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What else can they possibly be if they show that foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes than Britons born and bred?

Obviously, no progressive person can think that disparity is there because foreigners commit more crimes. And in any case, all such persons know that our police are institutionally racist.

When they arrest a foreigner, especially one from a racial minority, the poor chap is probably innocent. That’s why arrested and guilty are two different things, and, when it comes to minorities, never the twain shall meet.

This attitude is so dominant that neither the Home Office nor the police can do their job properly. How is it possible, for example, to establish proper admission and deportation policies without Parliament knowing the breakdown of all criminal offenders by nationality, visa and asylum status?

Yet both major parties have steadfastly refused to collect and release such statistics, and I did tell you there’s no fundamental differences between the Tories and Labour. In fact, the last time such a proposal was thrown out was in the run-up to the general election, when Rishi Sunak, nominally a Tory, rejected a backbench amendment to his Sentencing Bill.

God forbid he’d undermine his woke credentials just as the nation was about to go to the polls. It has to be said that Sunak’s wokery didn’t make a Labour landslide less imminent and possibly made it more so. Even worse, neither he nor the Tory Party is likely to learn their lesson. Going woke is like riding a tiger: you can’t really stop.

The league table of sex crimes I espied in The Telegraph is the first of its kind. It shows the leadership position of not just foreigners in general but – and you know how much it pains me to say this – Muslims in particular. In fact, of the top 10 sexually criminal nations only the Congo is partially Muslim. The other nine are solidly Islamic.

Albanians lead the league by a wide margin, with also-ran Afghanis trailing far behind, closely followed by Iraqis, Algerians and Somalis. Even assuming that some of those arrested Muslims are pristinely innocent, a certain statistical bias is still hard to ignore. It requires something HMG is unlikely to provide: an explanation.

One such would be that Muslims are naturally more virile than native-born Britons, so much so that they find it hard to contain their rampant libido. After all, when it comes to arrests for all crimes, foreigners outscore indigenous Britons only by two to one, not 3.5 to one as they do with sex offences. Thus, their sex criminality is much greater than their criminality in general.

However, the same groups lead the way in overall crimes as well. For example, in 2021, twenty per cent of all Albanian migrants were arrested for various crimes, which is pretty good going. By comparison, the corresponding figure for British suspects is a meagre 1.2 per cent.

Nevertheless, I tend to reject out of hand any biological, racial or ethnic explanations of social trends. This isn’t to say I don’t think they have a role to play, but if they do, it’s only a walk-on. The star of the show is culture, understood in the broadest possible sense.

To put this assumption to a test, one should try to find out whether Islamic culture predisposes men to take shortcuts to women’s affections. In the West, sex crimes transgress against the prevalent understanding of a woman as an autonomous human equal (in my marriage actually superior) to a man. “Neither male nor female,” wrote St Paul, and he wasn’t talking about transsexuality.

Even the most cursory familiarity with the Koran, the foundation of Islamic culture, shows that the status of a woman there is somewhat different. For example, that holy book explains that most dwellers of hell are women, who are a source of seduction and evil.

Women should be beaten if their husbands feel such punishment is merited, and men disciplining their wives in that manner aren’t accountable to God. A woman isn’t allowed to seek divorce except in extreme cases. A man, however, can divorce his wife simply by three utterances to that effect. In case of divorce, a wife’s share of the assets is half of a man’s.

Did I say “a woman”? Actually, men are allowed to have up to four wives, which encourages seeking variety as the spice of amorous life. And here we begin to touch on the cultural aspects of Islam that are relevant to my subject today.

Islam’s approach to sex in and outside marriage is rather different from ours. For example, if a man wants sex, his woman isn’t allowed to say no. If she does, she’ll be cursed by angels. “Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,” just isn’t part of Islamic folklore.

Men are allowed to take child brides, following the example of their religion’s founder. They are also allowed to rape captives and slaves without risking God’s (or man’s) punishment. A bride’s silence is always interpreted as her consent to marriage, which you must agree is a long way away from our current idea of consent. And so on, ad infinitum.

None of this predetermines criminal behaviour of Muslim men towards women. In fact, I know quite a few Muslims and I can vouch for their innocence of any such offences. However, a man weaned on such a spiritual diet must be statistically more likely to treat a woman as merely an object, whose human value is circumscribed by her sexuality.

And statistics is what we are talking about here, relative not absolute values, large groups not individuals. Hence, league tables of crime shouldn’t determine each individual case of a man seeking immigrant status in Britain. But it would be foolhardy to disregard such data altogether or, even worse, refuse to collect them.

P.S. Case in point: When German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, visited Syria the other day, her image is deliberately blurred in the official photograph released by the new, victorious government. She is undeniably a woman, which just won’t do.

I’m happy for the Americans. Their country must have so few problems that the president-elect and his right hand can redirect their boundless energy to helping Britain out of her morass.

This isn’t to say no morass exists, nor that Trump and Musk aren’t making good points. In fact, I agree with most of them. However, both gentlemen routinely overstep the fine line separating valid criticism from meddling in the affairs of a sovereign country.

At the moment, their two-prong attack focuses on Britain’s energy policy and Keir Starmer’s record as Director of Crown Prosecutions, both truly appalling. The two critics seem to be dividing the workload: Trump is at the moment talking about energy and Musk about Sir Keir.

The president-elect responded to the news that Apache, a US oil company, would cease production in the UK because of the “financial impact of the energy profits levy”. Indeed, when Boris Johnson was PM, he and his chancellor Rishi Sunak raised the windfall tax on oil companies from 35 to 38 per cent.

This goes to show yet again, if any further proof is necessary, that there is no substantial divide between our two main parties: both are woke and Left-wing, if perhaps to different extents. Both are committed to the economic suicide going by the name of net zero.

Now, Trump may be all sorts of things, but woke he isn’t. That’s why I’d happily sign my own name under his message to Britain: “The UK is ­making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of the windmills!”

However, Trump and I are different in more ways than I can count, but the one relevant here is that I am a British subject, and he is a foreign politician. Trump is entitled to his opinion, and in this case I happen to agree with it, but he isn’t entitled to talk to Britain the way he undoubtedly talks to his flunkeys.

There is an element of blackmail here as well, because Trump knows that Britain desperately needs a trade deal with the US. At the very least, Starmer craves an exemption from the blanket import tariffs Trump is planning to impose because, if he goes through with that idea, it will cost Britain billions.

Now, that idea is wrong, almost as much so as Britain’s shutting down North Sea drilling. But Trump has the power of his convictions, right and wrong ones alike, and he is unlikely to back down. This gives him leverage over Britain, but it still gives him no right to talk to us in the peremptory tone of a blackmailer.

There are more important things than money, national pride being one of them. Starmer would be within his rights to tell Trump – in the idiom the latter favours – to shove his deal and his directives where the sun don’t shine.

Musk also has a point when attacking Starmer’s record as DCP. Starmer, Musk said, “was complicit in the rape of Britain when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years. Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crimes in British history.”

I agree with this point, but not with Musk’s right to make it publicly. He is no longer just a private citizen with a huge capital and an ego to match. From 20 January onwards he’ll also have a key role to play in the US administration, and it’s outrageous that he sees fit to demand criminal prosecution of the prime minister of a foreign country and America’s staunchest ally.

Indirectly, Musk also took a swipe at Nigel Farage, who is the ally within an ally. In his pilgrimage zeal, Farage has turned Mar-a-Lago into an equivalent of the Ferney of 18^th century progressives, the Santiago di Compostela of Christians and the Mecca of Muslims.

However, for all his sycophancy to Trump and Musk (who is waving a $100 million bait before Nigel’s nose), Farage is a British patriot. There is a line he won’t cross, and his rebuke of Musk is exemplary.

In his own political evolution, Musk has been swinging from left to right depending on which way the economic wind was blowing. At the moment, he has swung as far right as it’s possible to go without having to don a brown shirt. All marginal parties and individuals in other countries are his friends and beneficiaries, and unfortunately it’s not just the benign Reform Party that he patronises.

Musk also supports Germany’s AfD, which is desperately trying to downplay its neo-Nazi roots in search of political respectability. And Musk’s British pet is Tommy Robinson, the darling of the MAGA crowd currently serving an 18-month term for contempt of court, the latest of his numerous criminal convictions.

In spite of his touching concern for British legality, Musk demanded that Robinson, a former member of the British National Party and the founder of its successor, the English Defence League, be released from prison.

If Musk counted on Farage’s support, he miscalculated. The ungrateful would-be recipient of Musk’s largesse said: “Anyone who looks at my history will know that I did more to defeat the BNP than anybody in British politics. I have always forbade them to be members of Ukip, the Brexit Party and Reform. That includes a certain Mr Robinson. He is a serial criminal … he seems to want to launch a holy war. I don’t. Elon Musk makes his own mind up. He is the high priest of free speech. He is entitled to those views.”

His ignorance of the Past Participle form of the verb ‘to forbid’ emphasises Mr Farage’s credentials as Trump’s friend. However, other than that, he is absolutely right.

Farage also put his finger, perhaps inadvertently, on another point worth making. Musk, a recent convert to the right end of politics and hence exhibiting a neophyte’s zeal, along with, more important, Trump, seems to be putting together an international anti-woke crusade.

There are some indications that such seeds may fall on fertile soil, what with voters in various countries showing signs of exasperation with tyrannical woke politics and indoctrination. The US herself, Argentina, Italy, several Eastern European countries, Germany, to some extent France are all leaning that way.

However, voters are fickle, and they tend to display as much spinal elasticity as Mr Musk himself. Let’s not forget that the same US electorate that commendably voted for Trump this time around had twice elected Obama and came close to electing Harris.

No anti-woke, anti-Left campaign will succeed unless it’s conducted with tact and discernment. Tact is demonstrably lacking in the pronouncements made by both Trump and Musk, and I doubt it’ll ever creep into their statements later – neither man has the right psychological makeup for it.

But discernment is even more important. Looking from across the ocean, MAGA chaps may not spot the difference between serious politicians like Farage and fascisoid scum like Robinson – or between, say, German conservative parties and the AfD.

If they lump them all together into the same campaign, that’s how the masses will perceive them. That will compromise the whole movement and arm subversive Lefties with enough ammunition to fight a successful rear-guard action.

The best way for Trump, Musk et al. to shake other countries out of their Left-wing torpor isn’t to be rude and bossy to them, but to turn America into a glittering success story by implementing conservative policies across the board. That will provide an example others may find difficult not to follow.

Conversely, an attempt to bully HMG into submission is guaranteed to cause a negative reaction among Britons, including many of those who detest the Starmer gang. My advice in the title above stands: mind your own business, chaps. And turn your own business into a triumph.

It’s a general rule supported by much empirical evidence. When it comes to schooling, conservatives educate, socialists indoctrinate.

Since socialists are in charge of education in Britain and just about everywhere else in the West, our schools keep churning out ignoramuses who have the hysterical power of their hairbrained convictions.

At least Tory governments try to reverse this tendency, but their attempts are invariably smashed against the stonewall of teachers, unions, pressure groups and school administrators. Most of these were educated at various hatcheries of wokery, to which they pledged lifelong allegiance. They use their strength in numbers and vocal chords to defeat any encroachments on woke probity.

I’m happy to report that this divisive confrontation is now over. Perfect harmony exists between Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and the groups I’ve mentioned. They are prepared to launch their combined assault on what’s left of British education.

To that end, Miss Phillipson has set out to change the national curriculum. She wants to “breathe new life into our outdated curriculum to make it more diverse”. It should reflect “the diversity of our society” and indoctri… sorry, I mean teach, youngsters to “appreciate the diversity of Britain.”

Some subjects, currently “mono-cultural”, are set to be “decolonised” in order to “embed anti-racist and decolonised approaches in the curriculum”. Let’s hear it for the “inclusive curricula that reflect diverse authors, cultures and perspectives.”

As the founder and chairman of the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I wholeheartedly support this approach to education. Indeed, if our schools can only teach youngsters one thing, it should definitely be how to appreciate and admire the diversity of our society. In fact, that indeed does seem to be the only thing Miss Phillipson would like to teach in her new curriculum.

However, it pains me to say that she has her work cut out for her. For example, it’s not immediately apparent how things like physics or mathematics can be twisted… sorry, I mean improved, in light of the new programme. I have every faith in our educators, and I know they’ll try to do their level best, but the task seems borderline impossible.

Hence the main thrust of new education will be directed against… sorry, I mean at, the humanities, mainly literature and history. The guiding spirit of the drive for diversity is Prof Becky Francis, who in the past criticised the Blair government for “an obsession with academic achievement”.

I couldn’t agree more. Even the Blair-type obsession of this nature runs against the grain of British education. Academic achievement, fancy that. It’s much more important, explain our educators, to steer clear of “traditional” English literature, especially in “majority white” classrooms.

Thanks to the emigration policies of successive governments, such classrooms are becoming exceedingly rare, but – fair enough – a few here and there are still extant. It stands to reason, of course, that those classrooms shouldn’t be allowed to be mired in white complacency. So the first target for re-education has been well spotted.

The Association of School and College Leaders laments that “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation are under-represented in the national curriculum”. I share their frustration, but no immediate corrective steps suggest themselves readily.

If American literature has produced quite a few books highlighting ethnicity and, mainly in the 20^th century, sexual orientation, classical British literature is tragically remiss in that area. I suppose hints at fashionable sexuality can be discerned in Oscar Wilde’s works, and perhaps one or two ‘confirmed bachelors’ pop up in other places as well, but none of it is explicit. It’s as if those writers were ashamed when they ought to have been proud.

The situation with ethnicity is even more dire. Classical English writers from Chaucer onwards were unapologetically white people who, as good writers will, described the life they knew. Which is to say the life of white people. Other races hardly ever figure.

Such lackadaisical omissions can be corrected on stage easily enough, by having, say, Hamlet played by a black transsexual woman missing a limb or two. But rewriting the play to make the Prince of Denmark speak in the idiom once popularised by Ali G seems like a tall order.

The five main exam boards of Britain explained that: “The literary canon should better reflect the range of cultures and experiences of all young people.” Splendid idea, that. The trouble is that such a literary canon has so far failed to materialise.

Perhaps members of our educational establishment should put their day jobs on hold and actually produce a canon to satisfy their exacting requirements. As new books and poems are being written, the old literary canon, all those Shakespeares, Keatses and Dickenses, could be squeezed out one by one, until the Great Literary Replacement has been achieved.

However, one has to doubt that such a Herculean feat can be accomplished within the lifespan of this government, even should it have more than one term in office. Still, no harm in trying, a stitch in time and all that.

At least with literature one can see a clear path to improvement in line with the reinforced commitment to “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation”. History, on the other hand, can’t by definition “better reflect the range of cultures and experiences of all young people”.

You see, by its very nature, history deals with the past, whereas “all young people” live and acquire their experiences in the present. The present is infinitely more diverse, multicultural, transsexual and generally better than any period in the past, that much goes without saying. Alas, and I don’t know how to put this not to offend anybody, the past stubbornly remains firmly lodged in, well, the past.

I agree that our DEI educators are entitled not only to their own opinions but also to their own facts, but I’m just concerned that, if they rewrite history completely, they’ll undermine their own credibility. They do have plenty of it, credibility, but if it’s undermined, they’ll have less. That saddens me.

To their credit, they don’t give up easily. For example, some history teachers (and a popular TV show) insist that Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of George III and hence a queen of England, was black.

No written or pictorial evidence for this supposition has so far been unearthed, but who’s to say it won’t be in the future? This is a line of thought perfected by Darwinists: yes, they say, the missing link hasn’t yet been found. But it may be found in the future, which means it will be found, which means we can safely assume it has been found.

In a similar vein, King Edward II is always believed to be homo- or bi-sexual, though not yet trans-. James I definitely had a commendable sexual orientation, as any reader of his letters to the Duke of Buckingham will confirm.

That fact should definitely be given a much greater prominence in history lessons, but one should tread carefully. Since James was Scottish, a teacher may run the risk of offending that devolved nation, thereby sinking into xenophobia, Little Englishness and potentially racism.

Altogether, these are rather slim pickings left for our DEI-fied educators. Since they can’t rewrite history as easily as literature, the only path open to them is to nail Britain’s past to the wall of opprobrium by portraying it as racist, homo- and trans-phobic, misogynist, colonialist – and nothing else.

Giant strides are already being made in that direction, but there is still room for improvement. And with Bridget Phillipson in charge, such improvements won’t be long in coming. I trust her implicitly.

Pope Francis wouldn’t make the short list of my favourite pontiffs, and he’d even struggle to get on the long one. Yet his homily at New Year’s Day Mass serves a powerful reminder of what it means to be a Christian in general and Catholic in particular.

One hopes it would also remind those holding different faiths or none of what it means to be a decent person. But, when it comes to killing by state, otherwise known as euthanasia or ‘assisted dying’, that hope is slim.

Priests are free to hold all sorts of political and cultural views, including, as most these days do, those I find objectionable. But any priest who supports that abomination should be summarily unfrocked, and I’d even go so far as to say that even lay Christians ought to be excommunicated if they see nothing wrong with euthanasia or, for that matter, abortion.

Some views are simply incompatible with Christianity, certainly its apostolic denominations. One can get away with having no respect for, say, private property or real music, but not for human life, which is only God’s to give or take away.

Congratulations to His Holiness for refusing to obfuscate that straightforward message with a smokescreen of qualifications and equivocations. He spoke forcefully about the urgent need to protect “the precious gift of life, life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying.”  

Unfortunately, he also called for “the elimination of the death penalty in all nations”, but hey, we can’t all be perfect. A valid argument can be made that the death penalty for murder upholds the sacred value of human life, rather than denying it. In any case, this is a separate conversation.

To his credit, the Pope has never been bashful about letting his views on abortion be widely known. At various times, he has referred to it as “murder”, akin to “hiring a hitman to solve a problem”, while describing pro-abortion laws as “homicidal”.

However, that ship has sailed, at least in Britain. As far as I know, even the mildest anti-abortion legislation isn’t even being mooted. But ‘assisted dying’ is a current issue: even though the relevant bill passed its second reading recently, it still isn’t a law.

It passed narrowly, which gives some hope for the future. In fact, 147 Labour MPs opposed it, along with most Tories and two out of five Reform MPs, including Nigel Farage. That three other Reformers supported the bill emphasises the difference between right-wing populism and conservatism, but again this dichotomy is for another day.

One of the most vociferous campaigners for the bill was TV presenter Dame Esther Rantzen, who is suffering from Stage 4 lung cancer. As a survivor of Stage 4 cancer myself, I sympathise with her plight, but not with her view on the state killing her — and eventually millions of others — by way of relief.

Her suffering touched a chord in what passes for Keir Starmer’s heart. Back in October, he said that he had “made a promise to Esther Rantzen before the election that we would provide time for a debate and a vote on assisted dying”.

That was one campaign promise Starmer has kept, which is more than one can say for a whole raft of other promises he has broken with blithe cynicism. Not only did he push that diabolical bill through two readings in Parliament, but he himself voted for it with so much enthusiasm that it was easy to get the impression he’d happily stick a needle into Dame Esther’s arm himself.

She should thank God he didn’t, and neither did anyone else. Had the bill become a law there and then, Dame Esther would probably no longer be with us. As it is, I for one was happy to read her announcement that “the new wonder drug I’m on” may hold back the spread of her cancer “for months, even years”. 

If AstraZeneca’s Osimertinib can add so much time to Dame Esther’s life, it will make a powerful statement in favour of modern pharmacology – and a rational one against killing by state.

One of the requirements for doctors to kill a patient with impunity is that he is to have no more than six months left to live. This requirement is based on certain premises, all of them dubious.

First, doctors can seldom pinpoint the end of a life with any accuracy. I’ve known several people given months left to live who then went on to stick around for several more years. Doctors can make a mistake and so can medical science.

Second, this denies the possibility of a miracle, delivered either by God or, as in Dame Esther’s case, a pharmaceutical company or – most likely – both. Practical and theological arguments thus merge into one, delivering the kind of blow to the ‘assisted dying’ bill from which it would never recover in any decent country.

That the bill will likely become a law in Britain before long diminishes her claim to being a decent country. An essential qualification for this accolade is unwavering belief in the sanctity of human life – something demanded by God, Pope Francis, simple decency and even common sense.

Sorry, give me a second to catch my breath.

The New Year Honours List has just been announced, and I was so astounded by some of the awards that I immediately went to the Royal Family website. What exactly are the qualification criteria?

There they are, in black and white: “To be made a Knight or a Dame is to receive one of the highest honours in the United Kingdom, and is usually granted to those who have made a significant contribution to their field, usually on a national level.”

In other words, to become a knight of the realm a candidate has to be very good at what he does. Because of his sterling performance he provides invaluable services to the crown, which is to say the nation, the part of it under his purview.

If that’s the case, how can the name of the London mayor Sadiq Khan be even whispered in this context? I’ve lived in London for 36 years now, and to say he is the worst mayor I’ve ever seen is to say nothing. Yet here he is, the freshly anointed Sir Sadiq Khan.

Let’s put it this way: if a hypothetical mayor were elected on the promise of harming London in every possible way, and if he then devoted every waking moment to achieving that goal, he couldn’t possibly be any worse than Sadiq Khan.

If elevation to knighthood were a matter of ideological purity, then of course Khan would be a perfect candidate under this government. He is further to the left than even Starmer’s cabinet, by far the leftmost government in the past 50 years or so.

And then he is a minority hire, which gives him a jump on competition both ideologically and electorally. After all, Muslims make up 15 per cent of London’s population, and with a co-religionist candidate on offer, they are guaranteed to vote as a bloc. That’s how Khan has managed to win three elections to the post he is demonstrably unqualified to hold.

However, the website of the family that bestows, or rather rubberstamps, the honours doesn’t mention ideology, religion or race among its criteria for “one of the highest honours in the United Kingdom”. (I hasten to add that, as the founder, chairman and so far one of only two members of the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I’d welcome such criteria with an open heart.) No, it specifically talks about a record of high achievement.

So what’s Khan’s record like? Well, he has indeed achieved impressive numbers.

Khan was first elected in 2016, and since that year the level of robberies, stabbings and other violent crimes has steadily fallen… No, not in London. Only across England and Wales. In London it has risen 30 per cent.

Twenty per cent of Londoners have been attacked or threatened with violence in the past five years. Khan responded to that lamentable situation in a predictable fashion, by busily closing down police stations all over the city. Police commissioners in other places have been just as busily opening new ones, but what do they know?

Having reduced the number of police officers in London, Sadiq Khan then hamstrung the remaining ones by limiting the use of stop and search. That tactic is blatantly racist according to him, and racism is a worse crime than any that could be prevented by stop and search.

At the same time, the mayor has looked with avuncular good humour on marches in support of Muslim terrorism, which have become ubiquitous since the 7 October pogrom. These have turned central London into a no-go area for Jews, along with those gentiles who frown on anti-Semitism.

Under Khan’s tutelage, 150,000 London Jews don’t feel safe even in the quarters they traditionally inhabit. They are routinely abused when leaving synagogues on Saturday, or when changing buses shuttling between Golders Green and other Jewish areas. Cars flying anti-Semitic banners speed through Jewish neighbourhoods with impunity. In response, city officials helpfully advise Jews not to display any outward signs of their religion, just to be on the safe side.

Climate fanatics also enjoy a free ride under this mayor. In fact, the same groups of thugs happily drift from anti-Semitic to anti-capitalist marches in an attempt to take control of London streets. The mayor looks on with a beatific smile as ‘protesters’ block major thoroughfares and throw orange goo on great paintings in London museums.

Khan himself is a climate fanatic, or rather a fanatic of the power-grabbing potential of climate activism. That’s why he has evidently decided to rid London of cars.

Socialists always hated private vehicles even before the elaborate global warming swindle became a force. A car is a factor of independence from public transport and hence from the state, which makes that form of transportation intolerable.

The mayor has set out to make cars unusable in London, and he is succeeding famously. And if they can’t be expelled, they can be turned into cash cows for our corrupt councils.

Acting in that spirit, Khan has greatly expanded ULEZ (the Ultra Low Emission Zone), imposing a daily charge of £12.50 on drivers of older vehicles in outer boroughs. That penalises the poor people Labour claims to protect, many of whom have to rely on their cars to go to work.

At the same time, Khan expanded the congestion charge zone, which Boris Johnson had narrowed when becoming mayor. Add to this the punitive 20 mph speed limit even on major roads, a profusion of bus and bicycle lanes, new traffic islands being constructed every day, and you’ll see why the Tom Tom Index identified London’s rush hour as the slowest-moving in the world.

That’s why cabbies can no longer make a living. For every 10 drivers leaving the trade, only two replacements come in, and no wonder. With only the meter moving fast, passengers have to count on their own two feet or the dirty and unreliable tube. Buses are no good in Central London: for example, courtesy of the good mayor, the 22 Bus takes at least an hour to travel the three miles from my home to Oxford Circus – and not just in rush hour.

This war on cars hits London’s retail businesses hard, with pubs, restaurants and shops going out of business at an impressive rate. But it’s especially damaging to emergency services that can’t get through bottlenecks even with the benefit of sirens and flashing lights. When Londoners talk about murderous traffic, they often mean it literally.

So what exactly is the “significant contribution” Sir Sadiq (as he now is) has made to the public administration of what to me is the world’s greatest city? None at all, although he has indeed contributed significantly to London’s public administrators. One in every four pounds we pay in council tax goes straight into the pension funds of council members.

That’s quite a lot, considering that London council tax has grown by 71 per cent since Sadiq Khan became mayor. That achievement clearly appealed to Starmer, in line as it is with the government’s policy of taxing people out of every hope of independence from the state.

The only surprising thing about Khan’s knighthood is that he hasn’t been elevated straight to the peerage. Such significant achievements deserve the highest accolade on offer.

Happy New Year!

Every year or so, Peter Hitchens feels the urge to defend the man he unashamedly calls “my greatest ally”, the Putin stooge Graham Phillips.

Phillips is a journalist of sorts, who has been doing Putin’s bidding since 2009, an undertaking in which he is as enthusiastic as Hitchens himself. Unlike Hitchens, however, he hasn’t learned how to offset his message with disingenuous qualifiers.

Today, for example, Hitchens writes: “He has been more sympathetic to the Russian cause in Ukraine than is either right or wise for someone who calls himself a journalist.” By implication, Hitchens himself shows the right amount of sympathy, just enough to keep himself out of trouble with the British government.

Unlike him, Phillips has never bothered to couch his admiration for Putin fascism in journalese, even when the hack had to commit crimes against humanity in the process. Hitchens refers to one such rather coyly: “He has behaved questionably (I put this mildly) towards a British prisoner-of-war captured by the Russians, and to others in similar fixes.”

‘Questionably”, I’m afraid, is the wrong word here, even when qualified in Hitchens’s skilful manner. Allow me to refresh your memory of the crime that only rates “questionable” in Hitchens’s lexicon.

In 2016 Phillips published a video in which he taunted a Ukrainian POW who had lost his sight and both his arms. With the Russians’ blessing, Phillips also interviewed, or rather interrogated, a captured British soldier fighting in the Ukrainian army. The soldier, Aidin Aslin, wasn’t a willing participant – in fact, he was handcuffed throughout the interview.

That violated the terms of the Geneva Convention that bans coercive interrogation of POWs for propaganda purposes. Already at that time, plans were under way to charge Phillips with war crimes, which is a rare accolade for British journalists.

When he wasn’t busy participating in the torture of Ukrainians and Britons captured by the Russian invaders, Phillips kept inundating the electronic waves with the most brazen pro-Putin and anti-Ukrainian propaganda this side of Russia’s own media, often even outdoing them.

His masters rewarded Phillips’s loyal service as best they could. In 2015, the Russian Border Service, an FSB branch, gave him its aptly named ‘Border Brotherhood’ Medal. He has also received several medals from the ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk, which is sort of like getting a Medal of Honour from the Manson family.

“Mr Phillips,” writes Hitchens, “seems to be the only British person living who does not have any human rights.” Including, it seems, the most essential one: “Mr Phillips is legally forbidden (for example) to pay the council tax on his London house.” I wish someone deprived me of that particular human right.

Phillips isn’t allowed to return to the UK, which is why “he is living in a bombed-out, unheated block of flats in the city of Mariupol.” What’s left of it, after the Russians bombed the city flat, occupied it and looted whatever they could find under the debris.

However, contrary to what Hitchens claims, with his usual cavalier treatment of facts even tangentially related to Putin’s Russia, Phillips isn’t the only Briton denied re-entry into the UK. Shamima Begum, who left Britain for Syria and took part in Islamic State atrocities, was stripped of her citizenship in 2019, and in 2021 the Supreme Court banned her from returning to appeal the ruling.

To quote a government document, “Under section 40 of the BNA 1981 any British citizen, British Overseas Territories citizen, British Overseas citizen, British National (Overseas), British Protected Person or British Subject may be deprived of their citizenship if the Secretary of State is satisfied that: it would be conducive to the public good and they would not become stateless as a result of the deprivation.”

The banishment of Phillips is unquestionably “conducive to the public good”, and he doesn’t have to “become stateless as a result of the deprivation.” Putin has been generous in granting Russian passports to his foreign agents, and Phillips is among the most industrious ones.

I agree with Hitchens that ideally banishment should have been legalised by due process, and I’m sure this technicality will be taken care of in due course. But when it comes to defending his “greatest ally”, Hitchens uses such arguments as subterfuge. In reality, he supports everything Phillips says and does, and has done so for a couple of decades at least.

He acknowledges as much: “My own writing, broadcasting and debating, critical of Ukraine and of British policy towards it, could be cited against me in the same way under a slightly dimmer government than we now have.” You don’t say.

Not a “slightly dimmer” government but a slightly more principled one would, as a minimum, shut Hitchens up and prevent him from spouting Putin propaganda in support of what he once called “the most conservative and Christian country in Europe”. After all, freedom of speech shouldn’t, and at wartime doesn’t, protect enemy propagandists.

One such, William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, was strung up for similar efforts in 1946. The death penalty for treasonous propaganda is no longer on the books, and no doubt Hitchens would argue in any case that Britain isn’t at war with Russia, as she was with Nazi Germany.

That’s another technicality because, though it’s true we haven’t declared war on Russia, Russia has declared war on the West, including Britain. For the moment, this is a hybrid war, one that only includes sabotage of infrastructure, terrorist acts, electronic warfare, massive propaganda – and of course beastly aggression against the Ukraine, which is as closely allied with the West as Hitchens is with Phillips.

The legal situation is such that Hitchens can’t be charged with treason, the way Joyce was. But he has done more than enough to rate censure and being drummed out of the profession he has brought into disrepute by his shilling for fascism.

P.S. When in 2018 I wrote about Russia’s poisoning shenanigans in Salisbury, Hitchens kindly sent me an e-mail insisting that Russia’s guilt hadn’t been proved. I’m eagerly awaiting his comments on Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile.

His logic will probably run along these lines: Russia’s crime hasn’t been, nor is ever likely to be, established beyond reasonable doubt in a duly constituted court. Ergo, Russia isn’t to blame. Hitchens is a master of such fake syllogisms, and he has his own standards of proof when it comes to Putin.

Courtesy of Watergate, -gate has become a productive suffix in political terminology.

Dozens of scandals have rated that attachment, such as Winegate, Motorgate, Koreagate, Irangate and so on. If Nigel Farage and his Reform Party aren’t careful, they may give rise to a new coinage, this one having the advantage of adding up to a real word: Elongate.

Farage’s emetic sycophancy to Elon Musk may not be illegal, but I’m afraid it’ll compromise British conservatism for a generation to come. The other day Farage actually acknowledged that Musk, American tycoon cum politician, would give a “reasonable-sized” amount to his party ($100 million has been mooted), provided it would be “legal and above board”.

The other day I mentioned that in this case, and in an increasing number of others, legal doesn’t equate moral and decent, quite the opposite. A major British party, especially one hoping to form a government, shouldn’t be in hock to foreigners, be they businessmen or especially politicians, and Musk happens to be both.

As an aside, though I wouldn’t describe Musk’s capital as ill-gotten, much of it has been acquired in ways no conservative should countenance. He exploited a niche carved in the motor trade by the climate craze. Not only did Musk pioneer the production of electric cars, but he also accepted billions in government subsidies, thereby catering to the agenda promoted by the Left.

Since Mr Farage is such a stickler for legality, that didn’t break any laws. But such opportunism has nothing to do with conservatism that Farage likes to proclaim.

In all forthcoming elections his party will attack Labour for its suicidal policies, including its obsession with net zero. Any Labour candidate worth his salt will be able to counter with a reference to Musk’s money, much of which was made by taking advantage of what Reform candidates will be castigating as a Leftist swindle.

I for one would dearly love to hear Farage’s diatribes should it become known that, say, George Soros, donated $100 million to Labour. The Left, he’d scream, have sold themselves to the globalist deep state, and Labour has forfeited the right to be called a British party. And that invective would be justified – as much as Labour’s attack on Reform would be if the latter took Musk’s global-warming dollar.

Yet it’s not just Musk’s financial assistance that Farage seems to be counting on. He claims to rely on the global-warming billionaire he calls a “bloody hero” as a bridge to young voters.

“Reform only wins the next election if it gets the youth vote. The youth vote is the key,” explained Farage. “Of course, you need voters of all ages, but if you get a wave of youth enthusiasm you can change everything.

“And I think we’re beginning to get into that zone – we were anyway, but Elon makes the whole task much, much easier. And the idea that politics can be cool, politics can be fun, politics can be real – Elon helps us with that mission enormously… The shades, the bomber jacket, the whole vibe. Elon makes us cool…”.

He certainly does. And someone like Tony Blair can appreciate coolness as a vote-getting quality. In fact, when he got elected, Blair said that his ideal was “Cool Britannia”. He then proceeded to embark on an orgy of constitutional vandalism that makes him the most damaging PM in British history, although Starmer may have something to say about that.

An appeal to “youth enthusiasm” is a hallmark of Left-wing politicians. Trotsky, for example, described the young as the “barometer of the nation”. That barometer then promptly fell off the wall, broke, and millions of Russians have been cutting their feet on the shards of glass ever since.

My firm conviction is that people responsive to “the shades, the bomber jacket, the whole vibe” shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but then I’m not canvassing for votes, and Mr Farage is. I’m sure his party’s polling has identified the young as a key group, and whatever old conservatives like me think about that doesn’t – and shouldn’t – matter.

What should matter, however, is that, for all his cool vibe, Musk is a foreigner, and a foreign politician to boot. He should be welcome to seduce American youngsters with his attire (ridiculous for a man in his 50s, by the way), but using him as political bait in Britain is outrageous. If it’s not illegal, it ought to be.

However, if Musk succeeds in his mission to cut the size of the state, that will set an example one hopes Britain will follow. “I’m hoping he gives us the blueprint, and the blueprint is how to cut the administrative state,” says Farage, and this statement is unobjectionable.

Reform is the only party that has any hope of introducing economic conservatism in Britain, mainly because it starts with a clean slate. For the Tories to justify their other name, the Conservative Party, they’d have to repudiate everything they’ve said and done over the past 34 years.

A hugely charismatic leader could perhaps achieve that, but Mrs Badenoch, for all her otherwise sterling qualities, isn’t one of those. Nor can I see any Tory on the horizon who could give the party a vigorous enough shake to make it come to its senses.

Faced with a vapid Conservative opposition and an actively subversive Labour government, Reform can make serious headway by preaching the conservative sermon. But it should do so on its own, without taking huge donations from ‘cool’ foreign billionaires, politicians and billionaire-politicians.

Mr Farage, however, is showing few signs of fastidiousness in accepting patronage from, or offering lickspittle sycophancy to, trans-Atlantic figures whose constitutional purview is protecting American but not British interests.

If as a result a scandal breaks out, and Farage’s detractors start talking about Elongate, I hope you’ll remember who coined the term. If this is of service to the Lefties, the conservative in me will be despondent. But the linguist will find it hard to suppress a self-satisfied grin.

“To the victor belong the spoils” is a proverbial phrase coined in 1828 by the American politician William L. Marcy.

What he forgot to add was that the victors are guaranteed to squabble over the spoils, especially those dealing with ideology.

If you wish to disagree with this observation, I suggest you remind yourself of what happened to the men who perpetrated both the French and Russian revolutions.

Most of them were eventually slaughtered by their erstwhile comrades who disagreed with them on fine doctrinal points. None so hostile as divergent exponents of the same creed, as I always say.

The conflict brewing within the MAGA ranks is just as heated, although I expect it to be less sanguinary. The bone of contention is the H-1B programme that allows US companies to hire foreign workers who possess high skills not easily found in the native population.

The programme is championed by Vivek Ramaswamy who strikes me as the most level-headed member of the MAGA brass. Because Ramaswamy saw the rational benefits of the programme, he came out in its favour even though he knew he’d be touching a sensitive nerve.

Touching? Jangling, is more like it.

All ideologies demand purity above rationality, and they are extremely sensitive to the slightest hints at heresy, never mind apostasy. MAGA is no different in this respect.

At issue here is mass immigration, curbing of which happens to be one of the central planks of MAGA ideology. Generally speaking, that’s a good idea. Alas, many a good idea turns into its opposite when pushed to a ridiculous extreme (reductio ad absurdum is the egghead term for that process).

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation),” wrote Ramaswamy. 

“A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH: Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”

Unfortunately, Ramaswamy then reduced cultural differences to the preference of some TV shows over others, thereby unwittingly illustrating the problem. He also added that America should return to the culture of “unbridled exceptionalism”. Surely he meant ‘excellence’? American exceptionalism is the jingoistic ideology of deifying the country, which is bad political philosophy and even worse theology.

Such quibbles apart, the point Ramaswamy made was serious, and it demanded a serious response. That, however, wasn’t the response he got. What he got was an outburst of spittle-sputtering ideological fervour, which always comes packaged with ignorant and often idiotic rejoinders.

One such came from the blogger Mike Cernovich, who can sputter spittle at a faster rate than most people. Ramaswamy, he wrote, sells short America’s talent for innovation: “The Woodstock generation managed to build our aerospace, the one before went to the moon.”

Quite. But those two true-blue generations received a mighty hand from Werner von Braun and his team, transported in its entirety from Peenemünden to the Marshall Space Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.

When I worked at NASA, I visited the Centre in 1974 and marvelled at the continuing preponderance of German accents there, 29 years after the war ended. Photographs on the wall showing Braun in his Nazi uniform splendour also left little doubt about the provenance of the American space programme.

Thankfully, German nuclear scientists narrowly missed out on creating the atom bomb. But those great physicists the Nazis ran out of Europe were largely responsible for the Manhattan Project.

Off the top, one recalls such key figures as Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Hans Behe, John von Neumann – not to mention Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo, who shouldn’t be mentioned because they turned out to be Soviet spies.

Nor was it just physics. Emigré chemists, such as Otto Meyerhof (Nobel Prize 1922), Otto Stern (Nobel Prize 1943), Otto Loewi (Nobel Prize 1936), Max Bergmann, Carl Neuberg, Kasimir Fajans “soon effected hardly less than a revolution,” writes the conservative think tank CATO Institute. “Their work … almost immediately propelled the United States to world leadership in the chemistry of life.”

Although the H-1B programme didn’t exist at the time, its precursive spirit was wafting through America, blowing into those shores such immigrants as Igor Sikorsky, Nikola Tesla, Vladimir Zworykin – and more recently even Elon Musk. By and large, they’ve all done America proud, although I’m not yet convinced about Musk.

Nikki Haley, who had previously steered clear of MAGA affiliation, took exception to Ramaswamy too. In doing so, she showed a keen nose for the direction in which the wind is blowing and also a talent for the requisite demagoguery.

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” fumed Haley. “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

This reminds me of a Chekhov story in which two officers argue whether or not Pushkin was a great psychologist. “If he wasn’t,” went the clinching argument, “they wouldn’t have erected his statue in the centre of Moscow.”

Nikki should look up non sequitur and see how it applies to her statement. Unless all those huddled masses yearning to get American social benefits are mostly made up of potential Nobel laureates, her argument missed the point by a light year, not just a mile.

MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec saw an oxymoron where none existed. America, he wrote, should nurture domestic talent rather than admitting those brainy foreigners. He seems to think that the presence of a few thousand émigré scientists would preclude the development of native talents, rather than having the opposite effect, as it always has done. 

“Imagine how many more J.D. Vances are out there,” Posobiec argued, leaving his readers to wonder whether that argument was pro or con.

Other arguments referred to the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, which to me isn’t so much a theory as a mathematical fact. If immigrants arrive and multiply faster than the native population can keep up with, they’ll eventually replace this population.

This is worth talking about, and I for one don’t see that simple calculation as a conspiracy theory. Not being an expert in demographics, however, I’m not sure of my footing when the calculations become less simple, as eventually they must.

What I am sure about is that, again, this has nothing to do with the problem at hand. Those Manhattan Project scientists initiated no great replacement, and these are the kind of numbers Ramaswamy was talking about. Perhaps a few thousand, not a few dozen, but even that wouldn’t create an objectionable demographic shift.

A rational curb on immigration isn’t only desirable but essential. Yet the moment ideology comes in, rational walks out. Any country can only protect its sovereignty by controlling the influx of immigration and deciding who should and who shouldn’t be admitted. That’s basic.

But throwing out the baby of top foreign talent with the bathwater of those millions of people fording the Rio Grande isn’t rational. It’s ideological and therefore stupid.

It’s experts who should decide who can qualify for the H-1B programme, not loudmouthed political ideologues. If such experts conclude that this or that top scientist or engineer can make America more competitive, then turning him away at the door is foolish.

But the adjective ‘top’ is naturally restrictive. People who qualify for it can’t be too numerous by definition, meaning that ideally they shouldn’t even be part of this conversation.

Alas, since we don’t live in an ideal world, the H-1B programme has a potential for corruption, and that must be rooted out. But that’s a different story, one that has nothing to do with the programme’s intrinsic merits.

Trump hasn’t joined the battle yet, although in his first term he made cuts to the programme. However, the president-elect has been known to change his views, as I hope he will in this case.   

Today is the perfect time for all Christians – and those atheists whose families used to be Christian in the past – to apologise for their faith. The list of those due an apology is long.

For example, during his long reign as Pope, John Paul II apologised to Jews, women, people convicted by the Holy Inquisition, Muslims killed during the Crusades or at any other time (during the siege of Constantinople?) and anyone else who had a grievance. Pope Francis added homosexuals to that list, apologising on behalf of the Church and also on his own behalf because he had once described that group with a pejorative term.

Protestant leaders of various denominations, thousands of them, won’t be outdone. They’ve issued profuse apologies for genocide, sex abuse, slavery, war and even the Crusades. One would think Protestants would be off the hook on that last one – after all, their particular heresy didn’t exist at the time. But no church can ever overdo mea culpas. The more, the merrier.

The Right Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the Bishop of Dover and the likely candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury, apologised implicitly by offering hope to those “dislocated, in refugee camps, fleeing violence, war, climate change, famine and starvation.”

And there I was, thinking that, though shoulders may get dislocated, people can only get displaced. But let’s not quibble about semantics: the Industrial Revolution fuelled by hydrocarbons began in England, at a time when the country was still residually Christian. That’s why the Anglican Church must accept responsibility for the ensuing climate change, along with the famine and starvation that warm weather is known to create.

As for refugee camps, specifically the topical Palestinian ones, those responsible for that outrage worship the first part of the Bible. Since that part also belongs to the Christian canon, Christians in general and Anglicans in particular must accept their share of the blame. I realise that the link is less than direct, but this doesn’t mean no link exists.

Tying climate change to violence and war seems difficult, but only for the likes of me. Those who have taken holy orders will be guided by vox DEI to the requisite epiphany, I have every faith in them.

However, as we all know, prevention is better than cure. Rather than having to apologise for its innumerable offences, the Anglican Church should avoid causing them in the first place. Thanks be to God, its prelates realise that.

Hence parish priests have been instructed to avoid “causing unnecessary offence” by exposing their flock to contentious carols. One such is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (né Veni, veni, Emmanuel) which offends in several ways.

First, it attaches a blatantly male name to God, which is deeply offensive to women. Since men tend to be less sensitive, they wouldn’t object to replacing Emmanuel with Emmanuelle… no scratch that. That was the title of a French soft porn flick from the 70s. Well, you get the gist. Let’s work on finding an inclusive name together.

Then, the carol beseeches God to “ransom captive Israel”. This though Anglican prelates, such as the Right Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, have explained that it’s captive Palestinians who need ransoming, not Israel that holds them captive.

Then that carol ratches up its offences by suggesting that other faiths are “outside of God’s grace”. First, the lyrics should have made clear that ‘God’ is strictly a figure of speech. With that proviso, listeners ought to have been reassured that so-called God doesn’t discriminate and regards all creeds, especially Islam, as worthy as they are irrelevant.

(In one of my earlier pieces, I suggested that Macron’s France adopt the hymn as its anthem, but that sensible idea was ignored.)

The other offensive carol singled out by the few remaining Anglican hierarchs, those who haven’t yet had to resign, is Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending. Its second verse promises that listeners “shall the true Messiah see”, and how inclusive is that? Not at all, that’s how.

What makes Christ any truer than other messiahs, such as Mohammed? Or the messiah still awaited by the Jews? And don’t get me even started on Buddha, Odin, Nana Buluku, Yan Wang and many other deities with an equal claim to the messianic status. Remember what the E in DEI stands for? Good. Don’t forget it.

It goes without saying that members of any Christian denomination have a lot of offences to apologise for and, if possible, prevent. But meanwhile I can go them one better by offering advice based on my own experience of protecting my feelings from egregious offences.

You see, I too am quite a sensitive soul more than capable of suffering mental anguish. For example, I’m offended by pop music – or rather would be if I weren’t equipped with self-defence techniques. Specifically, I don’t go to pop concerts and even shun restaurants where pop music accompanies eating.

Then I’m also offended by everything written in The Guardian. That’s why I protect my brittle sensibilities by never sullying my hands with that rag.

Nor can I stand female priesthood, which is partly why I left the Anglican Church. See what I’m getting at?

Carol services are typically held in churches. Hence, anyone likely to be offended by Christian messages should steer clear of those dens of iniquity. Happiness all around: no one is insulted and the few remaining Christians can celebrate one of the two greatest dates in their calendar by being Christians, not walking DEI caricatures.

I wish you all a merry, joyous, unapologetic Christmas and a happy new year, unsullied by woke perversions. Those mock priests and priestesses may empty out your churches, but not your hearts.

Britain’s unemployment rate is 4.3 per cent, which is slightly higher than earlier in the year.

But that figure is misleading. Or, abandoning understatement, it’s a barefaced lie. The government tells it to conceal its own corruption, and also that of other people: the population at large and the medical profession.

Data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that about a quarter of working-age adults, some 11 million Britons, don’t have a job. Of these, some 3.2 million currently claim disability and incapacity benefits. That number is growing at about 3,000 people per day, which suggests that Britain has more cripples now than in the aftermath of either world war.

By the end of the decade, it’s projected that one in 12 working-age Britons will be claiming sickness benefits, meaning that the current cost to the Exchequer, £87.2 billion this year, is only a point of departure – for the sky. That’s roughly what the state spends on education and much higher than the £54 billion it spends on defence.

Obviously, some of those 11 million people are genuinely incapacitated and can’t work. We can argue whether it’s the state or some other institution that ought to take care of them, but that they need taking care of is indisputable.

However, it’s just as obvious that millions of others have scammed the system into providing their livelihood on false pretences. Those swindlers are corrupt to the core – if there is a valid moral (as opposed to legal) difference between what they do and theft, I’m not aware of it.

But the system that allows that is also corrupt. If those millions of malades imaginaires were counted as unemployed rather than sick, our unemployment figures would go through the roof, giving a true picture of Britain’s economic doldrums.

Then there are thousands of GPs signing able-bodied adults off as sick. What makes the medics so gullible? The answer is, they aren’t gullible. They too are corrupt, for their own reasons.

A good friend of mine is a clinical psychiatrist who worked at a general hospital for decades. One young patient informed him he was on disability benefit. When my friend inquired about the nature of the problem, the patient explained he had a chronically bad back, making it impossible for him even to contemplate gainful employment.

Later in the interview, my friend asked the young man about his hobbies and was quite surprised to hear the reply: “Martial arts”. That made the diagnosis of a spinal disorder rather hard to believe but, to be on the safe side, my friend observed the patient for a few days.

When he realised that the young man’s movement was in no way impaired, he rang up the patient’s GP, let’s call him Dr Smith. My friend started to describe the patient’s prowess at sports requiring flexibility above all else, but Dr Smith cut him short. “Oh I know all that,” he said.

“Then why did you sign him off?” asked my friend, trying not to show too much indignation. “I’ll tell you why,” explained Dr Smith. “When I once tried to refuse to certify a healthy patient as disabled, he grabbed my computer and we ended up wrestling on the floor.”

One can understand the problem. Our overworked GPs see 50 patients a day, or even more. That gives them only a few minutes per patient and leaves no time at all for extended arguments and rolling on the floor in imitation of some techniques of freestyle wrestling.

To make their own lives easier, they sign the requisite piece of paper and keep their fingers crossed, hoping never to see this patient again. Their corruption is thus understandable, but that doesn’t make it excusable.

My friend didn’t ask Dr Smith if he, as an employee of the NHS, which is to say the state, was under pressure from the authorities not to be a stickler for medical detail when issuing disability certificates. That, however, is likely – as we’ve seen, the government has its own stake in the matter.

This triple lock on corruption should point to the truly detrimental effects of socialism. Those who take issue with it usually cite its economic inefficiency, and they are right. Socialism’s intrinsic imperative is shifting resources from the productive elements in the population, people fending for themselves in free markets, to the unproductive one, the state.

That’s why the wealth of a country is always inversely proportionate to the amount of socialism in it, that much is on the surface. Yet lurking underneath is a much greater harm socialism does to society: it corrupts.

Socialism, and any welfare state is by definition socialist, cynically claims a high moral ground for itself, something to which it’s not entitled. People in such a state are encouraged to abrogate individual responsibility for their actions, and they no longer recognise any transcendent moral authority.

By offering its own care, the paternalistic state perpetually infantilises people, turning them into children who count on their parents for their livelihood. And children are extra-moral or, if you will, pre-moral creatures. When they surreptitiously eat the chocolates Mummy told them not to touch, they aren’t bothered about the moral aspect of that action. They just hope not to get caught.

When they grow up, they happily pull a sickie even if there’s nothing wrong with them. They sense they are a key element in a vicious circle of corruption also involving their GP and his employer, the state. That makes it all right.

As I always say, when the state claims to do much for the people, it will do much to the people. And just about the worst thing it can do is encourage them to be corrupt.