Charles MooreCharles Moore
has not been followed up, however, is his
report that the newsletter of the RSPB
refused to publish a letter from him
which deployed these facts to argue for
more grey squirrel culling to save birds
and red squirrels. Is there any other
publication in the land which would not
print correspondence from the former
deputy prime minister on a subject
relevant to its readers? Lord Heseltine
says that elderly RSPB supporters have
‘a Walt Disney view of the countryside’,
but this might not be so. The fault may
lie with the RSPB itself, which assumes
that its supporters are too babyish to
be informed that some wild animals
and birds have to be killed in the wider
interests of other ones. Does it have
any proper evidence to support this
assumption? It is rather as if the Ministry
of Defence thought that the families of
servicemen were so sentimental that
it must not tell them that soldiering
sometimes involves dying. A charity
should level with its members, rather
than simply helping itself to their money.
Don’t gag Hezza.‘W
ould you like to be called Charles
or Mr Moore?’ my bank asked
me when I rang with a query. In the
past I have always responded ‘Charles’,
because it sounds pompous to insist on
one’s surname. But the truth is that I
would much rather be called ‘Mr Moore’,
or ‘sir’, or ‘mate’, than be addressed by
my Christian name by people I have
never met. So this time I plucked up
courage and said, ‘Mr Moore, please.’
There was an intake of breath at the
other end. I got the impression that no
one says what I had just said: the only
correct answers are ‘Charles’ or ‘I don’t
mind’. My interlocutor could not bring
herself to name me at all for the rest of
the conversation. In Heaven, your given
name is the only one that the authorities
will recognise, but on Earth surnames are
needed to maintain the psychologically
important difference between friends,
family and colleagues on the one hand,
and the billions whom one does not know
from Adam on the other. One reason
people go crazy about celebrities is that
internet use of their first names assists
their delusion that they know them.W
orld leaders are preoccupied
nowadays with what is known
as their ‘legacy’. In practice, this means
being linked with moral-sounding
projects, rather than embedding clear
achievements. Barack Obama is even
more obsessed with legacy than his
predecessors. What might be his final
way of showing this? Some suggest he
will order the United States to abstain
if France brings forward its planned
UN Security Council resolution calling
for a Palestinian state, thus permitting
the resolution to pass. If so, he will bring
no peace, but who cares? He will have
signalled his virtue.
M
y invitation to the Pink News
dinner (where David Cameron
won an award) on Wednesday night
promised ‘an inspirational evening’
which would be a ‘celebration of the
contritions of politicians, businesses,
and community groups’ after ‘another
historic year for LGBT equality’. I
assumed, at first, that ‘contritions’ was a
misprint for ‘contributions’, but maybe
not. Contrition for any deed committed
or word spoken against gay people in
the past is now compulsory for all who
wish to take part in public life, rather
as Catholics must be absolved before
taking communion. I agree that the
criminalisation of consenting, adult,
private, homosexual acts was cruel
madness. But I am suspicious of all this
breast-beating. It privileges concern
about one past injustice over many others,
and it is displacement activity. We would
do better to address current injustice than
grovel for things we did not personally
do. In every age, the relation between
sexual acts and the criminal law is fraught,
because of rows about mores, consent,
policing and evidence. The biggest recent
injustice in this area is the effective shift
of the burden of proof from innocent to
guilty against all those accused of child
abuse. Instead of saying how sorry we are,
60 years later, about Alan Turing, we need
to right whatever is wrong now.
W
hich reminds me that the new
guidebook to Chichester Cathedral
says the following about George Bell,
the Bishop of Chichester famous for
helping German Christians who resisted
Hitler and for condemning Allied carpet
bombing of German cities: ‘Since October
2015, however, some aspects of the way
he is remembered have been called into
question. An investigation into a claim of
child abuse concluded that the allegations,
whilst not tested in a court of law, are
nonetheless plausible. His considerable
achievements and their legacy remain,
but it now seems entirely possible that the
same man who showed moral courage in
opposing saturation bombing was also
responsible for the devastating abuse of
a child. As Bell himself recognised, few
people are either wholly good, or wholly
evil, and supporting victims is always the
right thing to do.’ It is rather creepy for the
cathedral authorities to invoke the long-
dead Bell’s own views to condemn his
supposed actions. No doubt he did believe
in supporting victims. The question is
whether the one person who accused him of
abusing her (nearly 70 years ago) actually
was his victim. The process followed by
the church authorities to establish this was
perfunctory and unbalanced, and therefore
unjust. I don’t think the guidebook’s phrase
‘entirely possible’ will do. Did he abuse her,
or didn’t he? If it cannot be shown that he
did, it must be assumed, in Christian charity
and in law, that he didn’t. On its own logic,
the guidebook should include a qualifying
clause about Jesus of Nazareth. He, after
all, was convicted by a court after serious
allegations, which cannot be said of Bell.L
ord and Lady Heseltine have just
published a book about their amazing
garden at Thenford. His bold revelation
(Diary, 22 October) that his keepers shot
or trapped more than 400 grey squirrels
to protect the garden’s trees and nesting
birds has attracted media attention. What