Show some spine in Big Ben ding-dong
THE other day the CO and I got to discussing virtue and its antonym, depravity. I managed to persuade her (pretty rare!) to my own view: that the supreme virtue is and must remain courage. Why? Because without courage all virtue will scuttle into retreat when faced by the bully of vice.
A simple example. Compassion and generosity are virtues. The destitute beggar asks for help. You reach into your pocket. But a lumbering thug appears to threaten you to give him your intended fiver. The beggar gets nothing. Cowardice has won again. Over the span of history more innocents have suffered because of cowards than from the brutes, because when the brutes showed up the virtuous but timid lost what little nerve they had and faced the wall. Study the rise of Hitler and you’ll see what I mean. It was the appeasers who cleared his path.
Edmund Burke, as so often, got it right. He wrote: “All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” If there is one thing that worries me about our national leadership at every level, it is the timidity where there should be moral courage.
PHYSICAL courage is rarely needed in a peaceful society yet when an outrage occurs – the murder of Jo Cox MP or PC Keith Palmer – there is always someone, not called upon but happening by, prepared to show a spark of courage and try to intervene. But in government moral courage is required every day. A lack of it produces capitulation and all society is diminished.
This week the example is before us all; the capitulation of our weakling Speaker in confirming the silencing of Big Ben for four years as the bell, the clock and Elizabeth Tower which houses both undergo necessary repair and restoration.
The work on the tower is not disputed. But only political correctness and the wet-knickers of Health and Safety demand the massive overkill of four long years for the silencing of this national emblem.
Skilled and experienced men who have maintained bell and clock for many years have come forward to say there is absolutely no need to silence Big Ben. Most of the structural work could take place around the bell. State-ofthe-art ear defenders could be used to prevent any aural damage in the workforce. Big Ben could be recorded to sound temporarily from another place. We have the skill. We have the technology.
The Speaker of the Lords, Norman Fowler, sees no need for it. Many of the reporting MPs now say they would like a rethink. But foursquare in favour of closure stands the midget (in every sense) Speaker (of the Commons) John Bercow.
Would Winston Churchill have presided over it? Or Margaret Thatcher? Or earlier Speakers George Thomas (Lord Tonypandy) or Betty Boothroyd? I knew the last three and I very much doubt it. So who is in charge nowadays? Well, wimps it would seem, and on just about every front.