The text "Be on your guard against greed" would look good writ large above the Telegraph's City pages
Published 18 October 1999
The language of choice has always struck me as an impoverished way of looking at politics, let alone morals, and its limitations have never been more apparent in the latest, unedifying abortion row. In the debate about whether Cardinal Winning, or rather his fund, was right to offer a pregnant 12 year old a pram and ready cash to help with the baby, the argument centred on the right to choose. The girl's father says he and his wife "vowed to support her whatever decision she came to". Cardinal Winning's spokesman, the gravelly voiced Mgr Tom Connelly, said bizarrely that "the church offers real choice" - in other words, the girl's decision will not be constrained, if it ever was, by a want of funds for baby things.
On the abortionist side, there is a rather different view. Sarah Colborne of the National Abortion Campaign says that "offering money to a child to keep her baby is bribery and removes choice". Jane Roe, of the Abortion Law Reform Association, adds that, in any event, a 12 year old is no fit person to make the decision, not being "mature enough to understand what [pregnancy] means". But here the girl's parents want to adopt the baby as their own. Does this mean they're not mature either? It rather looks as if the right to choose is fine so long as it is exercised one way.
But of course how we choose, whatever age we are, depends on what we see as good. And that depends, not just on the still, small voice of conscience, but on the values that we've picked up from everyone else around us, from our families, our friends, our telly. It's fine to talk about the primacy of choice if you're deciding between smooth and crunchy peanut butter, but deciding whether or not to snuff out a human life depends on your view of the world and the value you attach to a human foetus. And if you think that a human life is utterly valuable, choice doesn't really come into it. The girl was apparently captivated by the sound of the baby's heartbeat; well, it doesn't seem such a bad reason to me for not having an abortion.
The girl in question, according to her dad, was a pupil at a special school, and she's been having sex since she was 11. The social services, he said, sent her to a clinic where they offered her condoms. I suppose this was their notion of choice. I draw the line at the exercise of choice by a 15-year-old boy to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. His choices in the matter should, perhaps, be radically curtailed by an interview with the boys in blue.
I was charmed by the Daily Telegraph's offer to its readers of a copy of the four gospels in return for two special tokens from the paper. Readers recently had the chance to claim a Van Dyck print or a flowering shrub in exchange for tokens; now they can have the Word of God, King James version. I was even more taken with the paper's concurrent effort to popularise the gospels by devoting its third leader of the day to a passage from scripture. We've already had Mark 13, v 1-13, where Christ prophesies the coming persecution, and Luke 7, v 37-48, where his feet are anointed by a woman who was a sinner. What are the chances, do you think, of the series being rounded with Christ's reference to money as "that tainted thing", or the one about the camel and the needle's eye, concerning the difficulty of a rich man entering the kingdom of Heaven? The text, "Be on your guard against greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" would, perhaps, look even better writ large above the City pages.
I was mesmerised by the Duchess of York's interview with the Mirror, a paper chosen, she says, on the grounds that it's "always been supportive". A few things struck me. From the lovely pictures it seems that her take on the raccoon-eye look which is so fashionable at present is to outline her eyes, under and over, with hard black kohl. It's not, repeat not, the way to do it. Another is the revelation that she and Piers Morgan have previously shared "the odd hilarious encounter at discreet restaurants". There, we thought it was just Diana who had charm offensives on newspaper editors. And it is unfortunate that the front-page splash in the Sun about her being quite devastated at the news of her best friend's death was undermined by Piers Morgan's description of her bounding into the Berkeley in the best of spirits.
I had hoped that the interview would provide us all with reassurance that there is no foundation to the stuff that resurfaces periodically in the papers about the US tax authority's interest in Fergie's income, but it's about Diana, her respect for the Queen and how much she would like the Prince of Wales to like her. "He doesn't have time for me and that's fine," she says bravely. I hope Charles takes that in the right spirit.
The departing German ambassador, Gebhardt von Moltke, complains in a farewell interview that Britons labour under a "profound ignorance" about modern Germany. Too true, and there can be no better proof than the astonishing headline the other week to the Guardian's interview with the German head of K-For in Kosovo, which referred to the general's "Nazi past". He didn't have a Nazi past.
This country has a lot to learn from Germany, not least in the great education debate. There, children are divided by an examination between vocational and academic schools, but it is not a once-and-for-all decision. Children can pass during school from one to the other. This might be a solution to Labour's agonies about selection. In Germany, no one in their right minds opts for a private school.
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