So, we come to the end of another walk – and, in the main, it’s been very enjoyable. Some parts were hard going, as is to be expected – after all, it’s almost impossible to forecast the condition of tracks or small roads, let alone the weather.

The experience was made immeasurably easier and more pleasant by our driver and friend, Richard Moyles. His tolerance of us in good times – and in not so good – was truly remarkable. He is a great blessing.

Our thanks also go to those supporters who walked with us and cheered us up – and, of course, we are immensely grateful to those who kindly offered us hospitality along the way.

I am grateful to Miles Morland and others for their inspiration in shaping my commentary.

Finally, we extend our heartfelt thanks to ZANE supporters whose generosity continues year after year. One day, Zimbabwe will become prosperous, and ZANE’s services may no longer be required. But until then, our work remains vital to so many vulnerable people.

Jane and I offer our sincere appreciation to our loyal ZANE workers, both in the UK and across Zimbabwe. Many have devoted decades to serving the poor, often without recognition, and you may never know the names of these remarkable, brave individuals. Without them ZANE could not exist.

I am minded of the final paragraph of George Eliot’s Middlemarch:

“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

The Banality of Evil

We took four of our grandchildren to Auschwitz. As a condition of their coming, they had to be over 18, have seen Schindler’s List, know at least a little of the history and genuinely want to understand what it was all about.

I was prompted to do so by the late Ken Dodd. This may sound totally weird, for what’s a dead comic got to do with Auschwitz?

Dodd – one of the great comics of all time – insisted on live performances. He undertook hundreds each year, convinced that only face-to-face encounters allowed him to truly “connect” with his audiences. He believed film, TV – even Zoom – represented only a shadow of reality, lacking substance. A “spiritual” dimension could only exist when people met in person.

So, to truly understand, we must visit Auschwitz – walk the railway lines, touch the walls where people were shot, stare at the piles of hair, the children’s shoes and prams, and see the crematoria – to begin to grasp the full horror of what this obscenity was.

And I wanted our beloved family to see what man is capable of when the wheels of our little lives fall off. Civilisation is but a thin veneer – horror can emerge in a flash and shatter the illusion. If you doubt this, read Danny Finkelstein’s Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad – and see how his family’s prosperous, established, comfortable lives were utterly destroyed in less than a week.

And I wanted them to learn something else. Many people are uneasy with the concept of “sin”. Plenty say, “I’m a humanist… I don’t believe humans are inherently evil. If people go wrong, it’s all down to their upbringing.” But if you live long enough – and are honest with yourself – you’ll come to see, beyond doubt, that there are things in your own heart that will bite you and shock you. You’ll find yourself saying, “I didn’t know I was capable of that.”

Eichmann in the Mirror

The problem is, we are all capable of “that”. Adolf Eichmann was one of the key administrators of the Holocaust; he was tried in Israel in 1960 and later executed. During his trial, a striking incident occurred. One of the key witnesses, Yehiel De-Nur, broke down in uncontrollable sobs upon seeing Eichmann in the courtroom. Pandemonium followed, and the judge struggled to restore order – it was dramatic. Some time later, De-Nur was interviewed by Mike Wallace on the TV show 60 Minutes.

Wallace asked what had happened? Was he overwhelmed with hatred or by painful memories?

“No,” said De-Nur – and what he said next shocked many secular Western viewers. “I was overcome by the realisation that Eichmann was not some demon, but an ordinary human being. I saw that I am capable of doing this… exactly like he.”

We can choose to say that the Nazis were sub-human, and that we are not capable of behaving like that – but there are serious problems with that view. One of the scariest aspects about that chapter in history is not how few architects there were, but how many were complicit across an entire society – a society that, at the time, was producing some of the world’s finest scholarship, science and culture. That makes it impossible to write off the period as the work of a few isolated monsters.

The Nazis themselves believed certain groups were Untermensch – subhuman and beneath them. Do we really want to make the same kind of judgment about them as they did about the Jews, the Roma and the mentally infirm?

Hannah Arendt, writing in the New Yorker, claimed that Eichmann was an ordinary man who wanted simply to build a career. She called this the “banality of evil”.

I want our grandsons to realise that evil lurks in the hearts of all quite ordinary human beings. Even in the hearts of our beloved Benyon family. 

This was our last day and the wind was said to be at hurricane levels. We decided that walking near cliffs in such conditions would be foolhardy, so regretfully we called it a day. It’s been a great walk.

As I mentioned earlier, we will soon bid a sad farewell to three loyal workers. Allow me to pay tribute to them here – although, for security reasons, I will not use their real names.

Mary has run our extensive food programme with a rod of iron, yet with kindness, humour and warmth – a rare combination. She knows every detail of the care homes we support. Home managers tell us that without this essential work, they could not have survived – and collapse would have spelled catastrophe for thousands of pensioners. She will be greatly missed.

Then there’s Yvonne, who more or less founded our “pop up” classes programme. A deeply committed Christian, her dedication and love for this critical work have been remarkable. It’s a miracle she didn’t burn out years ago. ZANE has been privileged to work alongside her.

Finally, Hannah has worked in Bulawayo for 20 years, caring for the needs of pensioners with unmatched skill and dedication. She will be deeply missed, both by those she helps and by her colleagues.

The Price of Political Cowardice

For decades, tens of thousands of young girls across the UK were subjected to sexual abuse on an industrial scale – many of them targeted by grooming gangs, often involving men of predominantly Pakistani heritage.

This abuse, horrific in its scale and cruelty, remained largely hidden from public view for years. Why? The craven social workers, the police and the politicians were frit of being labelled as “bigots” or “racist scum” if they made a fuss. So instead of doing the right thing, they chose to suggest the children – some as young as 10 – had brought it upon themselves. File closed, acute misery hidden and injustice embraced. 

The politicians inanely thought (if they thought at all) that if you took a farmer from rural Pakistan – where attitudes towards women and the LGBTQ community can be profoundly conservative – and set him down in a modern British city, then he would adopt liberal, Western values overnight – as if by magic.

This wanton drivel was never included in any of the political parties’ manifestos. If anyone complained, they were instantly labelled “racist”.

As we can’t bring ourselves to deport criminals, the results appear to be irreversible. Did senior politicians really enter politics to be cowards? It’s not as if they weren’t warned about the consequences, but I suppose there are none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear.

Speaking the Unspeakable

In a sermon delivered in January 1977 at St Lawrence Jewry, Enoch Powell warned of the long-term political and social consequences of large-scale immigration. He said, “…the prospective size and distribution of our population of New Commonwealth ethnic origin… cannot be otherwise than destructive of this nation… The basis of my conviction is neither genetic nor eugenic; it is not racial, because… I have never arranged my fellow men on a scale of merit according to their origins. The basis is political. It is the belief that self-identification of each part with the whole is the one essential precondition of being a parliamentary nation. And that massive shift in the composition of the population in… cities of England will produce, by the sheer inevitabilities of human nature in society, ever-increasing and more dangerous alienation.”

This quote is taken from Simon Heffer’s excellent biography of Powell, Like the Roman.

Ted Heath dismissed Powell from his role as Shadow Defence Secretary in 1968, following the infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech. He loathed Powell who was much brighter. For the record, by the age of 23, Powell was a fellow of Trinity Cambridge and later became Professor of Ancient Greek at Sydney University. When war broke out in 1939, he enlisted as a private and became the only man to rise to the rank of Brigadier within four years. He was fluent in German, Italian and Urdu – and above all, he was a Romantic, deeply devoted to his country.  

Heath labelled Powell a “racist”, scorning his many crystal-clear warnings about the dangers of mass immigration. Today, we are facing the consequences. Powell, now buried in the Warwick Cemetery – dressed in his full Brigadier’s uniform – would likely be deeply saddened, though I suspect not surprised, by the events unfolding around us.

Benyon’s Crystal Balls

I am in favour of controlled immigration. But this is not what has happened, is it? It was Thatcher who worried that the UK was being “swamped” by 30,000 immigrants. Those were the days.

Major pledged to control numbers – he failed. Blair’s immigration minister, Barbara Roche, allowed the doors of the UK to swing wide, laying the foundations for the crisis we face today. Brown fared no better (famously forgetting to remove his mike, and calling a concerned constituent, Ms Duffy, a “bigot”).

Cameron promised to reduce immigration figures to the “tens of thousands”, yet numbers soared to over half a million annually – so he was perceived as either a liar or a fool. May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all made similar promises but failed to deliver. As for Starmer, it’s clear he hasn’t a clue what to do!

My forecast in simple: the electorate will not tolerate being taken for mugs over immigration. If reasonable governments continue to turn “House UK” into a seedy hotel, voters will elect unreasonable ones to do their bidding instead. The failure of successive governments to control immigration – despite repeated promises – has become one of the defining issues of our time, and public frustration is growing. The numbers are uncontrollable, and sooner or later, the government will be forced to discard what are perceived as “foreign” laws set up years ago to protect human rights and refugees. Voters are angry that clever lawyers are making huge sums of money by exploiting loopholes that allow illegal immigrants – many with criminal profiles – to stay in the UK. They shouldn’t be allowed to pass “Go”. They must be deported.       

On Cliff Edges

I once sat next to the crime writer PD James at a dinner. She told me that DNA had destroyed her work and the only safe way to kill anyone these days was to “accidentally” bump them off the White Cliffs. So I walked them today with special care. On the path we met Wendy and Pamplona, two attractive and lively ladies who are totally set on living life to the full. Then further on we chatted to two friendly Canadians, Wendy and Mitch. It’s good to meet such friendly people. A Spitfire did aerobatics.

ZANE and Veterans

In 2017 I met Major Mugamo in Bulawayo (not his real name on grounds of security). He was dying of untreated prostate cancer and he was the great pain. Since 2004 ZANE has represented all the UK services charities in Zimbabwe and we have distributed millions of pounds to veterans who were stranded and destitute on their behalf. But when Rhodesia declared independence in 1980 the UK ceased to fully support those who had fought in the colonial regiments. All the these veterans received was a tiny payment, enough for one meal each day and no medical support whatsoever. They served our Crown and they deserved better.

To cut a long story short, I wrote to the then head of our partner military charity to ask if he would co-chair a new pressure group to seek further funds. Although ZANE agreed to pay for Mugamo’s operation we didn’t have the funds to help the many hundreds of others who were facing destitution. David Richards (now Fieldmarshall) agreed, as did Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary. We approached DFID, and by chance, Bingo! Penny Mordaunt, who was heading it up, agreed.

Some 10,000 veterans across the Commonwealth now get two meals a day. ZANE won a further grant and established a unique basic medical programme to benefit all those veterans and pensioners living in Zimbabwe. This has proved to be a huge success. The lady running the programme in Bulawayo is now sadly retiring after 20 years service. She has been dedicated, loyal and hardworking and she will be hugely missed. It’s a pity we can’t go on forever.

The Gift of Forgiveness

“Purify your hearts, you double-minded”.

These words from the Bible (James 4:8) are about integrity… and fraud.

The trouble with Rachel Reeves is that the errors in her CV all leaned one way – towards making her achievements seem more impressive than they were. The length of time she’d worked at the Bank of England, and the seniority of her role there, were both inflated. She also claimed to have published an article in Political Economy when in fact it was The European Journal of Political Economy – a far less prestigious publication. Perhaps, deep down, she suspects she’s a fraud. 

She isn’t alone. A friend elected to Parliament told me that for the first week he wondered how such a fraud – as he knew himself to be – had reached his position. After the second week, he wondered how everyone else had got there!   

And it’s not just parliamentarians. Early in their illustrious careers, journalists John Simpson and John Humphrys shared an office at the BBC – and whenever the men in grey suits appeared, they’d chorus, “Okay, we know what you are about to say. We’ll go quietly.” Fortunately, they were mistaken.

Perhaps the knowledge of double-mindedness is one of the reasons for the chronic alcoholism and early deaths of so many supremely talented actors. Richard Burton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Spencer Tracy – all of whom made a living out of make-believe while trying to fill the emptiness with drink, sex, and drugs – spent their last years aghast at the horror of it all.

The Inner Judge

One of the most terrifying scenes in literature can be found in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman is a travelling salesman who knows deep down he’s a fraud. His self-pity drives him to regularly cheat on his wife.

He rationalises, as men often do, “I live a hard life, the sexual act means nothing” – and so on. His only consolation is that his son, Biff, idolises him. But one day Biff turns up unexpectedly in his hotel room and catches him with another woman. It’s excruciating.

Willy tries to swagger. “Now look, Biff – one day you’ll understand these things.” But Biff just stares. Then Willy tries to bully his son and orders him to forget the whole incident.

Biff replies, “You fake, you phony little fake!” Willy falls to his knees, his soul stripped bare of all rationalisations.

When I read this scene, I tremble. Is there a last judgement? Who needs it when we do such a thorough job of judging ourselves?

What wonderful news we’re forgiven.

Overhyped and Overrated

The late Barry Humphries listed his most overrated things, and I have to say I agree with most of them – and have added a few more! In no particular order: Starbucks, French onion soup, Bob Dylan, Niagara Falls, the film Citizen Kane, the Caribbean, all the novels of Virginia Woolf and Patrick O’Brian, Pilates, lobster, Lord of the Rings, most modern art, nearly all sculpture, nearly all modern poetry, Sir Ed Davey, the TV  programme Mock the Week, Annabelle’s, Meghan Markle, Las Vegas and all devolved parliaments.

Deluged with torrential rain, the walk came to a sodden halt.  We started again in the afternoon.

Allow me to explain our “Pop up” classes programme,  it’s a  transformational work and it’s tragic we can’t expand it across Zimbabwe.

Please close you eyes and just imagine what it must be like to be a single mother, living in a slum where  misogyny and violence rule. You are trapped. Your regular rapist lives freely down the road and laughs when you pass.  the police are useless; there is no affordable healthcare or social services or education. Oh yes, the unemployment rate is 95% and if you are lucky you are living  on a dollar a day.  Some women have to use their bodies as cash machines to survive.

Just imagine this. I discovered a remarkable charity eighteen years ago that brings relief to a few of these desperate families: ZANE has  backed it ever since.

The first  stage is to build slowly the previously shattered confidence of a tiny minority of these women to enable them to teach. When they are ready they can teach a total of 72 children (6-12) at a time.

The books and teaching materials are stored in six suitcases, hence the “Pop up” name. The  Kids learn basic numeracy and literacy, song, dance, physical education, and Bible  study with the aim of preparing them for mainstream school.  Dozens of children have progressed and many fees are paid with ZANE scholarships. The classes provide a safe, secure environment for the children. We aim to build their confidence, enable them feel to valued and allow them to show love and compassion. For many, the pop-up classes is a rare refuge from their chaotic home lives. Each child gobbles up a hot meal every day, for most their only meal. In addition, they learn basic farming techniques and grow vegetables to subsidise the meals.

ZANE is hugely proud if this work. Sad we cant just roll it out.

Please note that ZANE allows choice to donors as to which work they want to support. We pay tribute to those who back our precious “Pop up” classes programme.

Armchair Assassins

At a recent supper party, a man with a crimson face and tiny eyes began tearing into the reputation of Boris Johnson. We’ve all heard this sort of thing before. He was clearly projecting his dissatisfaction with his own failed life onto someone he’s never even met.

I couldn’t resist joining in for I heartily despise the thoughtless criticism of people in public life. The speakers always imply that if they were in charge, they would do a far better job – which is almost certainly a lie! People in high office deserve our prayers, not wanton abuse.

“Hold on,” I replied. “You’re a retired circuit judge?” Crimson Face nodded. “And you claim Boris is a useless buffoon?” He nodded again.

“Don’t forget he was the lead writer for the Daily Telegraph, arguably one of the great newspapers of our time,” I reminded him. “I would like to be a lead writer at the DT, but I’m just not good enough. Do you think you are?” Crimson Face’s cheeks went a shade darker, and his mouth opened and closed like a carp’s. 

“Boris was also the editor of the Spectator,” I continued. “I’d like to have edited the Speccie, but I’m not good enough. Are you?

“He was then the Conservative Mayor of London – twice. Remember, it’s a Labour city. I would like to have been Mayor even once, but I’m simply not good enough. Are you?”

No reply.

Boris was then Foreign Secretary. I’d like to have been Foreign Secretary – imagine all those first-class flights, wonderful meals and grand conferences, with no direct responsibilities. But I wasn’t and it’s too late for me now anyway – and I probably wasn’t good enough. Are you?”

No reply.

“He followed that by becoming prime minister for three years. I’d like to have been PM for even a day. But I doubt I have what it takes. Do you?”

No reply.

“Boris was arguably the most consequential Prime Minister since Thatcher. He campaigned for the “leave” vote, then in 2019, when Parliament was stalemated, he forced us out in compliance with the wishes of the British people expressed in the referendum. You may not agree, but this was mighty consequential.

“It’s all in his excellent book Unleashed. Have you read it? And whatever you may think, he isn’t a useless buffoon!”

A sullen “No”.

I made an enemy that evening, but I don’t care.

The Speed Illusion

Points on your license! A speed awareness course! Complaining about 20mph?

Look, driving very fast is unpleasant and dangerous. It leads to longer braking distances, higher energy consumption, an increased risk of accidents and fatalities, and the likelihood of receiving speeding points or even losing your licence – not to mention the risk of being mistaken for a reverse-baseball-hatted yob. And yet, the very thing we’re usually trying to achieve – a reduction in journey time – is often barely gained.

Take it from me – the faster you go, the less time you save by going say 10 miles per hour faster. Accelerate from 20 to 30 and you save 10 minutes for every 10 miles you are travelling. Accelerate from 70 to 80mph and you save under a minute.

Remember, you heard it from ZANE first.

We faced miles of unkept grass with the texture of sodden green spaghetti as we staggered along the St Augustine way; it doesn’t look as if it has been in use since the dear saint walked to Canterbury in the seventh century.

I kept sane- just – by thinking of ZANE’s Clubfoot work, which, although it is not quite the crown of ZANE’s work – that is our pensioner programme – it’s certainly our orb and sceptre.

It began around eleven years ago when I managed to persuade my friend Chris Lavy to pay a visit as our guest to Zimbabwe. Chris is a remarkable man who has spent much of his career building hospitals in Southern Africa. He is an orthopaedic surgeon and a world expert in the correction of Clubfoot in children. We formed a partnership. Now there are 13 sites around the country; we have completed over 6,600 treatments, allowing children whose previous lives were hideous to jump for joy.

We allow donors to choose what work to support and we are so grateful for their generosity; but to be able to watch today a team of footballing children when only one year ago they were walking on the sides of their feet or on their knees is a rare privilege.

History’s Unintended Consequences

As that halitosis-ridden bastard Adolf Hitler shot himself, he would have been furious to know that the unintended consequences of his ghastly career included the birth of the EU and NATO – and for goodness’ sake, the flourishing of the State of Israel.

Before Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, the country was in a state of chaos. Stalin simply had to get his act together, which he did rather well, and Russia has remained rather grimly together ever since. Meanwhile, Hitler’s war drained the UK of wealth, leaving it unable to sustain its empire after the conflict ended. What an astounding series of unintended consequences!

(As a side note, the first third of Hitler’s life was an abject failure. Then came a time where everything he touched turned to triumph, followed by a last period marked by total disaster. And he died at 56! Sebastian Haffner captures his unique career profile in his short book The Meaning of Hitler.)

Brexit Backstory

Did you know that without Paddy Ashdown, Brexit would never have happened? I outraged a LibDem table at a fundraiser with this story (with ill-disguised glee)!

In 1997, Paddy Ashdown lobbied the new PM, Tony Blair, to embrace his two passions – proportional representation (PR) and to remain in the EU forever. Blair agreed on staying in the EU, but inevitably disagreed on PR. However, after relentless lobbying from Paddy – and much to the objection of then Home Secretary, Jack Straw – Blair introduced PR in the EU elections. 

Nigel Farage had been waiting in the wings. Until then, he’d been the patron saint of lost causes – but now he spotted an opportunity. UKIP took one seat, then two… then three. With each gain, publicity grew – boosting what many saw as the ludicrous idea that Britain might actually leave the EU. David Cameron, realising the Conservative Party was being hollowed out by UKIP, called a referendum in 2016. And the rest, as they say, is history…

This saga is detailed in Jack Straw’s Last Man Standing, and in Michael Crick’s biography, One Party after Another: The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage. 

Potatoes and Plagues

Henry VIII’s inability to find a competent divorce lawyer led to the founding of the Church of England – fancy that!

Meanwhile, when a shady Genoese adventurer conned the Spanish Crown into financing a voyage to outmanoeuvre the Portuguese, this brought about unintended consequences on a grand scale. Europeans gained new and unknown goods from the Americas – and in return, they received a few things they hadn’t bargained for from us.

Without Columbus’s sailing trip, there would be no potatoes in Ireland, no baked beans in England, no cassoulet in France, no tomato sauce in Italy, no polenta in Venice and no Ferrero Rocher for stockbrokers. There’d be no turkey for Christmas – or cranberry sauce to go with it – and you certainly couldn’t pop out for a curry, because there’s no curry without chilli.

Until Columbus arrived, the Americas had no bacon, beef or cheese – and no McDonald’s! There were no chickens, so forget Kentucky Fried Chicken. There were no dogs or cats, and they were even rat-free – until these pests emigrated via the ships that followed Columbus. There was no latte because there was no coffee. And no one was getting run over by a stagecoach, because wheels hadn’t been invented there yet – nor had horses been introduced to pull carts.

However, the Americans did have one gift to bestow on us, and it did for Lenin, Donizetti, Schubert and Nietzsche – syphilis! They also gave us tobacco, which killed millions with lung cancer (and ruined many amorous moments through stinky tobacco breath).

We took our revenge by gifting them smallpox, measles, flu, typhus, bubonic plague, diphtheria, whooping cough, chickenpox, yellow fever, scarlet fever and leprosy… and malaria as a treat.

Fair Exchange?

From America, we received the following plants: potatoes, maize, tomatoes, cacao (for chocolate), rubber, tobacco, peanuts, pineapples, cassava, sweet potatoes, vanilla, beans (such as kidney, lima and pinto), squashes, pumpkins, bell peppers, sunflowers, avocados, papayas, cranberries and blueberries.

In return, we gave them wheat, barley, rice, oats, rye, sugarcane, coffee, bananas, citrus fruits, olives, apples, pears, chickpeas, lettuce, onions, garlic, turnips, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, beets, radishes and kale.

And what about animals? All we got from America were turkeys. From us, they received cats, dogs, rats, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens and donkeys.

The Dark Triangle

The American climate was great for growing sugarcane, but harvesting it required a huge workforce. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough Aztecs or Incas left standing after our diseases had ravaged their populations – enter the Triangle Trade.

African chiefs sold weaker neighbours in chains to European traders who took them to the Americas as slaves. There, the traders picked up a cargo of sugar, which they took to Boston where the locals turned it into rum. The rum was then shipped back to Africa to trade with the chiefs for another cargo of their neighbours… 

So, finger-pointing blame for the slave trade is complex. Without Columbus, there would be no slave trade – at least, between Europe and America.

If you’d been there, what would you have done?

Bright sunny day with two friends, Rob and Margaret, who came from Worcester to walk with us. We discussed the numbers of our friends who are ill or dying.

I asked Margaret if she knew the five regrets of the dying.

I listed them three years ago in my commentary, but perhaps supporters might like to be reminded. They came from a book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse from Brisbane. She had nursed hundreds of the dying, and she asked some of them if they minded her summarising their final regrets in a book: they agreed.

The first regret is the wish that they had worked in jobs they wanted to do instead of being forced into jobs that their parents wanted them to do. For example poet John Betjeman wanted to be a poet while his parents wanted him to run a shop! Luckily for us all, John won.

The next regret was that they had been so driven at work, when they retired, they found they never had time to enjoy themselves, and they were disliked and had few real friends.

The third was that, as they had worked so hard, they had allowed their few most treasured friends to drift away.

The fourth was that they had never told the people they loved that they loved them. Apparently, some men find expressing emotion to their sons particularly difficult.

Last, when they woke in the morning, they had never realised what a privilege it was to be alive, and it was not just another boring day.

The Great British Giveaway

As you pay your tax bill, consider this.

Your government has given tens of thousands of your dosh to the transgender charity Mermaids. Yet, according to a Charity Commission inquiry last year, Mermaids wrongly claimed that puberty blockers were reversible, and gave chest binders to children as young as 13 – often against their parents’ wishes. Even more disturbingly, one of its trustees gave a speech at a conference organised by what the Commission described as a “paedophile support group”. It seems your taxes are supporting depravity – shame on you!

Now to the total waste of your money. The Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded £841,830 to a study titled “The Europe that Gay Porn built” – nice that, isn’t it? Then a hefty £759,253 went to “Comics and Race in Latin America”, and let’s not forget the £123,470 awarded to the initiative “Decolonising South-East Asia Sound Archives”. Meanwhile, the Department for Business allocated £200,000 to Shanghai to “foster creativity in Chinese communities” – plus the same again to fund all-female Yue Opera performances for urban viewers on social media.

Oh yes, I almost forgot – we are handing £133 million to deeply corrupt Pakistan, and £33 million to India – a nation that can famously afford its own space programme. And let’s not overlook the £13 million going to South Africa – the weather is mighty nice there at this time of the year.

Go on… pay your tax bill and smile. It’s only money!

Mind Your Language

And now to political correctness…

The National Farmers’ Union has declared the phrase “farmer’s wife” to be inappropriate. And the word “sick note” has been cancelled – instead, it’s referred to as a “fit note”.

You couldn’t make it up…

I once sat on a committee of a London charity, “New Horizons” with Lord Longford  and Jack Profumo. Over lunch, Longford asked me for my motives. I stumbled a reply and said they were mixed. He said, “May I give you some advice? As he was paying for the lunch, I could hardly say “no”.

“We all have mixed motives in everything we do,” he said, “may I suggest you just shut up  get on with it.”

Why did I start ZANE? What were my motives? Mark Twain wrote: “There are two important days in our lives: the day we are born and the day we find out why we were born.”

Perhaps I was born to start ZANE.

My friend Jim Pringle claims that occasionally people are “anointed” to some work or other. Some to “big” works, for example, William Booth  (the Sallies), Chuck Colston (Prison Fellowship), John Stott, Tim Keller and many others. And when they die the work alters of course in other hands, and continues but in a different way.

And smaller works? Jim reckons I was anointed to start ZANE and all those who work in the charity have been “anointed” as well; in fact anointed  by God to do the work planned for us to do before the world began (Ephesians 2 v 10). So boasting is ludicrous. It’s an enormous privilege.

And my motives? Perhaps I should just shut up and  get on with it.

Dragons Lurk Here

Sex, money and power are addictive and… potentially packed with sin.

When I was young, it was another world. You could only access smutty literature, or the occasional picture of half-dressed women from the likes of Health and Efficiency magazine, by chance. Of course, there was Page 3 in The Sun, and at a stretch, we could buy harder stuff in Soho and carry it home in a brown paper bag. Such were the days of innocence.

Then came Playboy, Hugh Hefner’s slippery slope of “one-handed” literature, with an ever-thinner veneer of respectability.

Unstoppable Tide

They used to call it “adult” pictures. In truth, there’s nothing adult about it – it’s adolescent. But it’s catastrophically destructive all the same.

With, the advent of the internet, the roof caved in and the floor collapsed. Now, children can gain access to the dystopian world of Sodom and Gomorrah with a single click – and gaze at unlimited quantities of hard-core pornography.

Of course, the pimps try to squeeze subscriptions out of idiot punters, but much is available for free in eye-watering, gynaecological detail. Apparently, more than half of today’s 12-year-olds have been exposed to pornography. And what do they see? Women being routinely humiliated, objectified, dehumanised, assaulted and tortured. The women are real, as is the violence. The suffering is eroticised – and of course, this coarsens viewers and dehumanises participants. Nothing can stem the tide – as King Canute famously showed, some forces simply can’t be commanded.

Pornography is addictive and, as the iron laws of unintended consequences kick in, we can see the escalation of male impotence and the inability to maintain “normal” sexual relations. Young women are asked to perform bizarre sexual acts, and sex crimes are rising. It’s all vastly damaging with no pluses at all – except to the profiteers.      

It has nothing to do with a lack of education. As we recently saw in France, Giselle Pelicot was drugged and raped by a trail of more than 50 men ­– but what happened to her had nothing to do with ignorance. Some of the men on trial were graduates. All, presumably, understood that consent is imperative – sex education is compulsory in French schools – yet they charged on anyway. 

Why? Precisely because the rapists knew exactly what they were doing – that’s the point. The driving force behind rape and sexual assault is pornography, which drags (mostly) men into a bottomless swamp of degradation. The Pelicot case amply exposes the mainspring of the porn industry – the monetisation of taboo.

The Unscratchable Itch

Researcher Sean Thomas writes, “The whole, vast, metastasising, $100bn sewer isn’t selling sex, rather it’s selling transgression. The dopamine hit that drags men (it’s nearly always men) back to their laptops time after time is the result of breaking a taboo, and that’s why it’s transgressive. Once a taboo is normalised, it loses its transgressive power. So, men seek another and another more extreme way to transgress. And so, the spiral can end in rape.”

Male sexuality is designed by evolution to be an unscratchable itch, a desperate, unsatisfiable urge. It’s like hunger – you aren’t meant to wake up one day and think, “Okay, I’ve had 6,000 meals, so I think I’ll stop eating now.” Nor do men wake up and think, “I’ve viewed 500 sex acts – so I’ll stop staring now.” And the danger here is that when a man starts to explore his more deviant sexual fantasies, he finds himself chasing ever weirder varieties of sex.

And where are the vigilantes policing whether the women involved – and some of them children – have been trafficked? If they can catch Jeffrey Epstein, why can’t they catch the hundreds of pimps feeding this disgusting industry?   

Beware! We must warn the young, for dragons lurk here. This will, and can, destroy you.

I’m glad I’m not young anymore.

A lovely fresh breeze and a sunny day; we were accompanied by two delightful supporters from Maidstone, a retired journalist and his insightful wife. We had a far ranging conversation and they were both well read and as sharp as tacks. I was reminded of the aphorism, it’s hard to get an intelligent person to change their mind but impossible if they are stupid. All ZANE supporters are of course, by definition, intelligent but, in case there is one  who has slipped through the net, there are various topics I choose not to write about because they are toxic; after all I am in the business of writing on everyday subjects as an entertainment, and I try not to irritate. So I avoid abortion, Brexit, assisted dying and Gaza. But as an exception to my rule, I will say something about Gaza.

There was a priest and a rabbi who died and went to Heaven. As a tradition, all holy people are allowed a meeting with God. At the end of the meeting, they were allowed a question.

“Please tell us O God, if there ever will be a resolution to the Israeli/Palestine affair?

“Yes, of course, answered God, “but not in my lifetime,”

And that’s as far as I will go – and I was told that story by a Jewish friend. I might add that I have a couple of events in my life that I challenge anyone to emulate. I was once kissed by Yassar Arafat and hugged by Mother Teresa, so beat that if you can. I should add that my reactions with Arafat were entirely temporary and do not affect my views on the tragic conflict, which I am keeping to myself.

What’s in a Name?

The liberal consensus welcomes the cancellation of those whose backgrounds fail to fit with contemporary sensibilities. So, Rhodes must fall and Edward Colston’s statue was hurled into Bristol Harbour. The CoE now prays about statues of unsuitable luminaries with slavery connections.

No modern liberal can afford to be linked with an institution that commemorates people with a problematic background. However, there is one exception. In a quiet church graveyard on the Welsh border – St Giles’, Wrexham – lies the grave of an extraordinary old rogue.

The Rogue Behind the Ivy

The man in question was born in 1649, three decades after the Mayflower arrived in America. As a young man he loathed Puritanism, so he took a job with the East India Company and went to India. As he had no morals or principles, he made a pile of money and ended up as governor of Madras. He maintained several mistresses and enriched himself through smuggling and every kind of crooked practice. One wheeze was to pass a law requiring every European ship to carry a minimum of 10 slaves for sale. He sold them at a huge mark-up – in 1687 alone, he arranged for 655 to be sent on their way. He met the burgeoning demand for slaves by having children kidnapped – and even had his groom hanged for taking two days off without permission.

Even the East India Company eventually lost patience with him. In 1699, after it was discovered that he had been embezzling company funds to purchase land for himself, he was banished to England. He brought back so much loot it couldn’t fit into his two houses, one in London, the other in Wrexham. He became England’s first auctioneer so he could flog off the surplus stuff. It took seven auctions to get rid of several hundred snuff boxes, 500 rings, 7,000 paintings and 116 pairs of cufflinks.

This character had some tenuous links to America, and, in a fit of absentmindedness, gave a minute fraction of his wealth to an obscure college in Saybrook, Connecticut. Later the college asked for more funds, so he sent 417 books and a picture of King George I.

To honour their donor, the new college renamed itself after him and hung his portrait in the hall. It shows him being waited on by a Black servant wearing a metal collar.

Despite that, the college – now a university – still bears the name of this whoring, thieving, slave-trading old monster who gave it a few books. So, let’s applaud Elihu Yale, whose name graces the university from which Bill Clinton and both George Bushes graduated.

Under Watered

I felt below par at the outset of today’s walk. What could it be? Then I wondered if I was becoming dehydrated. It’s easy to underestimate the amount of water needed in warm weather when walking long distances.

I redoubled my water intake and feel better.

Totting Up While Tottering Along

I have totted up a rough calculation of the work ZANE has undertaken in Zimbabwe over the past twenty years.

We have always looked after pensioners and veterans in homes and living by themselves and it numbers over ten thousand. Then there are six and half thousand treatments to correct child clubfoot that’s children who can now live normal lives as opposed to living in the shadows. . Thousands have benefited from our medical aid programme. Many thousand veterans across the Commonwealth now have access to two meals a day. The pop-up classes in the slums of Harare have been a great success. ZANE has brought relief to sufferers of cholera and political violence. A few years back we assisted the embassy deliver necessary medicines in the COVID scare.

It’s quite a story, all due to ZANE’s amazing teams.

And all worth walking for.

A Grumble (with Gratitude)

Some things in today’s world just get on my nerves! Here’s a grumble through the ghastly, the baffling and the just plain naff…

Things I Find Naff

• Men with Windsor knots.
• Calls to utilities that put me on endless hold, tell me my call’s important, then play ghastly music as a consolation.
• The question, “Red or white?”
• Comb-overs.
• Halitosis so strong it could be used to club a baby seal (amazingly common).
• Vicars wading into politics during sermons (often on subjects they know tiddly squat about and which have nothing to do with salvation) and saying “er” and “um” relentlessly.
• People telling me about the problems in Zimbabwe, as if they were new to me.
• Short socks.
• Politicians squawking at times of disaster, “Our hearts go out to the victims.”
• Being told, “No worries” or “Have a nice day!”
• My call being answered by someone whose accent is so impenetrable I cannot understand a word.
• Piped music in restaurants.
• Electric cars.
• People who encourage me to “enjoy” when food is served.
• Waiters who interrupt a meal to ask if everything is all right (I’d tell them if it wasn’t).
• Face masks.
• T-shirts with slogans.
• Fat men in shorts.
• “Smart casual” as a dress code.
• Tattoos and face piercings.
• Online petitions.
• Walking around with a water bottle.
• “Elf and safety”.

Things I Miss

• Petrol attendants.
• Train journeys with dining cars, tables, white cloths, menus and a waiter.
• Cinemas with usherettes selling choc ices in the interval.
• Walking unsearched onto a plane.
• Coal fires.
• Parking for free anywhere.
• Robinson Lemon Barley Water.
• Crisps with small blue packets of salt.

Things I’m Grateful For

• Jet travel.
• Showers (no one had them in 1950s England).
• Frozen peas.
• Kitchen foil.
• Mangoes and avocadoes in UK shops.
• Jeans, shorts and slip-on shoes.
• Modern medicine and dentistry (not the bills for the latter!)
• Interflora.

We are now half way through the walk.

Jane and I are to visit Zimbabwe in a couple of weeks. In many ways, it will be a sad occasion as we will be saying farewell to three loyal and dedicated servants of ZANE who are retiring after 20 years of service. We never reveal the names of our workers, but those leaving have enabled many thousands of the elderly to face retirement with sufficient food, money, medicines and love instead of penury and despair.

Many of those ZANE workers have been privileged to assist were WW2 veterans and  their widows. In the main they have  died – apart from widows. But many others have taken their place. Often their children have emigrated and their aged parents left behind were too proud  to admit their savings had been destroyed by bouts of inflation and they were totally  desperate.  That’s where ZANE has a proud role and we couldn’t have achieved what we have done without our brave team.

So it will be a bitter/sweet occasion. But I am hope those who are  retiring will never forget what they have achieved and the crucial role they have played in the lives of so many.

Running on Empty

Google tells me that around one in five young people in the UK are suffering from some form of mental health condition. 

The reason for much of this seems obvious. It’s not that we’re hungry for fame, comfort, wealth or power – these things generate almost as many problems as they solve. The core problem is the lack of meaning – the senselessness and emptiness of so many lives. It is the general neurosis of our time.

Our souls are hungry for meaning – for the sense that the world will be a little bit different for our having passed through it. If we feel we are merely existing rather than living, or that our leisure time has been drained away staring at a screen, then we might just as well never have been here.

The American Declaration of Independence offers everyone the right to pursue happiness. However, because it’s a political document rather than a religious one, it doesn’t warn of the frustrations involved in trying to exercise that right. You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness, but by living a life that means something. The happiest people I know are not the richest or the most famous. They are those who work at being kind, helpful and reliable – and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things.

Happiness is always a by-product, never a primary goal. It’s like a butterfly – the more you pursue it, the faster it flits out of sight. So, stop chasing and busy yourself with productive things – and happiness will sneak up and perch on your shoulder. 

Like, whatever…

I am indebted to Miles Morland for introducing me to some really bad analogies written by American high school students:

• He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree
• She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• She had a deep throaty laugh – like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as like, whatever.
• The revelation that his marriage of years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock – like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.