Malcolm Fowler’s Blog

The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Liam Donaldson, is to announce today that guidelines allowing children from the age of 5 to 15 to drink alcohol in the home, and under parental supervision, are wrong. His position will be that the years up to the age of 15 should be totally alcohol free, and the government will issue new guidelines based on this.

This is tosh for several reasons . We have known for many years that the French approach, in which alcohol is introduced gradually by parents, by means of watered down wine, is much more effective in training children to have a sensible approach as they grow into adulthood. How will Donaldson’s approach enable children to handle the inevitable peer pressure to drink outside the home? My belief is that it will make it all the more attractive for them to do so.

And how is it to be enforced? Will squads of parental supervision police batter down front doors at mealtimes to haul in offenders?

Of course, parental supervision is not an absolute concept, and it ranges in quality from superb to almost non-existent. But the top and bottom of all this is that it will be yet another excuse for the government to control us. Big Brother is absolutely relentless.

Make the most of it; it’s not often that the BBC gets it right. Of course they would be guilty of not showing impartiality if they were to do anything else. 

There has been a big hue and cry over the last few days about the refusal of the BBC, and now Sky News, to broadcast an appeal for contributions to a fund to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian victims of the fighting in Gaza. The BBC, for once, is right, and the publicity that this matter has received has served to promote the fund at least as well as would a 5 minute appeal.

Let there be a fund for all victims, whichever side of the border, and let Iran, who supply the rockets which initiated the conflict, make the first contribution.

I am writing this post as I watch the beginning of the inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. Whilst I feel that the good people of America have missed a wonderful opportunity by not electing Hillary as the second President Clinton, I am sure that Obama will be a breath of fresh air after 8 years of a man who was singularly ill equipped for high office.

There are many parallels with the arrival of President Kennedy on the world stage.  We devoutly hope that he does not leave it in a similar way.

Manchester City have, apparently, offered £108million for the signature of a Brazilian footballer by the name of Kaka. If they are successful in securing it, they propose to pay him £250,000 a week. We are told that Kaka will not be swayed by the amount of money on offer. He is a devout catholic and donates a large proportion of his salary to the Catholic Church. Whilst I am sure that he sincerely believes that such donations will benefit mankind, it is hard to think of a less worthy cause than that bunch of paedophiles.

Premiership football lost touch with reality long ago, and we should not be surprised that one of the richest men in the world has taken over one of our clubs and upped the ante to breathtaking levels.

On the other hand, before Rupert Murdoch came along and pumped huge sums into the Premiership, football clubs were bankrolled by wealthy local businessmen. Now that we live in a global village, what is so different about what Abramovic and Sheik Mansour are doing? And if it gives City a chance to eclipse that other, cynical, Manchester team, then it has to be a good thing.

The royal racism row has escalated with the revelation that Prince Charles addresses an Asian fellow member of the Cirencester polo team by the affectionate nickname ‘Sooty’. Give me strength!

The nickname by which Sooty addresses His Royal Highness is not reported. Might it be ‘Big Ears’?

Environmentalists are the new Luddites. There, I’ve said it. There is no concensus, amongst those who truly understand these things, that any climate change is taking place that we have any power to influence.

And yet we allow ourselves to be constantly hectored by all manner of groups seeking to modify our behaviour in order to conform with their particular views of the way that life should be lived. Our freedoms are anathema to them, and their biggest disappointment is that we are permitted the most important freedom of all - the freedom to travel.

I will return to this issue frequently, but the relevant news today is the purchase, by Greenpeace, of a piece of land which would be needed for the building of Heathrow’s third runway, effectively given the go-ahead by the government yesterday. They have sold parcels of this land to various people, including well known aviation experts Emma Thompson and Alastair McGowan, believing that this will make the compulsory purchase of the necessary land more difficult when the time comes.

Mr McGowan destroyed the case for a third runway with his perceptive and incisive analysis - ‘Heathrow already has a decent sized airport, so why do we need another runway?’

Fortunately, the latest planning laws mean that the pathetic efforts of those who would hold back progress are doomed to failure.

Prince Harry was foolish to call his friend a ‘Paki’ whilst he was being filmed, but that is the end of it. The fact that the term has been used by thugs who have committed racist violence does not make everyone who uses it a racist. Should we outlaw the use of the word ‘Jew’ on the same grounds? ‘Pommy’, ‘Limey, ‘Brit’, ‘Yank’, ‘Ozzie’, Jock’, ‘Taffy’; they all have a derogatory element to them.

Racism is an industry which involves the politically correct brigade turning trivial incidents into major issues and thereby creating conflict.  Prince Harry is a man who has put his life on the line for his country, and meant absolutely no offence. It seems that no offence was taken, but that is not enough for the professionally precious.

They should get a life. Even if we were insulting each other - better that than killing each other.

The word on the street is that the Tory leader is contemplating bringing Kenneth Clarke back into the shadow cabinet, despite being urged not to by many of his colleagues, who question the former Chancellor’s loyalty to the present leadership.

The most surprising thing about the whole affair is that Clarke would want to be associated with this nondescript band of second rate fops, when the party three times rejected him as leader and chose a much lesser man instead. From Cameron’s point of view, what is there to lose? The government is presiding over debacles in every sphere of public life and would be in total disarray were it not for the paucity of Her Majesty’s Opposition. The return to the political arena of a man with robust views, who is not afraid to express them, would surely benefit us all.

Dare we hope that it might bring a proper focus on the steady erosion of civil liberties which has been taking place almost since the Labour government took office? Can so few of us see that it is but a short step from the introduction of ID cards to a requirement that they are carried at all times, and produced at the whim of every petty official who struts the streets to enforce the PC brigades latest silly policy? Are we really going to accept the move to require that copies are kept of every email, without even a whimper?

Bring back Kenneth Clarke. At least he’ll give them a run for their money.

I hope that you are as unsurprised as I am to learn that the Disunited Nations resolution, calling for a ceasefire, has been rejected by both sides. I hold no brief for either; I have dear friends in both communities; but beg leave to point out that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and Israel the only democratic state in the region.

There is a great deal of cant spouted about the plight of the Palestinians, and there is no doubt that they have to live in conditions which we would find absolutely intolerable. They should, however, look to their own leadership when seeking someone to blame. The state of Israel has existed for roughly the same length of time as myself, and during my adult life there have been two occasions on which it has been invaded by the neighbours that surround it with the intention of wiping it from the face of the map. Had it not been ready to defend itself, and done so very effectively, it would have been consigned to history long ago, and it has limited territorial acquisitions to those that it considered necessary to defend its borders.

It is little wonder that Israeli governments accord such a high priority to the defence of the state and the protection of the people. Persuade Hamas to stop firing 80 rockets a day at Israeli towns and then complain to me if Israel continue the fighting.

I’m sure that we all wish Andrew Strauss well, but the ECB’s capacity for self -destruction beggars belief. If they had wanted a captain who would tolerate mediocrity they should not have appointed Pietersen in the first place. Now we are left in total disarray a few weeks before we attempt to regain the Ashes because he made a stand for excellence.

I am the first person to acknowledge that no one player is bigger than the team, but we have, in KP, one of the greatest batsmen who has ever played the game.  It is vital that he can work in an environment in which he can display his exceptional talents to the full if England are to have a chance.