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Heffer, Simon
Columnist for the Daily Telegraph
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4 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
British police force mutates into service
Follwing the suicide of presumed murderer Raoul Moat thousands of British are mourning the man who was Great Britain's most wanted criminal until the weekend. The conservative The Daily Telegraph sees the police force's growing helplessness against criminals as one reason for this: "Moat, let us not forget, had murdered a man, and murdered him with an illegal firearm. The police in many counties will strip a responsible gun-owner of his shotgun licence if they understand that his unlicensed wife knows where the key to his gun safe is, which is easier than catching real, dangerous criminals like Moat. He had also wounded his former girlfriend, and shot a policeman so badly that the poor man may be blinded. Yet a mindless proportion of the public still thinks he was a bit of a hero. ... This was all of a piece with the change in the character of the police over the past 20 years. They were a force and are now a service."
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More from the press review on the subject » Social movements, » Demographics, » United Kingdom
Abbey Road must live on
The record company EMI is thinking about selling its Abbey Road Studios, which were made famous by the Beatles. Plans to turn the "sacred" studios into a museum are an indication of the progressive decline of music culture and a warning to us all, writes The Daily Telegraph: "Yet it fills one with sadness that so great a recording studio may soon be frozen in time as a museum. What will happen to our fine living composers - and we do have one or two – when they wish to be recorded? ... This is beyond the power of governments to put right, I fear. We must rely on the co-operative efforts of our people to maintain something approaching a flourishing musical life."
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More from the press review on the subject » Music, » Corporations, » Remembrance culture, » United Kingdom, » Global
British opponents to the Lisbon treaty are desperate
Simon Heffer, a vehement opponent of the European Union and any future constitution, laments the way Parliament is currently conducting the debate over the Lisbon Treaty. "This, you will recall, is the treaty that our great leader [Gordon Brown] was too ashamed to turn up to sign when everybody else did: he sneaked in while they were having their lunch, rather like one of the under-gardeners hoping for a sly plate of leftovers. ... We can bet the Government will be taken to the wire on ratification. Some of its own backbenchers - but not so many as is hoped - will stand out against it. Some of the opposition parties will attempt to enhance the Government's discomfort by seeking to prevent ratification by joining forces with these rebels. If that does not succeed - and it is hard to see it will, at this stage - then, in the end, the wretched thing will be on the statute book."
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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » EU Constitution, » Domestic Policy, » United Kingdom
The EU allows the UK to maintain imperial measurements
"But for a ruling by our masters in Brussels on Tuesday, it would have been illegal from 2010 to display the weights of goods for sale in pounds and ounces", notes the columnist Simon Heffer. "Ever since the prospect was first raised, there has been visceral opposition in this country to metrication. To the more historically minded it might just be a resistance to Bonapartism - it was under his aegis that the system was invented. For most of us, it is all about a profound distaste for the wanton destruction of a central part of our fast-vanishing culture. We are an old country. Our literature and our folksongs are peppered with references to traditional measurements. Our architecture, our towns and our landscape are all calibrated to miles, yards, feet and inches. ... But our people's passionate attachment to imperial measurements has nothing to do with sentiment. It is because we all understand them, and they work."
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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Domestic Policy, » United Kingdom
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