Charles Moore:
Aspokesman for NHS England says that its proposal to question all patients about their sexuality “will have no impact on the care people receive”. If so, why ask it?
Whenever one is questioned by the public authorities, one needs to ask oneself, “Which answer would they prefer?” In the US visa application form, for example, it says “Are you a member of a tribe or a clan?” Is the better answer “Yes”, because the US authorities have a politically correct tenderness for such peoples? Or is it “No”, because they are frightened you will try to smuggle in all your relations as well?
In the case of sexuality, anyone over the age of 40 will remember a time when it could easily have been fatal to your career to admit homosexuality. Anyone of any age with any sense will note that it is a characteristic of authoritarian regimes to collect personal data and use it against citizens. In apartheid South Africa, ethnic definitions were the means of conferring or refusing full civil rights. A free country should not be asking such questions. That is why I decline to state my ethnicity on my census form. I just write: “I am British.”
Still, one might as well play the system to one’s advantage. Since we live in an age in which married heterosexuality gets less support from the public culture than any other arrangement, one might as well not own up to it. If you say you are gay, doctors and nurses will surely treat you more kindly, if only because they are frightened of being sued for discrimination.
Probably best to say you are transgender. Then you have a chance of getting the lavatory of your choice.
You will hear it said that “hard” Brexiteers are “deluded” about leaving the EU with no deal. I can understand why some people would prefer a good deal to no deal (though I really am puzzled by those who think a bad deal is better than no deal).
But the point is this: no deal is a likely outcome; possibly the most likely outcome. Therefore, regardless of personal preferences, Britain must prepare for it fully and at once.
How do you feel when your ancestor is dug up in the interests of research? That is the fate of Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat and the last man in Britain to be beheaded for treason. The deed was done in 1747, when he was probably 80 years old. Now, with the family’s permission, his remains are to be exhumed for Scottish TV: they want to find out if the man in the coffin is truly Simon Fraser.
Lovat, known as the Old Fox, was a notably cunning clan chief, outlawed in his youth for forced marriage and rape. He switched sides, when convenient, between Stuarts and Hanoverians, regaining his family title and estates. But his support for Bonnie Prince Charlie proved fatal.
The Old Fox was tried in London for treason, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, so the decision that he undergo the more gentlemanly punishment of beheading was an act of mercy. It also led to the mystery about his body. By paying 10 guineas to his executioner, Lovat contrived that his body and clothes should be returned to his friends, and that his head be put into his coffin with his body. He was officially buried in a chapel in St Paul’s cathedral (although he was a Catholic), but a story says that his corpse was secretly swapped with another by his family and spirited away to the Fraser mausoleum in Wardlaw, Inverness-shire.
Modern science may be able to determine whether the Wardlaw skeleton is truly that of Lord Lovat. It will consider, for example, whether the severed neck vertebrae are in keeping with beheadings of the day.
I know the present, 16th Lord Lovat – also called Simon Fraser – so I asked him how he felt. He says he is “a little torn”. On the one hand, it is “great for the community and the clan” that the memory is being renewed for another generation. On the other, he rather wants the results to be inconclusive. His ancestor was famous for his courage at his execution. He was so merry that he is said be the origin of the phrase “laughing your head off ”. Young Simon likes the idea of the Old Fox “laughing from beyond the grave at still futile attempts to pin him down after 250 years”.
As I write, the unnaturally still and hot weather is changing. A dark cloud looms and a wind is getting up. Exactly 30 years ago, the same thing happened. The Great Storm devastated the South East.
By chance, my wife and I headed north that night, taking the sleeper to Scotland, where the weather was much calmer. The next morning’s headlines told us of the destruction, but we could not get hold of our families in Sussex and Kent because the telephone lines were down.
Seeking spiritual consolation, we attended the local Church of Scotland service in a little Highland kirk. “We must pray,” said the minister, “for all those down south who were not insured”. Then he added, by way of afterthought, “We must also remember those who have died.” We found this fulfilment of the Scottish national caricature strangely consoling.
‘Probably best to say you are transgender. Then you have a chance of getting the lavatory of your choice’