ll be expected to welcome morgues advertising on TV, with slogans like “Bed the dead”.

Similarly, because online betting companies like Bet365 are allowed to inundate the box with their publicity, no moral objections are ever raised. Yet I for one regard habitual gambling as morally reprehensible – and it’s habitual gamblers who keep Miss Coates in country estates.

W.C. Fields inadvertently came up with the core principle of the gambling industry: never give a sucker an even break. The industry lives by that maxim, and everyone knows that. Yet suckers keep coming back for more, making one wonder which side to such transactions is more immoral. About a toss-up, I’d suggest.

Most punters are driven by greed, a base hope to get something for nothing. Yes, the house always wins in the end. But that’s in the end, when large-number statistics come into play. This doesn’t mean someone won’t walk away with the jackpot along the way. Hit me again!

It’s not just greed that drives suckers, but also hunger for cheap thrills. Yet many find out that cheap thrills can be dear at the price.

In a society that extols egotism as a virtue, many people lack natural mechanisms restraining their appetites. That’s why in both Britain and the US personal indebtedness far exceeds personal income. People don’t mind using one pack of credit cards to pay off the debts incurred on another, and they apply for bank loans to pay for a holiday without too many second thoughts.

Such rapacity extends to their gambling. Since every vice is these days medicalised, it’s fashionable to talk about ‘gambling addiction’, a disease that supposedly absolves the sufferer of any guilt. Yet gambling beyond one’s means isn’t an addiction in any physiological sense.

It’s a deficit of self-control, responsibility, foresight and – consequently – morality. It’s putting either greed or hedonism or both before reason, prudence and moral restraint.

Catering to, and profiting from, such human frailties is immoral even if legal. That’s why, much as I love to hear Ray Winstone’s rich London accent as he intones “Please gamble wesponsibly” in Bet365 commercials, the company is being dishonest there.

All such businesses depend on what’s called ‘heavy users’. Be it alcohol, cigarettes, fast food or gambling, the old 80-20 split is always at work: 20 per cent of the customers account for 80 per cent of the consumption.

A chap who bets the odd tenner on a football match a couple of times a season isn’t going to keep Denise in personal jets. It takes millions of suckers irresponsibly betting away their rent money because they find Ray Winstone oh so seductive.

Anyone who has ever seen people go for it at a casino, on a race course or in a betting shop is unlikely to describe the emotions contorting their faces as laudable. One sees tasteless, unbridled joy over winning and often real grief over losing, both preceded by unsightly gesticulation and incoherent shrieks.

Would I ban gambling? Probably not. But I’d certainly make it less accessible. Ideally, it should be contained within private clubs charging high membership fees, which would perform a useful vetting function. A chap gambling at Aspinall’s is less likely to become destitute than one doing so on line.

What I would definitely ban is TV advertising for online betting, even at the risk of knocking a zero or two off Miss Coates’s income. After all, we do ban cigarette advertising, so such paternalism is nothing new – and in this case it would be more justified.

The unveiling of a statue to Greta Thunberg at Winchester University made me feel ashamed of myself, for two reasons.

First, I didn’t realise the poor girl had died, which she must have done – after all, even saints only merit statues posthumously.

Actually, I’m cross with our news media for failing to inform us of Greta’s tragic demise. This conspiracy of silence testifies to the wicked nature of our establishment, even though it fulsomely claimed to accept the validity of the cause Greta championed so passionately.

And then I’m mortified at the abuse to which I subjected Greta while she was still alive. I called her retarded, hysterical, strident, devil’s spawn, ignorant – even an evil child with learning difficulties. Mea culpa!

Numerous were the occasions when I thus besmirched the girl’s character, while describing her cause as a hoax lacking any scientific justification and only propagated by the enemies of our civilisation specifically for the purpose of destroying it.

Now, I must admit I still have some residual misgivings about global warming and those who take it up as a cause. However, Greta’s untimely death is akin to martyrdom, and that, as we know, can redeem…

Hold on a second… Oh dear. Penelope has just looked over my shoulder and said I should really read the whole article before jumping to premature assumptions. This, she says, is typical of my tendency to reach conclusions on the basis of slapdash research.

Turns out Greta is very much alive, and the monument is Winchester University’s way of casting in bronze her status as the immortal legend in her own time.

So sorry I’ve misled you. I’m hereby taking back everything I’ve taken back that I ever said about Greta. By this process of double negation, we arrive at my true position:

Great Thunberg is indeed a retarded, ignorant, strident and genuinely evil child with learning difficulties. And her cause is indeed a shamanistic crusade drawing under its banners every manner of malcontent on a wicked mission to destroy our civilisation — which group manifestly includes the administration and faculty of Winchester University.

I’m glad we’ve sorted this out – thanks, Penelope. Please remind me to abuse the statue mingently next time we’re in Winchester.   

Such is the latest gem coming to you courtesy of Manny Macron, who wishes to see Britain classed in the same bracket as Russia, China and Iran.

This is a useful reminder that, though ideology is a cognate of idea, in reality the former precludes the latter. In fact, an ideology can make anyone look dumb.

That’s why debating against ideologies is pointless: none of them can withstand 10 seconds of rational argument. The whole point of an ideology is to override reason and common sense, replacing them with a kneejerk response to stimuli.

Nor do strident ideologues have to be stupid to spout inanities. It’s just that their intelligence doesn’t come into it. They don’t hold their utterances to any IQ tests; ideological purity is all that matters. In that sense, the ideology of European federalism is no different from Marxism and Nazism.

No matter how intelligent a Marxist could be otherwise, the moment he flies close to his ideology, his intellectual wings melt and he crashes to the ground. Leszek Kołakowski, for example, was no idiot – and yet he came across as one whenever he tried to squeeze his philosophy into the Marxist straightjacket.

Similarly, Carl Schmitt had a first-rate mind, but he put it on hold every time he tried to justify Nazism. ‘Abandon brains all ye who enter here’ is a sign implicitly displayed at the entrance to all ideologies.

While the ideology of European federalism is less toxic, at least so far, it’s an ideology nonetheless. That’s why, having tried to argue the toss with dozens of otherwise intelligent men (I usually don’t argue with women because such arguments are silly and rude by definition), I have yet to hear a single idea that makes even remote sense. All I hear is ideological platitudes.

It’s only against this backdrop that Manny Macron’s diatribes against Britain can be understood. In fact, as far as he is concerned, Britain may be even worse than Russia, China and Iran. Yes, they present a clear danger to the West, but at least, they never left the EU because they never belonged to it.

Britain did, which makes her worse than dangerous. She is an apostate and heretic, and ideologies always treat such schismatics more harshly than outright foes. Lenin, for example, reserved his most hysterical harangues for the non-Bolshevik socialists, such as Kautsky, not for implacable enemies of Bolshevism, such as Churchill.

So Manny whistles, so Ursula von der Leyen jumps. For her a plunge into stupidity is even shorter than for Manny, which is why she plans to exclude British scientists from collaboration with the EU in state-of-the-art technology, such as supercomputers.

If Manny, or even Ursula, engaged their brains even for a second, they’d know how idiotic this plan is. Science and technology thrive on international collaboration, and they risk withering without it. This applies to the excluded and the excluders alike: both sides will suffer.

Naturally, whenever a project has military applications, it must remain classified to potential enemies, those who can use it for aggressive purposes. Yet neither Manny nor Ursula can possibly think that Britain threatens the security of the EU.

Actually, they don’t think that. But they do believe that Britain threatens the ideology of the EU, and there they have a point.

That’s why, in order to spite Britain, the likes of Manny are happy to cut off not only their nose, but even more reproductively vital portions of their anatomy. They are prepared to make their countries less competitive as long as Britain loses out too, pour encourager les autres, as Voltaire put it.

EU fanatics could do worse than study history. Then they’d know that ideological contrivances eventually collapse, and the more strident they are, they closer their demise. Yet, as another Frenchman, Paul Valery, wrote, “History teaches precisely nothing”. That’s certainly true with ideologues.

Some time ago I had a friend who lived in Essex. He told me about his village’s celebrity, a 14-year-old girl who regularly took men behind the pub and gave them handjobs for 20 Bensons.

I was shocked: surely her parents ought to have alerted their little girl to the health hazards of smoking. However, for all I know that young lady must have been preparing herself for a glittering academic career.

According to an article I’ve just read, studies show that somewhere between 95,000 and 500,000 British students use prostitution to fund their studies. Moreover, their universities and student unions actively encourage this activity.

At Cambridge University one can find leaflets saying that “not all sex work is abusive” (unlike, say, complimenting a girl on her body).

Bristol’s student union pledges to “lobby the University to take an explicit non-exclusionary stance towards students who work in the sex industry”.

University of London’s student union explains that “sex work is work… the exchange of money for labour, like any other job”.

Edinburgh University promises to “take a zero-tolerance attitude towards whorephobia”, thereby expanding my lexicon of objectionable phobias.

University of Oxford, while streamlining its music studies to exclude Mozart and Beethoven,  supports a “campaign for the full decriminalisation of sex work”.

And Leicester University has produced a helpful ‘Sex Work Toolkit’ for students and staff, academic salaries being what they are.

I’m proud of our universities. Displaying commendable realism, they acknowledge that the role of the university has changed over the centuries.

Such institutions used to produce scholars trained in theology, philosophy, logic, music, mathematics and rhetoric. But these days they have less and less time for such abstract disciplines – nor indeed for most others recognised in the past as legitimate academic subjects.

Instead, they see their role as arming students with the skills, knowledge and character traits essential to succeeding in the rough-and-tumble of our increasingly complex world. And prostitution can serve this end better than any other extracurricular activity.

In addition to acquiring advanced amorous techniques of a purely mechanical nature, our budding academics can also develop a certain elasticity of morals and behaviour that will stand them in good stead in future life.

In some areas the benefits are immediate and direct, in others they may be deferred but no less sizeable for it. In the former category, prostitution provides essential skills for stellar success in politics, public relations, modelling, hospitality, acting and sales.

That much is obvious. But even in seemingly unrelated fields, such as law, journalism, finance or medicine, a young lady who has turned hundreds of tricks by graduation time has a head start on competition, as it were.

The same way she used men as a source of revenue, she can now use them as stepping stones on her upward career path. Moreover, she can later sue some of the stepping stones for harassment and sexual objectivising, thus complementing her already sizeable income with a tidy lump sum.

In our increasingly transactional society, every woman, regardless of occupation, can benefit from developing an acute business sense, independence of mind and ability to fend for herself. Hence I was pleased to find out that most student prostitutes dispense with pimps and work strictly for themselves.

The entrepreneur is the driver of a free market economy, and what’s a pimpless prostitute if not a self-employed businesswoman?

She has to vet her clientele, work out a flexible pricing policy to cover the whole range of services, look after health and safety provisions, ensure collection, develop a strategy minimising tax exposure – in short, the prostitute is the crystallised quintessence of modern society, the ideal toward which it strives.

I do think though that our universities must take the next bold step by turning student prostitutes into a profit centre for the whole institution. Universities already have dormitories that can be profitably converted into brothels, thereby centralising that activity and realising economies of scale.

In due course, universities may embark on expansion by moving mattresses into the now-unused classrooms, thus optimising the use of floorspace. Opportunities are rife, and I’m sure our universities will meet the challenge head on, as it were.

Meanwhile, the article I’ve read mentions a bright 18-year-old girl named Anna who studies “diligently in the musty libraries and ancient halls of one of Britain’s most venerated universities.” By night, however, she hones her business skills by turning tricks for as little as £10 a throw.

Yet again I was shocked. Anna must work on her pricing strategies, both to maximise her own earning potential and also to prevent depressing the market. Currently, she’s selling herself short.

I wonder if Anna is that girl from Essex my friend mentioned, now grown up and savvy. Old habits die hard, and £10 is close to today’s price of 20 Bensons.

Please don’t call for the men in white coats yet, bear with me for a couple of paragraphs.

Now what if I suggested that our best university scrap musical notation because “it causes students of colour great distress” and “has not shaken off its connection to its colonial past” and “complicity in white supremacy”?

What if I then developed this idea to its inevitable logical conclusion by insisting that the presence of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart et al. on the university curricula delivers a “slap in the face” to minority students? And therefore all such offensive personages, along with their music, should be cancelled?

Now put that phone down. Or, if you insist on summoning those proverbial men, don’t mention me as a potential patient. Mention instead professors and administrators of Oxford University who are planning to do all those things in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s their pronouncements that I quoted.

Those learned ladies and gentlemen are planning to remove the whole classical repertoire from the curriculum. This abomination, they explain, is “white European music” that causes “students of colour great distress”. 

Now you probably expect me to huff and puff about this woke equivalent of Nazi book burning, spouting words like ‘savagery’, ‘vandalism’, ‘barbarism’ and so forth. Well, hate to disappoint, but I’m not going to.

Instead I simply invite you to ponder the state of a civilisation where that sort of thing happens at a university currently ranked as the world’s best. That’s right, the best not merely in Britain, but in the whole world.

I’d also like to rebuke the University of Oxford for a certain lapse in logic and consistency. Why just Mozart and Beethoven (and Guido d’Arezzo, who first committed the offence of inventing modern musical notation)?

Why not also Newton and Leibniz, who concocted their theories at a time when slavery and colonialism were rife, and dead black people were stuffed and displayed in zoological museums? (I’m only mentioning those two because the list of scientists working before the second half of the 20^th century is too long to include here.)

Why not Plato and Aristotle, who not only philosophised at a time of slavery, but actually extolled it?

Why not the whole European, and specifically English, literature created at a time when black people didn’t teach, nor indeed study, at Oxford?

Why not Classical, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-Classical, Georgian, Regency and Victorian architecture? Do you have any idea how deeply it can traumatise ‘students of colour’ (other than white, that is)?

And oh yes, what about all art of the same periods? I mean, how many black people were painted by Leonardo and Vermeer? How do you suppose students of colour feel having to study paintings of white bitches playing the virginals?

But do let’s simplify matters by stopping this itemisation. Cancel the lot of them, I say. Oxford should reduce its entire curriculum to one programme only: Black Studies.

This could be subdivided into courses in African art, bongo drum compositions, rap, black literature and a very short credit module in black science. Black magic is worth considering too, even though it’s not overtly racial.

Have you pondered all those timely proposals? Fine. Now ponder something else: if this is what’s going on at the world’s top university, what are the lesser institutions teaching? Apart from condom studies, that is.

Cannibalism? Voodoo? History of slavery? No, surely not those – such courses would only perpetuate negative racial stereotyping, thereby reinforcing all sorts of unconscious biases. Anyway, your guess is as good as mine, or actually much better because I’m out of ideas.

Meanwhile, let’s start a campaign for cancelling Oxford University (founded in 1096) and all other institutionally racist institutions dating back to the times falling short of our exacting moral standards. And not just the educational establishments either.

The Mother of All Parliaments, anyone?