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Thursday, March 02, 2006

A Hitchens Who Talks Sense

Good news- the Hitchens brother who talks sense has started blogging. Peter Hitchens opposed both the Yugoslavian and Iraq wars, supports capital punishment, reintroduction of the married man's tax allowance and renationalisation of the railways- and as if that isn't enough, also attended the same College of Further Education as yours truly.
I first met Peter Hitchens when I was a guest on Radio 4's Moral Maze in 2001. We were speaking in favour of the death penalty- but as usual the BBC bias against capital punishment was evident by having as one of the witnesses a South African who talked about political executions under apartheid. We thought the programme was to be a serious debate about the merits of executing convicted murderers in a rule of law democracy- and not about political killings in a brutal and indefensible racist state. We also teamed up on the same side in a capital punishment debate at the Cambridge Union debate a couple of years ago. We argued our opponents, led by the preening QC Michael Mansfield, under the table- but still lost- most people's minds were, I believe, made up before they entered. Hitchens made a superb speech that night- saying that the longer we postpone reintroducing capital punishment, the nastier the eventual solution to ever-rising violent crime will be. He is of course-( as he is on virtually ever topic except the NHS)- absolutely right.
Welcome to the blogosphere Peter!
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2006/03/cameron_a_suppo.html

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