This column is written from St Andrews, where our son is in his last year as an undergraduate. It is the most perfect university town I know. Held in on two sides by the Firth of Tay and the sea, and by the famed golf course on the third, it can scarcely expand at all. So when you breast the hill on the Anstruther road, you see the spires and the old stone wonderfully compacted in front of you, and the water beyond. North Street and South Street seem subtly to curve (I am not sure if they actually do) so that they converge on the noble ruins of the cathedral. It has been a place of learning for 600 years, and it thrives. But the insane policy of the Scottish government of no fees to Scottish students means that the government has to ration severely the number of places granted to rein in the costs it has imposed on itself. Extremely well-qualified Scots are now, for the first time, being turned away. In St Andrews, where the English (on full fees, of course) and the Americans (on stratospheric foreign fees) are numerous, Scots make up only 30 per cent of the student population. Meanwhile, Alex Salmond’s government, which has fully devolved powers over universities, has decided that they must be run in a different way. It demands that their governing bodies be ‘democratically’ elected and contain at least 40 per cent women. Whenever I am inclined to believe that we live in a country (north and south of the Scottish border) which instinctively respects freedom, I look at the way our politicians treat universities, and realise that it is not so. They actually hate the fact that a university, in spirit and by charter, is an independent institution. Even a Conservative-dominated government sees nothing wrong with bullying universities over whom they admit, and getting Professor Les ‘Miserables’ Ebdon to put our greatest institutions in the dock. A place like St Andrews is a centuries-old example of the Big Society, but politicians cannot see it when it stares them in the face.
•••
I am staying with Lady Penn, former secretary to Kim Philby (she took part in an amateur wartime film — now tragically lost — in which she and Philby rode a tandem), legendary beauty and lifelong friend of the Queen. To dinner comes Prue Penn’s distinguished-looking grey-haired son-in-law, whom I recognise as my fag-master of more than 40 years ago. In Michaelmas 1969, I used to make his bed, play his Beatles records, help cook his tea and (I may be making this last duty up) lay out his kilt for the dances of Caledonian Society. As befits the senior, Charles Wemyss, now an architectural historian, has not the faintest memory of me. For priggish reasons, I was anti-fagging when I became a senior boy myself, and affected to be following the ‘rule of love’ instituted in College at Eton by George Orwell and Cyril Connolly in the 1920s. I took pride in never fagging anyone anywhere. This was silly. Fagging was good, not only for the animalistic bonding which all institutions need, but also because it was the only time in the lives of many overprivileged boys that they were forced to do menial tasks. Fagging should be revived, but as a sort of Io Saturnalia. Instead of serving big boys in the school, the new boys should be made to tidy the rooms and fetch the takeaways of yobs in Slough or wherever, so that they could learn how the other half lives and help it to live in greater comfort.
•••
In St Andrews, I spoke to the International Politics Association. It is so professionally run that they actually charge (£4) for entrance to hear speakers. I was speaking on Mrs Thatcher’s legacy in the credit crunch. Is it all her fault, or did it come about because her lessons were forgotten? Afterwards, I remembered that the first time I ever had a conversation with her, in the mid-Eighties, she was worrying about how to find the right phrase for the free-market views which she preached. She did not like the word ‘capitalism’, which she felt people both misunderstood and feared. She eventually hit on ‘enterprise culture’, but was never very happy with it. The problem is still with us. Without the right phrase, the concept itself is insecure.
•••
Recent experiences in my family have reminded me of how, as nurses in the NHS get worse, the paramedics who turn up in ambulances seem to get better. They are grown-up, non-bureaucratic, skilled, practical and friendly. They come well equipped. Often they can solve problems on the spot. The only pity of it is that they ever have to take people off to those places of infection, slovenliness and death known as hospitals.
•••
The Daily Telegraph’s late Peter Simple column used to have an item, quoting something current, called Screaming Point. If it existed now, it would surely have selected this week’s Thought for the Day from Lord Harris of Pentregarth: ‘The New Testament is unequivocally in favour of transparency.’
•••
It gives me great pleasure whenever I hear of the success of Florence and the Machine, because Florence — I am not sure about the ancestry of the Machine — is the grand-daughter of Colin Welch, who invented the Peter Simple column (though it was mostly Michael Wharton who wrote it). Colin, who was deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph and a Spectator columnist, was a brilliant journalist, but he was also extremely musical, creative and passionate. Much as he graced Fleet Street, one always had the sense that office life was not really for him. Thanks to Florence, I now realise that inside the bespectacled, greying journalist was a plangent, flame-haired, beautiful singer.
•••
Thank you for more reports from Radio Twee. The cult of children features strongly. A nine-year-old girl is interviewed about playing the cello (‘it is so fun’). A mother emails Clemency Burton-Hill to report that her one-year-old daughter enjoys a work by Eric Satie. But Michael Henderson supplies this week’s winner: Sarah Walker to a Chinese pianist, ‘I’m just loving your belt.’
Comments