I am a lifelong scruff, the despair of several tidy-minded headmasters. Clothes hang badly on my lumpy Cornish frame and my suits look as if I have been sleeping in them, minutes after I first wear them. Perhaps above all, I have loathed wearing ties since I first met one.
Yet, if I were interviewing the Prime Minister, I would, beyond doubt, struggle into a suit and tie. In fact, among journalists, I would have thought this was common ground. It doesn't matter if you like or agree with the politician involved. He is the King's First Minister. If we do not grant him a measure of dignity, we are insulting our own institutions.
So it seems to fall to me, of all people, to express surprise and dismay over the behaviour of the BBC's Nick Robinson while interviewing Rishi Sunak last week.
Nick Robinson also appeared to be trying, rather unsuccessfully, to grow a beard, writes Peter Hitchens
Mr Robinson is of course a very grand person, BBC aristocracy. And we should all treat him with immense respect. But he turned up for his meeting with Mr Sunak in an open-necked shirt.
He also appeared to be trying, rather unsuccessfully, to grow a beard. I have had several beards and would advise anyone not to go on TV while wearing one until it is properly grown. Unfinished beards make people want to press coins into your palm and offer you sympathy. Or perhaps they will think you are the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Mr Robinson's effort looks rather as I imagine Jeremy Corbyn's North London allotment looks. The general impression was that the Prime Minister was being interviewed for the Big Issue rather than for the mighty national broadcaster, the BBC, created by Royal Charter.
READ MORE:PETER HITCHENS: Disguised in flowery language, Starmer and Gordon Brown's plan to make it impossible for Parliament to overturn their Left-wing revolution
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If that had been all, it would just have been mildly rude. But it wasn't. Mr Robinson was sharply inquisitorial and dismissive, like a policeman interviewing someone he had just caught in mid-burglary. Shortly after it was over, a Radio 4 bulletin proclaimed (while reporting the interview), that Mr Sunak had 'admitted' something or other about housing. The word 'admitted' suggested that he had blurted it out reluctantly under heavy pressure, as if he had pleaded guilty. He didn't. At most he acknowledged it. It would have been more impartial to say he 'said' it. Verbs such as 'admitted', or 'claimed' or 'insisted' are used to make the person involved sound guilty, or suspect. The BBC, if it obeys its charter and agreement, cannot use them in political reporting. But it does.
I have no monitoring unit. I would never have the time to listen to all the hours of stuff of this kind pouring out of the Corporation's transmitters, night and day. But not since 1997 have I felt that BBC coverage of a General Election was so blatantly, carelessly partial. I suspect they are not even conscious of it.
For they, like many others, are assuming the polls are correct. They are not entitled to do this. Polls, in this country, have frequently been wrong. In recent months polls have also been mistaken in India, Norway and Australia. But there are, alas, many weak-minded people whose votes are influenced by polls, who want to follow the crowd and are afraid to stand out from it.
My guess is that the main message most viewers carried away from the otherwise forgettable interview was that Rishi Sunak has already lost, Peter Hitchens writes
The effect of the polls on them is frighteningly powerful. My guess is that the main message most viewers carried away from the otherwise forgettable interview was that Rishi Sunak has already lost. If not, he would not have been treated like that. The BBC would have been too afraid of him.
This insidious, relentless propaganda is Labour's most effective weapon. Lots of people who (like Mr Robinson) have nothing to do with the Labour Party are wielding it for them. They should stop. There is no point in having elections at all if the elite decide the result in advance.
Why giving Russians' money to Ukraine may not be wisest act
It looks as if the Ukraine War will last as long as the one in Vietnam, if not longer. Think of all the coffins.
President Biden said at the G7 talks that the US 'will be with Ukraine until they prevail in this war'. Gosh. That could take a while, and many deaths, and what if they do prevail? What next?
My guess: a Russian leader who makes Putin look like a walking olive branch. At the same time, Mr Biden persuaded the West as a whole to take a very dangerous step. Profits from Russian money in the West, frozen after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, will be handed to Ukraine.
Well, you say, it's only justice. And it may be, but it's very dodgy in law.
China, which is playing a very long game, always watches such events very carefully. We have already given Peking the excuse to freeze our assets on their territory if they think we have behaved badly.
Now they have the perfect pretext to use the money against us too. How strange that it is just as the West begins to grow weak that it becomes bolder and rasher.
I long ago accepted it is impossible to have a rational discussion about Ukraine in a country where everyone thinks it is always 1938, and anyone we dislike is a new Hitler.
Actually knowing anything about major world problems is a disadvantage in any debate. But are we being wise here?
Computer says no
To my amazement I still have milk delivered in bottles to my doorstep before dawn.
The drawback is the milk must be ordered through a computer. This malfunctioned the other night and fiercely resisted our attempts to cut the delivery (from four pints to three). But it was worse than that. It decided we wanted 43 pints and – being a computer – told our milkman to deliver this vast load.
Luckily he is a man of sense and decided not to do so. But others might have obeyed the electronic god.
In the same week, another computer decided, for no reason, to terminate a magazine subscription I wanted to keep. And another twice cut off my phone in mid-conversation, just because it felt like it.
I also entered the sixth week of an attempt to get the London cycle hire company to accept my subscription renewal, which another computer refuses to do.
And people say they want a cashless society.
