Back at Australian Tory I briefly stated my admiration for the Diaries of Alan Clark, the English Tory MP, and son of the art historian Kenneth Clark. The Diaries have now been adapted as a television drama by the BBC. Alan Clark is played by John Hurt. I imagine it would be touch and go as to whether the ABC will show it out here.

The BBC website carries a short but interesting interview with the programme's director, Jon Jones. I like what he says below -

BBC Four: Were there particular aspects of the Diaries that you knew had to go in?
Jon Jones: Everyone would approach it differently but what I like about the character of Alan Clark is what he represented. Before I started I went to a talk by Jane Clark and the audience there really fascinated me - middle England, middle class, conservative, very floridly dressed. These are people you rarely see on television and I felt very fond of them. Somehow, since Thatcher has fallen, this group has become more irrelevant - Blair is on a very different tip. Given that, I was always looking for the bits in the Diaries that somehow represented the best and worst of those people's values which Alan Clark encapsulates.

Transsexuals: the facts that count

From the UK Daily Telegraph

By Quentin Letts
(Filed: 07/03/2004)


Forget Tony Blair: down at Westminster a recent contribution in the House of Lords by Earl Ferrers, a 74-year-old Conservative peer, has become the most discussed speech of the year.

Lord Ferrers, whose clipped tones are complemented by a bristly white moustache and the habit, when speaking, of clicking his fingers behind his erect back, did not try to bore the House with another screed about the constitution or asylum seekers. He aimed his fire at the Government's new law on transsexuals, the Gender Recognition Bill.

There are not more than a few hundred transsexuals in the United Kingdom but in the last few weeks they have been given a huge amount of parliamentary time. The Bill will grant new birth certificates to transsexuals. To ensure that their transformation is genuine they will have to pass muster before a panel of expert scrutineers. Those who have yet to complete the snip-and-tuck process will, after due inspection, be granted "interim" status.

Once transsexuals are fully-fledged members of their non-birth gender they will be permitted to disguise the truth about their biological past, even when applying for jobs in sensitive places such as schools and hospitals. Public servants who gossip incautiously about transsexuals' backgrounds could be liable to prosecution.

Enter Robert Washington Shirley Ferrers, 13th Earl. His lordship asked what happens under the new law if an earl has a sex change? He devised an imaginary Earl Dodger and his son, Viscount Chump. "If Earl Dodger has a sex change," he began, "does he become a countess?" This earned chuckles.

"As the earl has changed from being a male to a female, what happens to the title? Does Viscount Chump suddenly inherit the earldom and become an earl as the earldom is apparently vacant? That does not seem right because you would then have two earls. What happens if Countess Dodger, on the other hand, changes sex and becomes a man?"

The red benches of the Lords were soon flowering into laughter. The further Ferrers drilled into his subject, the wider the mirth. Ferrers looked up and V-shaped his eyebrows in apparently earnest bemusement.

"Let us suppose that Earl Dodger has a son and a daughter," he continued. "Let us suppose that the daughter is older and that she has a sex change and becomes a man." By now Lord Palmer, a Crossbencher, was wheezing with the giggles. Other peers were dabbing at their eyes.

Lord Ferrers persisted: "Does she then become Viscount Chump instead of her younger brother who, up till now, was Viscount Chump? If she does become Viscount Chump, does she inherit the title of earl instead of the proper Viscount Chump, and all the cash, if there is any?" He added: "In my experience, earls do not have much cash nowadays, but they used to in the good old days."

Each new question from the impeccably correct Ferrers brought fresh whimpers from a House by now reduced to the state of Brian Johnston and Jonathan Agnew during their celebrated Test Match Special collapse into hilarity.

This quotation from British Libertarian Sean Gabb, regarding the new governing and media class, gives me the creeps -

That these people cannot clearly describe the shape of their ideal society, does not at all weaken the force of their attack on the one that exists. The old socialists were notoriously vague about their final utopia, but this did not stop them from producing mountains of dead bodies wherever they took power. We may doubt if the present generation of socialists are sincere when they talk about justice, peace and good will between all people. But we can have no doubt of their immediate end. This is the destruction of the old social and political order - the overturning of its traditions and norms, its standards and laws, its history and heroes. Every autonomous institution, every set of historical associations, every pattern of loyalty that they cannot control - these they want to destroy or neutralise.

Look out, kids!