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Nor
do Conservatives
Eton
apparently taught Matthew Pinsent very little. It is all well and good to be
able to row a small boat very quickly, but nothing excuses blubbing like a baby
- or, worse, a foreigner - up on the medal podium in Athens. We would all much
have preferred that he had come last than triumphed and consequently subjected
us all to such wet public embarrassment and humiliation. Not that he's alone
among the horribly named 'Team GB'; they've all been at it, sobbing their little
hearts out when they win, or come second, or come last. The team headquarters
must be dripping with warm salty water. We may trail Ukraine in the official
medals table, but we're up there on the podium for freestyle weeping and
synchronised sobbing. This, at
least, is the view from some quarters. Our newspapers, having briefly tired of
sexual intercourse and its inevitable ramifications, have for some days been
asking the question: where did all this crying suddenly come from? And should it
be stopped? There was a letter in the Daily Telegraph earlier this week
from a chap who pointed out that the Duke of bloody Wellington didn't cry. Nor
did Nelson. Nor did Kitchener, when he was whupping those darkies. Why, then,
should it be allowable for someone whose greatest achievement is merely to row
quickly? And would that Kitchener were among us today! Actually, the Telegraph
correspondent didn't quite say all that - I made some of it up. But
that was the gist of his fulmination. I have
been in a politically confused state for some years now. When it comes to
voting,
I am unable to know which of the two bewildering plans to 'offer parents real
choice' in education is the more fantastically stupid and irrelevant, the Tory
or the Labour. Neither plan seems to be conservative or socialist in outlook,
so far as I understand them. The two policies over Iraq bewilder me even more,
to tell you the truth. And the minuscule difference in spending and taxation
between Oliver Letwin and Gordon Brown scarcely justifies the energy expended on
a trip to the polling booth. As a result, I am lost, not knowing where I stand
or to which party I owe even instinctive allegiance. Which is why I've been
delighted by the brouhaha over Matthew Pinsent (and Paula Radcliffe) blubbing
for Britain on primetime TV. Because on this issue, there is at last clear blue
water: New Labour approves of the crying, the Conservatives think it absolutely
ghastly. So much has been evident from the last few days of press speculation
and comment. And indeed, you can all too easily imagine Tony Blair crying. It
wouldn't surprise me if he cried every time he watched the Little House on
the Prairie - but you couldn't say the same thing about Michael Howard,
could you? If Michael Howard won an Olympic gold medal, he'd stand on the podium
looking vaguely satisfied and a little puzzled at the fuss. A few
years ago the Daily Telegraph, under Charles Moore's stewardship, ran a
rather wonderful editorial called something along the lines of 'Forty ways to
tell if you're a Conservative'. It was a bit like those selfrevelatory quizzes
women like doing in Cosmopolitan. In it, readers were asked if they
concurred with a list of statements; agreement indicated a Conservative frame of
mind. One of the statements was: 'I do not know what guacamole is.' Obviously,
if you are a Conservative you will not know what guacamole is. You wouldn't
deign to eat in the sort of restaurant that served the stuff and still less
would you ever order or make some. Mr Moore's list was very funny and
instructive, but a little too specific to be of much use when approaching the
ballot box. But crying certainly does the job. A general, principled stand on
emotional incontinence in men: that's what we need. It was Diana who taught us
all to cry - and she was most certainly not a Conservative. Charles is a
different matter. Tom
Utley, the Telegraph's excellent columnist, was in trouble a short while
ago for having opined the following in one of his pieces: 'Conservatives do not
get RSI.' The many anguished complaints only emphasised the rectitude of Tom's
thesis: and so here's more clear blue water. Conservatives do not get RSI. And
not only do Conservatives not get Repetitive Strain Injury; my guess is that
they do not suffer from ME, either - or any allergies other than those induced
by foreign climates and watching Peter Mandelson on the television news. If they
do possess an allergy to, say, peanuts or geese, they would rather be
asphyxiated than admit to the fact. In fact Conservatives do not admit to any
illness that was not recognised and documented in parish death records at least
300 years ago. Ague, black bowel, canker, plague - that sort of thing. Here's
another one. Conservatives ignore government-sponsored health advice. They are
particularly resentful when it is a sunny day and the weatherman warns everybody
to stay inside in case they get cancer. It wouldn't surprise me if Conservatives
took their protests to the extreme of never wearing sunblock. Further, they
are mystified and bored when told, on hot days, that the ozone count is very
high and they might therefore choke to death if they venture outside. Nobody who
votes Conservative wishes to have anything to do with the ozone count. No
Conservative really believes there is such a thing. Conservatives
do nothing in public. They do not eat in public, urinate in public or perform
sexual acts in public - and of course they do not cry in public. They will not
submit to the assuaging of any bodily or spiritual needs if they think that
other people are looking. If the truth be told, they would rather not be out in
public at all. What
we're beginning to build up here is nothing more than the picture of an
individual - and that's the crucial term - who is mistrustful of government
interference in his or her life, who behaves with moderation and even reserve in
front of his fellow men and is loath to describe himself as a victim of, well,
anything. There may also be a caution or a suspicion about the notion of society
- i.e., other people - in general; certainly a degree of sangfroid. It is the
description of a person who would not, I think, embrace the title of
'compassionate' or 'caring' Conservatism, believing such things to be a matter
for the individual rather than the state. It is quite an attractive picture, I
think - and a rather better reason for voting Conservative than anything
which might appear in the party's manifesto at the next general election. Rod
Liddle
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