Category: Blog

“Simple, love. They come when Mummy and Daddy stay at home all the time.”

If a report by Kings College London is to be believed, this reply will be resonating through the country in a few years, with low birth rates a distant memory.

The report says that, to quote the newspaper headline, Companies Should Let Employees Work from Home to Fix Britain’s Declining Birth Rates. Now, there’s a hell of a great idea, I thought.

This adds a whole new meaning to the concept of lying down on the job. Instead of involving themselves in the drudgery of daily toil, couples could stay at home and go at it hammer and tongs. That way they’ll produce many more babies who’ll then grow up and work from home too – nudge, nudge.

Sorted, as they say in these parts. Except that a question arises of how Mummy and Daddy will be able to pay the bills or, to extrapolate, to keep the economy going. But hey, one problem at a time, all right?

That’s the drawback of long headlines: they put the whole story in a nutshell, discouraging further reading. This is a case in point – I let my scabrous imagination run away with me. However, having then read the article to the end, I found out that replacing work with hanky-panky isn’t quite what the report meant.

Or is it? The paper says that, when both ‘partners’ (dread word) work from home at least once a week, lifetime fertility rises by an average of 0.32 children per woman. Yes, but why?

The report cites no physiological reasons. Instead it mentions the greater ease of family planning and a reduced need for childcare as contributing factors, leaving unmentioned the obvious explanation that first popped into my dirty mind.

For, as often as not, working from home (WFH) is a way of not working from home (NWFH). Anyone who has ever been involved in any commercial activity will know that people who work together with their colleagues are more productive than loners who claim to be working from home.

Claiming exemption from coming to work is almost the same as pulling a sickie, a sort of malingering. Granted, there are exceptions, but I don’t believe they can be numerous enough to make a statistical difference to birth rates. After all, we are talking huge numbers here.

To cite one example close to my heart, an advertising creative team working on a new campaign may indeed be more productive staying at home in peace and quiet, away from phone calls, irate clients and – especially in Britain – useless meetings. Even there, having made that WFH phone call myself many times, my partner (as the term is properly used) and I usually idled away half a day chatting about this and that.

Communications being what they are today, WFH is technically easier than it was in my day. But things remain the same psychologically: the dynamics of a buzzing office get more out of employees than lazing at home ever will.

“For societies faced with undesirably low birth rates,” says the paper, “WFH can thus yield societal benefits that go beyond any direct benefits to employees and employers.” Yes, such direct benefits as getting the work done and keeping the country afloat.

That said, birth rates in Britain aren’t just low but catastrophic. At 1.4 children per woman (compared to 2.93 in 1964), they are way below “the ‘replacement-level’ rate needed to maintain a stable population of 2.1”.

Of course, as any Green or Labour politician will tell you, with a Tory one pretending to demur, there are other ways of keeping the population stable or even growing. But uncontrolled Muslim immigration is a subject for another day.

A UN report identifies the same problem and offers a full raft of reasons for it. Some of them are objective: rising living costs, less job security and a lack of affordable housing. But then there are also subjective reasons, a matter of personal choice: women focusing on careers too much to be sidetracked by children, men reluctant to be burdened with family responsibilities.

Such fracturing off various factors seems unnecessarily pedantic to me. For all of them are but subsets of an overarching problem: the chickens hatched by our deracinated modernity have come home to roost. All over the developed world we are paying the price for conducting social experiments on humans.

Englishmen (and definitely Americans) my age remember the time when a man making a normal middle-class salary could provide for his family well enough for his wife and three or four children to live in comfort. The wife typically didn’t have a full-time job – because she neither wanted nor, more to the point, needed one.

Those women who couldn’t keep their natural talents bottled up did pursue careers, but they were in the minority. Most stayed at home to run their households and raise their children.

Their role was as vital as that of their men, but it was different because, well, men and women are different. The issue of which ‘gender’ was entitled to which primary sex characteristics never came up, and neither did many malcontents question the natural biological and social differences between men and women.

Then the 1960s barged in, sweeping all before them and leaving a social and cultural wasteland in their wake. The biological differences between the sexes were still acknowledged, just, but no other.

Militant feminism became the order of the day, and the woman’s traditional role of wife and mother was declared obsolete, onerous and oppressive. Women now had to fulfil themselves not by raising families but by competing with men in the workplace – this, while still juggling their jobs with domestic obligations.

I’ll illustrate the situation on the example of the only industry of which I have inside knowledge: advertising. When women were told to cast aside the yoke of womanhood, they began to flood into agencies, bloating their staff by at least 40 per cent.

There was precious little those companies could do about keeping the deluge at bay. For governments proved their progressive nature by introducing various laws mandating equal opportunity and prohibiting discrimination based on sex (or ability, as one is tempted to add).

Yet advertising agencies are commercial concerns accountable to their shareholders. They had to make profits, a task made difficult by newly bulging payrolls. Hence the managers did the only thing they could do under the circumstances: they lopped 40 per cent off the men’s salaries and used the money to pay the women.

That’s what happened in every industry and in every country. The ideologically inspired urge of a woman to have a full-time job was boosted by the economic necessity to do so. A normal middle-class salary was no longer sufficient for a man to provide for his family.

This is in no way trying to denigrate women’s competence. They are often as good as men are at many occupations and better at some. For example, the biological imperative to run large households often makes women excellent administrators at all levels, from running advertising accounts to, as Margaret Thatcher proved, running countries.

If women desperately want to work and have the necessary abilities, then by all means, no barriers should be erected in their way. But, call me a misogynist and report me to the Equalities Commission, most women seek full-time employment not because they need to express their talents but because they have to financially – and feel they have to ideologically.

It doesn’t take an academic sociologist, nor an extensive study, to realise what sort of effect that situation will have on birth rates. We can see what’s happening before our very eyes.

This whole drive to WFH, especially for women, is a tacit admission of a terrible mistake made over the previous three generations. Alas, we are going to be furnished with yet another proof that any large-scale experiments on human beings always produce disastrous effects, those that can’t be corrected by palliatives.

That is to say they can’t be corrected at all. Enforced, ideologically inspired social meddling is usually irreversible if allowed to fester long enough. That’s why sage men throughout the ages highlighted prudence as the greatest political virtue. But those men are no longer with us, and neither is their prudence and sagacity.

Hence the massive drive to tear the social fabric to tatters, followed by half-hearted attempts to patch up the more gaping holes. Good luck with that.

So many people have thus described Simon Richards so often that I once told him he should adopt the designation as his legal name.

Simon died on 21 February, at a ridiculously young age of 67, and seldom have I seen the death of a public figure causing such an outpouring of grief. Much of it is my own, for Simon was a dear friend, a man I loved and admired.

Human faces can be deceptive, but not faces like Simon’s. One glance at him, and you knew you were in the presence of a good man, a just man, a kind man, a man you wanted to become your friend for life.

Niceness so often disguises vapidity, but in Simon’s case it was a direct product of his faith, first-rate mind, deep convictions and unbridled energy in defence of what he regarded as man’s most prized possession: freedom.

Never have I seen such steeliness of conviction coexisting with such gentility of manner. Simon was a lesson to us all, emphatically including me. Where others looked for a battlefield, he sought common ground; where others saw enemies, he saw misguided friends; where others ranted, he chuckled and drew his adversaries in.

How badly we’ll miss him, especially at a time when the unity Simon cherished is giving way to rancorous factiousness, when people who disagree push so far to the opposite extremes that they resemble warring clans, not fellow men trying to arrive at a shared goal if from different ends.

Simon joined the Freedom Association as still a schoolboy and retired as its Chief Executive Officer in 2020. In 2006 he co-founded Better Off Out, a conservative group campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union.

In both capacities, Simon perhaps did more for that cause than any of the better-known figures basking in the limelight. He worked quietly behind the scenes, raising funds, building alliances, organising public events, firmly putting Brexit in the context of free nations, free speech, free markets.

Simon could discuss the economics of Brexit with the best of them, but he’d refuse to reduce British sovereignty to bean counting. He loved his country, and he felt its pain as chunks of sovereignty were slashed out of its body politic and tossed beyond the reach of Britain’s Parliament.

Even if it could have been shown that Britain would prosper beyond imagination as an EU province, Simon would have campaigned against remaining with just as much vigour. As it was, he saw clearly the economic possibilities of Brexit, those that all post-referendum governments have squandered so wantonly.

But the referendum was won against all odds, and Simon’s friends at the Margaret Thatcher Centre have written that, without him, Brexit wouldn’t have happened. I wasn’t deep enough on the inside of the movement to know whether that was the case.

But I can easily believe it, for Simon brought to the task not only his mind, organisational ability, energy and convictions, but also his talent for building bridges rather than blowing them up. For example, few conservatives would have been as eager as Simon was to divert funds and strategic support to Labour groups campaigning for Brexit, such as Labour Leave.

But Simon respected his political adversaries as fellow Britons and loved them the way Christians were taught to love. That must have come naturally to Simon for he exuded love and goodwill like few people I know.

Unlike so many activists in the ranks of Brexiteers, Simon wasn’t a single-issue zealot. He was keenly interested in a whole raft of conservative politics and thought, with his unerring instincts and sharp intellect putting him on the right side of every debate.

We were friends for the best part of a quarter-century, but unfortunately never saw each other as often as I would have liked. He lived in Cheltenham, I in London, and I wish the 110 miles between us hadn’t become such an obstacle.

Mostly we spent time together during various social and political functions Simon organised. When he ran the Freedom Association, he’d often invite me to speak at various seminars and also the annual Freedom Festivals at Bournemouth. Once I had to deliver four separate talks there in two days, matching Peter Mullen in that respect (one of the few occasions I’ve ever been able to match Peter on anything).

Just a month ago, Simon and I had an exchange of e-mails that started with my being copied in on a lively conversation among several people, some of whom spoke favourably of Orbán. Simon replied that he saw their point but couldn’t abide with Orbán’s support for Putin.

I wrote, “Hear, hear!” and Simon replied:

“Thank you, Alex. You have consistently, and authoritatively, warned about Putin, from the start. You were the first person to open my eyes to him, for which massive respect.

 “My very best wishes to you,

“Simon”

I wrote back, saying:

“And massive respect to you too, Simon, for being the only political thinker I’ve never disagreed with. By reading these e-mails, I take it you are unwell. I hope you get better soon – and do keep in touch.

 “All best wishes,

 “Alex”

Then came Simon’s last message to me:

“That’s most kind of you, Alex.

“Having never been properly ill, I had a heart attack last November. I was well looked after and now feel fine, though on a cocktail of drugs.

“I do hope that you are well.

“It is so sad to see how many people who should know better have fallen hook, line and sinker for Putin’s lies. Shame on them!

“Yours ever,

“Simon”

This may look as if I’m writing as much about myself as about Simon, and this is indeed the case. Because this is where Simon will be from now on, in the hearts of his grieving friends and all those who knew him. We have become Simon’s resting place in earth, as he claims his eternal rest in heaven.

Rest in peace, my dear friend.

On 20 February, 2014, Russian troops pretending to be something else invaded the Crimea. Almost exactly eight years later, on 24 February, 2022, a full-scale Russian invasion of the Ukraine began.

The war has raged at varying intensities for 12 years now, and no end is in sight. Instead of a lightning-quick victory within days, Putin’s fascist regime got mired in a war of attrition. Hundreds of thousands have died, three times as many have been crippled.

Of all the major modern wars in Europe, this is the only one where the line separating good from evil, victim from aggressor, right from wrong is clearly demarcated.

During the Napoleonic wars, guilt was spread around more or less evenly. Russians who put all the blame on Napoleon forget that between 1804 and 1812 Russia under Alexander I entered four different offensive coalitions against France, each resulting in wars.

Two earlier coalitions, starring Britain and Austria, had also directly led to armed conflicts. Napoleon himself was no shrinking violet, but many serious historians argue he was responding to aggression, rather than initiating one. Be that as it may, Napoleon certainly wasn’t the sole culprit.

The First World War is routinely blamed on Germany, and perhaps she did act as a catalyst. But it wasn’t Germany but Russia that mobilised first, and the Entente was spoiling for a fight as much as the Central Powers were. Had Germany and Austria emerged victorious, today’s history books would be casting Russia, Britain and France in the role of aggressors, with reasonable justification.

The Second World War had two culprits: Hitler and Stalin. The war started a week after the two predators signed their so-called Non-Aggression Pact. Germany attacked Poland on 1 September, 1941, the Soviet Union did so on 17 September.

The two diabolical regimes divided Europe between them, with Germany claiming the continent’s west, Russia invading and annexing its east. Thereafter, the two regimes began to build up for a clash between themselves, and it was a matter of who struck first.

Stalin had amassed the greatest military force in history and deployed it on the USSR’s western border, where it was poised to attack. Hitler had no choice but to launch a preemptive strike against an enemy greatly superior to Germany in every rubric of warfare: numerical strength, tanks, warplanes, artillery.

Every rubric but one, that is: the art of war. That’s why during the first four months of that conflict the Soviets suffered a military catastrophe unprecedented in the history of warfare.

Historians agree that Stalin was planning a first strike, with some claiming that Hitler beat him to the punch by a fortnight, others opting for a few days, and Mark Solonin, perhaps the most outstanding historian of the initial stage of the war, putting forth a convincing argument in favour of just a couple of hours.

One way or another, the two principal adversaries in that war, Germany and the Soviet Union, were equally satanic regimes that share the responsibility for the greatest carnage in European history – yet. Britain and the US sided with one villain against the other, won the war, and the victors dictated their own narrative to obliging historians.

Yet it takes an intrepid (or ill-informed) commentator to insist that the Western allies were on the side of the angels, rather than supporting one demon against another. Such commentators aren’t thick on the ground in Eastern Europe, which was subsequently enslaved by the Soviets for the next 46 years.

Such diversity of interpretation is out of place in the on-going war. Russia is unequivocally the aggressor; the Ukraine, the victim.

However, the US, in the person of her one-off president, is trying to impose on the Ukraine a capitulation that Putin’s hordes have failed to force on the battlefield. Not just Trump but also some like-minded commentators, presidents and prime ministers try to apportion the blame between both sides equally. If anything, they seem to think that the Ukraine and NATO bear the greater guilt.

The Ukraine, they insist, isn’t democratic, which is palpable nonsense. Yes, that beleaguered country hasn’t had a presidential election for almost seven years. But by that criterion Britain was even less democratic when she held no general election for 10 years during the Second World War era.

The Ukraine can’t possibly hold national elections at a time when 20 per cent of her nation is occupied by the Russians. And yes, the regime of the Russian puppet Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 by a popular uprising rather than by due process.

But the legal and moral justification for that public outburst was stronger than in the three greatest revolutions of modern times, American, French and Russian. Ukrainians rose in revolt against their historical oppressors, those who have tried for centuries not only to subjugate the country politically but also to rob it of its national identity, killing millions in the process.

Just list the roll call of grievances the American Declaration of Independence cites against George III and compare them with Ukrainian ones against Soviet tyranny, complete with mass shootings, concentration camps and the artificial famine of 1932-1933 that murdered at least five million Ukrainians.

Ukrainians clearly saw what myopic Western observers missed: Stalin’s communist empire had come back as Putin’s fascist Russia. The scale is still different, but the monstrous intent is exactly the same. It takes a Putin stooge like Peter Hitchens to describe the 2014 Maidan as a ‘putsch’ against legally instituted authority.

The Ukraine, say Putin admirers, is corrupt. Of course she is. What do you expect after decades of communist cannibalism? All former communist countries are corrupt, and the nearer their orbit was to the Soviet centre, the more corrupt they are.

Russia herself is infinitely more corrupt than the Ukraine, and much less democratic (unless one sees sham elections featuring openly stuffed ballot boxes as a paragon of democracy).

The two countries must be seen in their dynamic development, which in the Ukraine is clearly vectored towards the West, and in Russia towards even more fascism and a steady escalation of war. That’s exactly what one expects from a regime formed by a fusion of organised crime with the most sinister secret police in history.

Above all, there is no argument whatsoever about identifying the aggressor in this war. The Ukraine has fallen victim to a monstrous invader whose sights are set on the rest of Eastern Europe, at least. Russia has violated every known international law and committed a plethora of unspeakable war crimes.

The Russians are fighting for imperial expansion; the Ukrainians, for national survival – and not only their own. Nevertheless, Trump, Orbán, Fico et al. are trying to force the Ukraine into capitulation, disguised as a ‘peace plan’.

They assume the right to dictate to the Ukraine when she must have presidential elections, although every sovereign country should decide that issue by herself. By their insistence, those leaders implicitly agree with Putin who refuses to see the Ukraine as a sovereign country.

It’s the Ukraine, not Russia, that is supposed to limit the size of her armed forces – another sop to Putin, another tacit agreement to ignore the Ukraine’s sovereignty.

And perhaps the most egregious of all is the demand that the Ukraine cede more territory, including the fortified region in the Donbass that would take the Russians millions of casualties to capture, if they can do so at all.

In exchange for what? Putin declaring victory, then rebuilding his military muscle and coming again within a couple of years, with the tuned-up fascist juggernaut rolling over a rump Ukraine and all the former vassal states of the Soviet empire?

Even Mark Solonin fails to match the perspicacity he shows when analysing the war that started on 22 June, 1941. The war that started in 2014, he insists, ought to end on Putin’s terms because the Ukraine has no hope of scoring a decisive victory.

He may have a point: with allies like Trump who transparently supports Putin, and Western European leaders who talk a big game but play a small one, the Ukraine may not be able to oust the invaders from her soil. But that doesn’t mean her situation is hopeless.

She continues to hold the Russians back, making them pay dearly for every square inch of Ukrainian territory. Short of weapons and personnel, the Ukrainian army is working miracles of heroism and ingenuity – as recent NATO exercises showed, it has become the most battle-worthy army in Europe.

The Ukraine bleeds, but she isn’t exsanguinating. Above all, she has no choice: contrary to the feigned innocence of some Western leaders, any peace treaty with Putin would stink as much as the sort of stuff one scrapes off one’s shoe sole. Putin’s signature on any ‘peace’ document means less than nothing – it means a guarantee that Russia’s fascist regime will soon come back in greater force.

On this tragic anniversary, one can only wish the heroic Ukrainian people even more courage, even more endurance, even more strength. I’m not a great admirer of slogans, but I’ll make an exception today by repeating the proud motto of Ukrainian independence: ‘Glory to the Ukraine!’. ‘Glory to the heroes!’, is the answer to that one.

Trying to explain Trump’s obvious sympathy with Putin’s Russia, some naysayers have claimed that Donald Trump is a Russian agent, codename ‘Krasnov’.

Those less susceptible to conspiracy theories have suggested that Putin may be blackmailing Trump with kompromat, obtained courtesy of Epstein or otherwise.

Still others have opined that Trump genuinely likes his friend Vlad and envies, hoping to emulate, the kind of power the latter enjoys.

Those more cynical have insisted that Trump is driven exclusively by pecuniary interests and hence sees Russia as a more lucrative long-term trade partner than the Ukraine can ever be.

I myself have sided with some of those versions, stopping just short of giving credence to the ‘Agent Krasnov’ theory. However, over the past couple of days, something else has dawned on me: Trump identifies not just with Putin but with Russia – as she is, historically has been, and I dare say always will be.

His reaction to the setback he suffered at the hands of the US Supreme Court leaves little room for doubt: Trump’s Weltanschauung isn’t that of an American president, nor even of an American, full stop. It’s that of a Russian, specifically of a Russian leader, be it tsar, Secretary General or president.

Russians in general, and their leaders in particular, have always held a particular view of the country’s interchange with the world. The view was nothing short of paranoia: the whole world hates Russia and conspires against her.

The country is surrounded by enemies united in their fiendish plots to enslave Russia, rob her of her riches, erect a barrier in the way of Russia’s holy mission to save the world from itself. That mission may be expressed in the terms of Third Rome, Third International or Second Coming – nomenclature doesn’t matter because Russians have that sacred mission in their blood, and no one else can possibly understand it.

Since Russia is encircled by foes, essentially defined as all countries that aren’t Russia, the country has to fight a permanent war against the world, and also against all domestic enemies, those vipers who are traditionally branded as ‘enemies of the people’, ‘spies’, ‘traitors’, ‘foreign agents’ and some such.

Looking at the deranged rant Trump delivered in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, I suddenly realised: he sees America’s place in the world exactly like Putin (Stalin, Lenin, Nicholas II, Alexander I, Ivan IV et al.) sees Russia’s.

Granted, being a Westerner, Trump has more strings to his bow than your average Russian chieftain. His mentality isn’t only that of a Russian leader but also that of a Mafia godfather.

In the latter capacity, he spewed hatred at the justices who broke the unwritten law of the underworld: they accepted the godfather’s favour without pledging undying loyalty in return.

The favour was spectacular: Trump put three of those vermin on the Supreme Court, thereby empowering them for a lifetime. Those who remember the opening scene of The Godfather know what the usual quid pro quo is supposed to be.

Vito Corleone agrees to grant Amerigo Bonasera’s request, but stipulates that one day he may call upon Bonasera to do a service for him in return. Bonasera accepts: he knows how things work.

For Vito, read Donald – he did a huge favour to those justices, and he expected a service from them whenever he needed one. Yet those ingrates proved no match for Bonasera: just when Vito-Donald expected a favour in return, they refused to grant it.

Should that have happened to Vito, he wouldn’t have slipped into a madcap harangue. He would have talked to his lieutenants in that half-whisper of his, and within hours a tragic accident would have befallen Amerigo.

Alas, Trump can’t order a hit on the six justices who voted against him. He can’t even sack them because the constitution doesn’t allow it. All he can do is rave and rant, and these modes of self-expression come naturally to our hero.

Those justices were “disloyal”! He was “ashamed of them”! So should their nearest and dearest be: they are an “embarrassment to their families”! They are “fools”! They are “lap dogs”!

That last invective bridges the gap separating a Mafia godfather from a Russian chieftain. “Lap dogs” to whom exactly? Whom are they “disloyal” to? To the Donald, naturally. But, and there the Russian chords are struck, they are also disloyal to their country. They are “unpatriotic”!

They have been “swayed by foreign interests”! Now we are talking, or rather now the Russians are talking. Those nine Supreme Court justices, well, okay, six of them, are traitors, foreign agents, enemies of the people.

I get it. But traitors don’t just betray their country in a vacuum. They betray it to other countries, those fiendish foreigners plotting against America. All those double-dealing scum who “have been ripping America off” since time immemorial.

Granted, those enemies of America have only conspired to swindle the country out of its wealth, not to enslave or annihilate it. But then that Latin phrase mutatis mutandis comes to mind – changing minor details without affecting the main point.

Russian history has conditioned the populace to think of foreigners as potential invaders, and fair enough, Russia has indeed been invaded a few times in the past 500 years. Americans, on the other hand, have never been invaded by foreign enemies – but they have been “ripped off”.

Those perfidious, sweaty foreigners aren’t out to rob America of her territory or sovereignty – they are after America’s money, which to Trump amounts to the same thing or even worse.

That’s why he lashed out in a manner close typologically to the usual reactions of Russian leaders. The whole world is against America, especially those so-called allies feigning friendship while reaching for America’s wallet.

Trump had tried to grab them by their wrists, declaring (trade) war on the world, but those Supreme ingrates didn’t let him. What does that make them? Correct: traitors, enemies of the people, foreign agents, you name it.

This shows how out of touch I am with the country I used to call my own. When I lived in the US (I left in 1988), I didn’t witness anything resembling this obscene show. This though just about every president during my American sojourn, from Nixon to Reagan, had quarrels with the Supreme Court.

Neither do I recall any Americans, never mind US presidents, who exhibited siege mentality, claiming the whole world was out to get them. If anything, the Americans I remember were more likely to believe all Europeans liked them more than they actually did.

The country must have changed tremendously during these measly 38 years for a US president publicly to accuse Supreme Court justices of treason – and get away with it. Or will Trump get away with it? We’ll see.

And vice versa, of course.

The test case is Bobby Fischer, one of the best chess players in history, who had an IQ of 187.

Thus, you must agree, Bobby was much more intelligent than such Nobel-winning scientists as William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor (IQ in the 110-125 range); Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA structure (IQ 115); James D. Watson, Crick’s partner (IQ 123); Richard Feynman, one of the stars of the Manhattan Project (IQ 125).

Or was he? If he wasn’t, as I don’t think he was, we have to accept that intelligence may have so many different definitions as to be practically undefinable. A philosophy professor and a plumber who fixes the egghead’s leaky tap look down on each other with equal disdain for the other chap’s intelligence.

Neither Thomas Edison (IQ 100) nor Andy Warhol (IQ 85) was a Nobel laureate, and yet they, especially the former, had to be fairly clever. But, considering that the average IQ of white people in the US is 110, Edison’s was below average and Warhol’s dipping towards idiocy.

The other men I mentioned had an IQ above average, just. Yet, compared to that wood-pusher Bobby, they weren’t especially bright.

There have been numerous studies investigating chess intelligence. One, The Chess Mind by Gerald Abrahams (1960), I’ve read but not properly retained. I vaguely remember that chess players possess a heightened space awareness and excellent memory.

Another study, Analysing the Chess Mind by Boris Gulko and Dr. Joel R. Sneed (2022), I’m afraid I haven’t read. That’s a shame, considering that Boris and I played junior chess in Moscow at the same time. He was much better than me, which is why I quit competitive chess at 16, while Boris went on to become one of the few grandmasters to have a plus score against Garry Kasparov, and also the only man to have won both the USSR and US Chess Championships.

Bobby Fischer is my favourite chess player, which is why I’ve played through just about every game of his and read numerous personal accounts by people who knew him well. While all of them admired Bobby’s prowess at chess, none of them described him as a generally intelligent man.

Quite the opposite, reading books like Bobby Fischer Against the Rest of the World by Brad Darrach (1974), one gets the picture of an idiot savant, with ‘savant’ relating to chess and ‘idiot’ to everything else. This is bound to raise questions about the reliability of IQ testing.

Yet when they do arise, experts in various disciplines agree: IQ is by far the most reliable single predictor of success in just about every walk of life. However, this raises even more questions, including those about the definition of not only intelligence but also of success.

We all know that different types of intelligence exist. A mathematician boasts one type, a philosopher another, a businessman still another. I’d venture a guess that IQ tests measure specifically the trivial intelligence required to succeed in the rough-and-tumble of practical life.

It’s the intelligence of a quick-thinking stockbroker, a merchant, an army officer, an adman – or a chess player. Raymond Chandler acknowledged kinship between the two latter categories when he made his protagonist Philip Marlowe say: “Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency”.

Having spent 10 years of my life playing chess as a child, and over 30 inside an ad agency as a child who refused to grow up, I can testify to the truth of that statement. But this brings us back to the issue of IQ.

IQ tests measure one’s ability not just to solve practical problems, but to do so quickly. This ability is obviously useful in life, but it has nothing to do with what people normally describe as high intelligence, although no one ever talks about any other kind as low.

When I played chess seriously, I remember regularly losing tournament games to the same players I’d thrash in blitz, speed chess played at a time control of five minutes per game or even less. My opponents were slow-thinking, slow-talking boys who – given enough time – nevertheless went deeper into the game than I did. But I doubt they would have scored high on IQ tests that demand quick thinking.

I don’t know how successful most of them became in adult life, but I do know that former chess players who turn to business usually make a killing.

For example, Grandmaster David Norwood gave up chess to become a billionaire investment banker, and International Master Malcolm Pein made a fortune flogging chess software – but he is still a pauper compared to my Moscow friend Simon, as much of a child chess prodigy as Gulko, who grew up to become a super-wealthy oil executive in the US.

I’m sure David, Malcolm and Simon have very high IQ scores, possibly as high as Bobby Fischer’s. Yet life-long observation has led me to the certainty that wisdom, intellectual depth and critical thinking can’t be measured by standardised intelligence tests.

Real intelligence, to me, isn’t an ability to solve easy problems quickly. It’s being able to solve difficult problems with no regard for the clock or, come to that, the calendar.

IQ tests gauge standardised intelligence, but people capable of deep insights are anything but standard. Moreover, such people may not appear to outsiders as especially bright.

A good example of such misapprehension was Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds in history. When he was a student at Paris University, his classmates called him a ‘Dumb Ox’. They mistook Thomas’s large bulk and his taciturn, contemplative manner rich in silences for a lack of intelligence.

Yet his mentor, Albert the Great, saw deeper. Thomas may be a dumb ox, he said, but his “bellowing will one day resound throughout the world”. So it did, but it’s possible that, had IQ tests existed at the time, St Thomas wouldn’t have scored high.

An important constituent of intelligence, as I use the word, is the power of concentration. Someone with an IQ of 120 who always brings all of it to bear on a problem is more intelligent than a chap with an IQ of 160 who always thinks at half capacity.

Real intelligence requires not speeding up, but slowing down. Those cursed with an excessive speed of thought must learn to hold their mental horses and delve into serious matters one deliberate step at a time. Doing so requires strength of character and a capacity for merciless self-criticism – faculties beyond the reach of IQ testing.

Almost 200 years ago, Tocqueville wrote that most political problems sooner or later became legal in America.

What was true in 1835 is even truer now, and, like most things in life, this situation is a coin with its two sides.

The downside of this legalism is that it encourages judicial activism, with politicised judges going beyond their remit to impose their ideology on the kind of business that should be immune to it. That can become a problem, and American constitutional scholars, along with serious commentators, are aware of it.

But, if judicial activism is the reverse side of the coin, what’s the obverse side? This is obvious: courts can act as a vital check, a safety valve activated when the constitutional balance of power is under threat.

That valve clicked earlier today when the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s trade war against the world was illegal. Tariffs are taxes and, according to the Constitution, only Congress is empowered to impose them.

Trump justified his action by invoking the International Emergency Powers Act, the first president ever to have done so. But the Supreme Court ruled that the Act “does not authorise the President to impose tariffs”.

And also: “Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly, as it consistently has in other tariff statutes.”

Ahead of the decision, Mr Trump warned of dire consequences should the court rule against the administration. Bracing himself in expectation of this ruling, Trump last month wrote a warning crafted in a style all his own: “If the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this National Security bonanza, WE’RE SCREWED!”

If the composition of the Supreme Court were any different, Trump would be screaming about its political bias, the sharp practices of the ‘deep state’ and other subversive acts against the United States, an entity he regards as coextensive with himself. However, that would sound silly now.

The Court that voted against Trump six to three happens to be solidly conservative: six of its nine members can be so described, and three of them were appointed by Trump himself. I and other conservatives worried about Trump’s tendency to abuse executive power must applaud their decision.

It allays our doubts about the continuing viability of the rule of law in the US. The Supreme Court, including three out of the six conservative Justices, proved that an authoritarian president can ride roughshod over the Constitution only for so long.

Quite apart from its illegality, Trump’s trade war was based on his primitive, cracker-barrel understanding of economics. Every conservative economist from Adam Smith to David Ricardo to Milton Friedman could have explained to him that imposing tariffs hurts the importers as much as the exporters.

Traders everywhere, domestically and internationally, react to any new taxes by raising prices and passing the costs on to the consumers. The latter react by shifting their money to domestic producers, thereby rewarding less competitive companies at the expense of their more competent rivals.

Thus, for example, Adam Smith: “To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry… must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.”

Any short-term gain in tariff revenue will in the long run be offset by a continuing financial damage to the linchpin of any successful economy: the consumer. Trump’s obsession with tariffs, in other words, is as economically illiterate as it is constitutionally illegal.

If he expected that introducing sweeping tariffs would reduce America’s trade deficit, he was sorely mistaken. In fact, last year the deficit reached an historical high of $1.2 trillion, growing by 2.1 per cent compared to 2024.

Now anti-tariff groups are demanding an immediate refund of the tariffs collected so far (estimates vary from $130 billion to $175 billion). According to Justice Kavanaugh, the refunding process would be “messy” and protracted.

Interestingly, Wall Street and the financial markets have reacted to the news in different ways. US markets immediately went up, with analysts whose understanding of economics is more nuanced than Trump’s heaving a sigh of relief. Global financial markets, on the other hand, instantly increased yields on US bonds, meaning it’ll cost the country more to borrow and finance its growing budget deficits.

Let the experts argue about such recondite details, and let the markets decide. I simply want to congratulate the US Supreme Court on its own decision, reminding us that some things are more important than money. The rule of law for one.

Congratulations are also in order to the United States, a resilient country proving yet again that, push come to shove, those constitutional safety valves still click to life in the nick of time.

You got pick-pocketed because you didn’t hold on to your wallet. It’s your own fault.

Your house was burgled because you have no alarm system. Your own stupid mistake.

That man got assaulted because he was wearing a provocative pinstriped suit. He has only himself to blame.

That girl was raped because she was wearing a provocative short skirt. What did she expect?

This litany of victim blaming wouldn’t be complete without Trump’s implicitly threatening message saying that the Ukraine had “better come to the table, fast”. Or what, Donald? US Air Force will join Russian bombing raids on Ukrainian civilians?

Trump flexed his flabby muscles on Monday, when the two sides did “come to the table” in Geneva, with the US mediating and Europe conspicuous by its absence. One could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps the war is raging in the American Midwest, not in the heart of Europe.

That threat was made in the transparent hope of making the Ukraine agree to an unconditional surrender, otherwise known as Trump’s peace plan. That those stubborn Ukies refused to do, pointing out correctly that the so-called Trump plan was dictated in Moscow, and therefore calls for concessions only from the Ukraine, not Russia.

Predictably, the two delegations wasted another several hours over the next two days, failing, and never even trying, to achieve any tangible result.

Trump no doubt knew this would be the case, and he made his threatening noises mainly for PR purposes, to show the world that only that obstreperous Zelensky blocks the way of peace and Trump’s Nobel Prize.

Then again, Trump has never bothered to conceal which side he supports in this conflict. While his friend Putin, so described on dozens of occasions, literally gets a red carpet treatment, Zelensky gets nothing but insults, harangues and threats.

One can detect a touch of envy there: Trump would love to match his friend’s dictatorial powers. Unfortunately, annoyances like traditional institutions keep getting in the way, so Trump has to make the best of the situation.

On the plus side, the US Constitution gives the executive branch much more latitude in foreign affairs than domestically. That’s how Trump has been able to take an axe to the post-war world order that, for all its drawbacks, stood us in good stead for 80 years.

And that’s how he has sold to the world, or at least tried to, a mendacious version of Putin’s war on the Ukraine. While distorting reality, the picture does offer insights into Trump’s mind.

He keeps insisting that the war broke out because of some kind of bilateral squabble, in which both sides were equally at fault, but the Ukraine more equally than Russia. Russia, according to Trump, has “all the cards”, while the Ukraine holds a weak hand. Nevertheless, rather than folding and cutting her losses, she continues to deny Trump that Nobel Peace Prize.

He has done all he could to force Zelensky’s hand. Practically all direct military US aid to the Ukraine has stopped, although Trump has magnanimously allowed those European wimps to buy American weapons and send them over to the Ukraine.

America still shares intelligence data with the Ukraine, but probably only because Congress wouldn’t countenance a complete cut-off. And all the time, Trump continues to ratchet up pressure on Zelensky but not on Putin. Since the only way Zelensky can stop the war is by capitulating, it’s clear what outcome Trump finds desirable.

Zelensky says that’s “not fair”, but then he knows that saying anything stronger, the kind of things he doubtless says in private, may well turn Trump into an overt ally of Russia, rather than a semi-covert sympathiser.

Everyone, including Trump, knows the real facts of the war. Putin has created a frankly fascist regime, and fascist regimes are inherently expansionist. War is their natural habitat, not the unfortunate necessity it is for civilised countries. All they have to do is rally the population under appropriate rabble-rousing slogans.

Typically, these are based on a claimed intention of redressing historical grievances and restoring national pride dented by dastardly outlanders. For Hitler, it was the Versailles Treaty that was the culprit, along with England and France that had shoved it down Germany’s throat. For Putin, it’s the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent desire of the enslaved nations of Eastern Europe to seek NATO protection.

In the 1930s, everyone also knew the lie of the land. Such knowledge is always easy to come by because fascist dictators usually don’t mind stating their intentions succinctly. Thus Hitler made no secret that Czechoslovakia first and Poland second were only the intermediate legs of the journey, not its destination (Austria didn’t count, her very name means ‘Eastern Reich’).

Similarly, Putin is quite open about his plans to restore Russia to her past grandeur, when she was able to enslave all of Eastern Europe and a good chunk of Asia as well. The only way he can aspire to achieve that goal in his lifetime, and Putin is no spring chicken, is by first forcing the Ukraine to surrender.

This isn’t about adding a piece of Ukrainian real estate to the Russian landmass. This is about wiping the Ukraine off the map – not only geographically and politically, but also culturally and existentially. That done, Russia will be able to catch a breath, lick her wounds, regroup, rearm and attack NATO in Eastern Europe directly.

Hence any negotiations with that criminal regime are bound to be a sham, a travesty designed for gaining time and duping the world into acquiescence. Russia doesn’t want peace. Russia wants annihilation of the Ukraine as a first step into Eastern Europe, and ideally beyond.

To signal that reality, hours before the Geneva talks began, Russia fired 126 attack drones and a ballistic missile at Ukrainian cities, spilling more blood for which the brainwashed and brutalised Russians are baying. And still Trump insisted on that charade going ahead.

Meanwhile, in parallel with the peace negotiations even Trump knows are meaningless, another, less publicised, dialogue is going on that makes Trump’s eyes light up.

Bloomberg reports that Putin has waved a multi-trillion-dollar carrot before Trump to make his saliva start pumping. Apparently Putin is ready to let bygones be bygones and restart economic cooperation with the US.

Moreover, Russia is ready to abandon any plans of creating a new BRICS currency and go back to dealing in US dollars – trillions of them. Russia and the US can form offshore gas and oil partnerships, strike minerals deals, offer American companies tremendous opportunities for investment in Russian industries and infrastructure.

Also, between us boys and let’s not talk about this too loudly, the Trump Organisation will be in the forefront of that new Gold Rush – it’ll be the brother-in-law who is entitled to special deals. Deals! Putin is talking Trump’s language, but then the KGB academy teaches its students how to woo Western patsies.

Europeans, those naughty children told to go to the other room while the grown-ups are talking, understand the situation much better. The possibility of their cities turned to rubble sharpens their perception no end.

The countries directly on the likely route of Russian tanks, especially the Baltics, Poland and Germany, are rearming as best they can. Talks are even under way for these countries to acquire a nuclear deterrent, either as sites for British and French weapons or even on their own.

Germany in particular has stated her intention to create the biggest army in Europe, bigger than the British and French armies combined. (That’s not saying much, but still.) Well, at least someone understands what really is going on.

Yesterday, Gen. Wolf-Jürgen Stahl, president of the Federal Academy for Security Policy, claimed Russia is already waging a cyber war on Germany, probably as a prelude to a full-fledged ground assault.

Gen. Stahl also described Trump as an “egomaniac, narcissistic, erratic deal maker with authoritarian leanings”. Let’s just hope that’s all he is, not a man working hand in glove with the aggressor and ready to sell Europe down the river.

When the film director Rob Reiner died in December, Donald Trump didn’t pull any punches. Reiner, he said, among other derogatory things, “was very bad for our country”.

Why? Well, Reiner was “known to have driven people CRAZY with his raving obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, like never before.”

I wrote at the time that perhaps it would be in better taste to withhold such posthumous remarks until after the funeral, at least. But demanding good taste from Trump is like demanding powerful intellect from Starmer.

Discounting the aesthetic aspect, however, it’s clear that Reiner wasn’t Trump’s cup of Diet Coke. Fair enough, when he wasn’t making fine films like A Few Good Men, Reiner supported every ‘progressive’ cause going. One could infer from Trump’s comments that he regarded him as an enemy of everything Trump holds dear.

However, applying the same logic to his comments on the Rev Jesse Jackson who died yesterday, one must infer that Trump saw the late activist as an embodiment of human and political goodness. Unlike Reiner, a typical Hollywood Bollinger Bolshevik, Jackson, the hard-Left demagogue, must have been “very good for our country”.

In his tribute to Jackson, Trump called him a “force of nature like few others before him”, a good man with “lots of personality, grit and street smarts… Jesse will be missed!”.

That’s the trouble with passive constructions: they raise uncomfortable questions, in this case ‘By whom?’ By Donald J. Trump? Then he should have said “I’ll miss him”, thereby leaving no room for guesswork.

Or did he mean that Jackson would be missed by everybody? If so, I disagree. At least two groups won’t miss Jesse Jackson: American Jews and American conservatives.

The former, because he was a virulent anti-Semite; the latter, because he sat at the extreme Left of the Democratic Party. I realise Trump isn’t Jewish. But is he a conservative?

Back in the 1970s, Jackson happily gave interviews in which he propagated anti-Semitic clichés about the Jews running the media, the economy and generally the country. That sounded like excerpts from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Jackson had either read or had osmotic links with.

When he first ran for president in 1984, Jackson had the good sense to call Jews ‘Hymies’ and New York ‘Hymietown’ in a conversation with a Washington Post reporter. Since the latter was black, Jackson thought he could count on his discretion, but it turned out he couldn’t.

When his offhand remarks were published, American Jews predictably reacted with an outburst of indignation. But Jackson had a good and like-minded friend in his corner: Louis Farrakhan, who described himself as a minister of the Nation of Islam.

Farrakhan was an odious figure, compared to whom Jackson was a philo-Semite. Louis described Judaism as a “gutter religion”, praised Hitler and only regretted the man hadn’t quite finished the job.

Introducing Jackson at a Chicago rally, Farrakhan came to his friend’s defence: “I say to the Jewish people who may not like our brother, when you attack him you are attacking the millions who are lining up with him. You are attacking all of us… If you harm this brother, I warn you in the name of Allah, this will be the last one you do harm.”

Jackson, who harboured lofty political ambitions, was pressed to disavow Farrakhan, which at first he refused to do. Eventually, he was forced to call Farrakhan’s remarks “reprehensible”. But his heart wasn’t in it.

For one thing, he was sick and tired of Jews constantly harping on about the Holocaust. “The Jews don’t have a monopoly on suffering,” he said, which was of course true. But considering that half the world’s Jewish population perished during the war, perhaps Jews could claim brand leadership, if not quite a monopoly.

Jackson was a tireless supporter of Palestinian rights, as personified by Palestinian terrorists. In the 1970s and 1980s he had several touchy-feely meetings with PLO chieftain Yasser Arafat, who shared Jackson’s misgivings about the Holocaust, much as he wished to perpetuate it. Yet according to Jackson, it wasn’t Arafat but Israeli politicians who were terrorists.

During his two presidential campaigns, in 1984 and 1988, Jackson solicited Arab-American support by endorsing a Palestinian state. That didn’t do much to improve his relations with American Jews. This, although in his later years Jackson moderated his pronouncements, if not necessarily his views.

All in all, I doubt many American Jews will miss Jackson tragically. But what about American conservatives?

It’s generally acknowledged that Jackson paved Barack Obama’s path to the White House. This may be, but I doubt those of a conservative persuasion will see this as a strong recommendation.

That said, whatever support Jackson gave to Obama wasn’t a result of a great personal affection. In 2008, Jackson was caught on a hot mic saying that Obama “talked down” to blacks and acted “like he’s white”. “I want to cut his nuts off,” he concluded.

Jackson first came to national prominence as a civil rights leader, an associate of Martin Luther King. Taking a leaf out of his mentor’s book, he didn’t just campaign for equal rights, a movement that actually had merits.

When I lived in Texas decades ago, I had black friends who used to have to ride in the back of the bus as youngsters and were barred from public swimming pools and other facilities. Any half-decent person, regardless of his politics, would consider such practices outrageous and happily see them overturned.

The relevant questions, however, are ‘how?’ and ‘by whom?’. Protesting against racial discrimination by quoting Galatians 3:28 is one thing, doing so by referring to the Communist Manifesto is quite another.

Even though he was some kind of minister, Jackson gravitated more to the latter than to the former. His aim was to shift the focus of conflict from race to class, creating another Rainbow Coalition uniting the ‘have-nots’ in their struggle against the ‘haves’.

As a little taste of things to come, the former category included not only racial minorities and the poor, but also women and homosexuals, if not yet transsexuals – that had to wait for more progressive times. All such downtrodden masses were supposed to attack white capitalists from the ramparts of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (People United to Save Humanity, no less).

The original Rainbow Coalition, formed in the 1960s, was dominated by the Black Panthers and other such extreme groups. Jackson’s version was more moderate, but he too favoured direct action. That voluminous term covers a multitude of possibilities, few of them appealing to a conservative heart.

Jackson fought against what he called social and economic injustice by promoting social and economic injustice of his own. Called ‘affirmative action’, it demands not just equal rights but preferential treatment for representatives of any groups identified as victims of oppression.

In defence of such ends, which any conservative would see as subversive, Jackson made incendiary speeches, presaging rap with his demagogic oratorial style. In this, he heavily relied on jive talk replete with primitive rhymes like “respect me, protect me, never neglect me…”.

Thomas Sowell, a great social thinker and himself black, criticised Jackson mercilessly, calling him “a race hustler”. Leaders like Jackson, he’d say, have a vested interest in continuing and escalating racial and social conflict because their careers depend on it.

By creating a culture of victimhood, they encourage people to blame external factors rather than themselves for their failures, which deepens the problem. Leaders like Jackson, said Sowell, “are fighting the old war” long after it was won, effectively leading people “back to Egypt”, that is resentful dependency.

Will Thomas Sowell miss Jesse Jackson as much as Trump seems to? I doubt it. But then Prof. Sowell doesn’t need to court black support for mid-term elections.

Rev Jesse Jackson, RIP.

We’ve become coy about Christian festivals, even their names.

Granted, few people these days celebrate the key events of the Christian calendar as they ought to be celebrated. But, in recognition of the formative role Christianity once played in our civilisation, can we please be brave and at least call those festivals by their real names?

Perish the thought. We can’t on pain of ostracism offend adherents of other faiths or none, and they are bound to be traumatised for life if we don’t cower behind euphemisms. Thus most Christmas cards one can buy these days say ‘Happy Holidays’, not ‘Merry Christmas’.

You see, the Jewish holiday of Hanukah happens to be celebrated at roughly the same time, and Jews are supposed to associate Christmas with anti-Semitism and possibly even the Holocaust. ‘Are supposed to’ are the operative words here, as I hope you understand.

In fact, I’ve never met a single Jew who actually felt that way. Though they may not celebrate Christmas for what it is, they don’t mind if others do. But that’s in real life, not in the virtual reality spun out by our woke classes the better to lord it over our silent masses.

Thus, any overt reference to Christ is treated as cultural supremacism, bigotry, racism and probably also transphobia, although there the link is less direct.

Today is Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent that starts tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday. Today, Christians confess their sins and prepare to fast during the 40 days leading up to Easter. And yes, in some countries, including Britain, pancakes are usually eaten on this day.

(In old Russia, they weren’t so much eaten as devoured. If you read nineteenth-century memoirs, you’ll find plenty of stories about rich merchants scoffing 50 pancakes stuffed with all kinds of goodies, then sticking two fingers down their throats in the loo and starting afresh.)

However, referring to Shrove Tuesday as Pancake Day is an offensive gastronomic synecdoche, highlighting a part at the expense of the whole. Identifying religious festivals by the foods associated with them leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Before too long, we’ll start referring to Easter as Lamb Day, Christmas as Turkey Day (or, in my case, Goose Day), Passover as Matzo Day and Ramadan as Kebab Day… no, forget that last one. This would be showing disrespect for the only religion to be held in high esteem – or else.

Ramadan, whose first day, by the vagaries of the lunar calendar, coincides this year with Shrove Tuesday, is granted its real name, an honour denied to Christian holidays. Just imagine what would happen to a supermarket putting up a special display of lamb skewers at Ramadan and telling Muslims something like “Ramadan is a good day to spit it out” (or, in the US, “take it on the lamb”).

That store would probably be firebombed, its manager beheaded, and the corporate executives who endorsed such blasphemy sacked. Yet no one objects to ad agencies exercising their creativity on Shrove Tuesday, along the lines of ‘Have a flipping good day’.

Tesco and its agency BBH are winning plaudits for their Shrove Tuesday posters running the words “Flour, eggs, milk, lemon, sugar, Tuesday” upside down (flipping them over, get it?). Some other supermarkets eschew cleverness and simply display racks of eggs, pancake mix and maple syrup under the heading of ‘Pancake Day’.

The need for cultural sensitivity appears to be less urgent when it comes to Christian festivals. The underlying assumption seems to be that Christianity bears a stigma of historical guilt, something other creeds are free of.

Hence the persistent insistence that Christianity rates no special status in our culturally diverse society. Hence also the widespread morbid obsession with all sorts of Eastern creeds, which has been a popular pose for a long time.

Chesterton mocked that silly attitude in his book Orthodoxy: “Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatchford, are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.” Replace ‘Buddhism’ with ‘Islam’, and the satire would be just as biting today.

Considering that the book was written in 1908, one can just see a knowing smile on the faces of people subscribing to the plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose concept of history. Well, they are entitled.

Happy Shrove Tuesday to all of you, regardless of your faith or lack thereof. Try not to OD on those pancakes.

P.S. The Russian actress Faina Ranevskaya (d. 1984) offered a piece of advice that seems especially useful today: “If you want to lose weight, always eat naked in front of the mirror.”

So are transsexuals, or at least they will be if our government gets its way. Starmer’s cabal has issued a new guidance on how to handle primary school children eager to ‘transition’.

Such children, from age four onwards, should, according to Labour, receive every encouragement and protection. Specifically, their God-given right to change their pronouns shall not be denied, as those Tory vipers tried to do when in power.

Don’t know about you, but I am proud to be living at a time when grammatical categories have been elevated to the lofty perch formerly occupied by such incidentals as history, philosophy and religion.

I can’t, for example, imagine 17^th century pupils insisting on their right to be addressed as ‘you’ rather than ‘thou’. That transition did happen, but gradually, organically and without an accompaniment of hysterical political clamour.

Just goes to show that our leaders finally grasped the significance of personal pronouns, which is welcome news considering that our schools ignore the rest of English grammar. Still, you’ve got to start somewhere, and I for one am convinced that within a century or two androgynous school children will be able to string the odd grammatical sentence together.

In the process, a new grammatical category was invented, which speaks highly for our progressive creativity. Until now, grammarians have recognised only nine types of pronouns: personal, possessive, reflexive, intensive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, indefinite and reciprocal. I must congratulate our modern innovators on adding a tenth type: political pronouns.

Fair enough: if everything in life is now politicised, why not grammar? Also, more to the point, why not biology?

The new guidance turns that discipline into a branch of politics too. We can talk about the nitty-gritty of that document later, but every detail springs from an overarching assumption: Children as young as four are encouraged to question their sex and to change it once they’ve made up their mind.

To that end, a new biological term has been coined: ‘birth sex’ or, more common, ‘birth gender’. This is a spin-off from the time-proven idea that what matters isn’t where one starts in life, but where one ends up. This old wisdom has now been extended to primary school biology: a child may start life as a boy, but there’s no reason he can’t then become a girl and – in due course – a child-bearing woman.

To be fair, the government hasn’t yet offered four-year-olds NHS castration on demand. For the time being, the guidance only insists on the ease of “full social transition” – it’s those pronouns again, as part of general benevolence towards budding perversions.

If little Johnny fancies himself as little Jenny, then teachers and other pupils must address him as her and in general eliminate from their speech binary terms like ‘boys and girls’. However, making a perfunctory bow towards decency, the guidance allows that such gender-bender changes should happen only “very rarely”. (“Primary schools should exercise particular caution, and we would expect support for full social transition to be agreed very rarely.”)

How rare is ‘very rarely’? That little detail is left open-ended. In other words, it’s just a figure of speech, an open invitation for schools to treat trans-sexuality as natural and commendable, if not yet compulsory.

The new guidance also mentions in passing, as something that ought to go without saying, that it’s “common” for girls to play with toy trucks and boys to dress in “feminine” clothes. Not to worry though: “Sometimes young children also go through a period of questioning their gender but for the majority this will not continue into adulthood.”

Just how common is that role reversal? I don’t recall a single dress-wearing boy in my primary school, but admittedly that was a long time ago. My mother, who always wanted to have a daughter, did give me a doll when I was two. However, according to her, I picked it up by the throat and knocked its head off with a single blow, thereby affirming ‘gender stereotypes’.

As an amusing anecdote, back in the late 1980s, Penelope and I visited a family that had a son, 9, and a daughter, 7. But, according to our hostess, that biological difference didn’t matter. She explained that sex was strictly a social construct, a matter of nurture, and progressive families like hers discouraged stereotypes.

We were then invited on a house tour, only to discover that the girl’s room was filled with fluffy animals and pink dolls whose zipped tummies contained smaller dolls. The boy’s room, on the other hand, was filled to the gunwales with toy tanks, planes and guns. My comment was shaped as a question: “You were saying?”

One feels nostalgic for times olden, when it was generally assumed that children hadn’t yet earned the right to make decisions about their future or even their present. Had a tot insisted then that he was trapped in a wrong body, he would have been sent to bed without supper and told not to spout nonsense ever again.

Yet now children are treated as sovereign beings in command of their own destinies. They may be dependent on grown-ups financially, but only in that sense.

Logically, if four-year-olds are free to choose among 100-plus officially recognised sexes, then surely our present voting age of 18 is a toxic anachronism. That logic didn’t escape our ruling cabal.

They announced their plans to lower the voting age to 16 several months ago, and now Angie Rayner has proposed another bright idea: children registering to vote at 14. That doesn’t yet mean voting at 14, but surely that next step will follow shortly.

One can detect personal interest. Indeed, if a girl can get pregnant behind a bike shed at 15 and leave school as a result, why can’t she register to vote at 14? She’s an adult, isn’t she?

Of course she is, but Angie’s interest is also political.

It’s paedocracy striking again, and this vice is potentially more damaging than its numerous cognates. The general rule of thumb, supported by reams of research in every democratic country, is that, the younger the electorate, the more likely it is to lean leftwards.

Hence any attempt to lower the voting age is a naked, cynical power grab by our leftmost parties, Labour, Green and LibDem. They follow in the footsteps of Lenin who, according to communist mythology, loved children. That may or may not have been true, but what’s undeniable is that he definitely hated adults.

The democratic ideal Angie et al. seem to see in their mind’s eye is a long queue of sexless children waiting to vote for mindless politicians. And Labour have until 15 August, 2029, to make this dream come true. Plenty of time to reduce the country to ruins.