What Our Elite Seems To Like

Although he is wrong that we would have to put up with being poor, Peter Hitchens writes:

I shall not be lining the streets to cheer when the despot of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (matily known as 'MBS'), rolls up here in October.

Actually, I understand that Britain is so broke it cannot be choosy about such things. Saudi Arabia has lots of money and we want that money to be spent and invested here. For decades now, our senior politicians and Royals have (literally) bent the neck to various Saudi tyrants – they had to do so while those tyrants hung medals round their necks.

Saudi Arabia is a political slum, a place of torture, censorship, prejudice, repression and injustice, whose leaders are not even ashamed of this. The CIA, which has better ways of knowing such things than most of us, concluded that MBS was personally involved in the murder and dismemberment of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, on Saudi diplomatic premises.

He was also prominent in the decision to launch the bloody and disastrous 'intervention' (perhaps 'Special Military Operation' would have been a better term) in Yemen by several Arab countries, backed by the USA. 

The death toll among innocent bystanders is disputed but it is large whoever you ask. OK, we need the money. But if we are prepared to host such a person (and will King Charles welcome him?), what is all our moralising bluster about Russia worth?

Moscow murders its targets with polonium and novichok. Saudi Arabia cuts up dissidents with bone saws. Both invade their neighbours. If MBS is coming here, we really will have to shut up about how wicked Russia is. If we want to carry on delivering moral sermons to the world, we have to cancel the invitation and accept our poverty. If we want the oil money, we will have to can the homilies. One or the other. Not both.

And:

There was a curious and telling detail in the defence offered by Elton Charles, husband of Lord Patten's daughter Laura, when he was accused (and last week convicted) of 'conspiracy to possess a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence'.

The curious detail was his alibi. He said he was not doing what the prosecution claimed he was doing. He was just meeting his brother to obtain some marijuana. Now, I know the police and the courts have totally forgotten this but I have not: possession of marijuana carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and an unlimited fine.

Is this the first time anyone has ever pleaded not guilty to one crime on the basis that he was committing another at the time? I have seen no report that prosecutors then moved to charge him with this offence, although he had stated on oath that he had committed it. Or is it yet another admission that this law, so often claimed to be part of a cruel and ruthless 'war on drugs', has been secretly repealed by a pro-drug establishment?

You might get the same impression from the repellent, smug confessions of two professionals, a banker and a teacher, in Femail last week, that they smoked this noisome drug with their grown-up children. What brainless noodles they all must be, more so now than when they started doing this. Weak laws mean weak morals, and that's what our elite seem to like.

I await the report on drugs by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee which, as far as I know, finished taking evidence on May 25. Will it call for tougher enforcement of the existing law? What do you think?