DAVID CAMERON really is missing a trick. In his spirited and understandable attempts not to sound like Alan Clark or Nicholas Ridley he fails to notice that there are elements of traditional Toryism that would be strangely welcome. In emoting about wellbeing, planning a “policy review” of the “couple relationship” and denouncing the iniquity of half-price chocolate oranges, he overlooks a huge, silent, sullen cast of thought. He fails to hear a widespread mutter of: “Get out of my hair, I’m an adult.”
It is almost an illness in our leaders, this determination to tell us off, set us right, be our daddy (though even daddies now get publicly funded pamphlets explaining that to play with their children they must “go to a playground”. A government-approved playground, obviously). If Mr Cameron could only see it, there is plenty of mileage to be made out of mocking ministers’ anxiety to protect us in areas that are not their responsibility, while frequently failing in areas that are. He could then point out that this instinct to cut up our food for us inevitably dribbles down to infect lesser forms of governmentn such as head teachers, local officials and policemen. In any week you can pluck two random, disparate items from the news and make the same broad point: that government should stick to its job and let the rest of us bumble along in peace.
Take a pin and stick it in the newspaper at random. Here we go: more news of the ridiculous home information packs (HIPs), compulsory from next summer to take the “stress” out of homebuying. Sellers must provide a pack costing up to £1,000, containing evidence of title, standard local searches, a mini-survey and “energy efficiency rating”. A home inspector, specially trained, must visit.
Even veteran surveyors are expected to take the new training, and many refuse; so a vast army of less qualified prodnoses is to be raised. There will be fines of £200 a day for marketing your house — even privately — without a HIP. The HIP must be updated after six months. There will be VAT on it. It will all be a thundering nuisance, but will remove no stress because nearly all lenders demand a separate survey, and the inspector-people will not report on subsidence, flood risk or contaminated land. And there will be nothing to prevent human behaviour: buyers outside Scotland retain the ability to pull out capriciously or reduce their offer at the last minute. Sellers retain their right to accept gazumps and waste your costs.
Basic fraud control, building and planning regulations are in everyone’s interest, but it is not a government’s job to remove “stress” from the momentous process of borrowing a huge sum and changing your home. These things are rightly stressful. We can face them as one of life’s challenges, and steel ourselves for disappointment. We do not need a new misery, larded with tax and fines. We rather resent the violation of the priv acy and dignity of a contract between two adult citizens. Eventually some clown will bring a Human Rights Act claim against the Government for interfering in his right to private life and property, and good luck to him.
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Pick up the pin again, spear another story. This time the interfering mentality belongs to a lower authority. A school in West Sussex is harassing 12 girls who wear the silver ring signifying virginity before marriage, distributed to adherents by the American chastity movement the Silver Ring Thing and bearing a reminder of Thessalonians 4:3. The school says it is a uniform and safety issue, which would be credible if they only asked for the rings to be taken off for games and lab work; but the girls are banned from wearing them at all, and punished. Meanwhile, as parents provocatively point out, Sikh girls wear the bangle and Muslim girls the headscarf. What is clear is that the school does not like the Silver Ring Thing: its statement says that the school’s own sex education policy emphasises the illegality of under-age sex and encourages pupils to “discuss the issues”.
But these girls have clearly made up their mind on the issues, and decided to eschew not just sex under 16 but sex before marriage — “cheating on your future husband”, as the movement puts it. Such abstinence was standard teaching in the pre-Pill era, and is still a tenet of several leading religions. It is, however, politically incorrect today. Opponents cite academic surveys which show that when ring-wearers eventually break the vow (Columbia and Yale estimate that 88 per cent do) they are more likely to get pregnant, never having listened to the contraception talks. Probably true: in my youth it was axiomatic that it was “good” girls who ended up in the club. It is also true that the founder of the movement, Denny Pattyn, sounds a bit of a fruitcake, dwelling rather too keenly on the disgustingness of sexual diseases and rashly confiding to journalists that he reckons the Second Coming is due within a generation and young folks gotta keep themselves pure for it.
I am not, myself, enamoured of the movement. However, if a child of mine had wanted to wear the silver ring, I would have considered him or her rather brave. And if a headteacher tried to stamp out the rings on weaselling “safety” grounds, I would send that child to school next day armed with John Stuart Mill’s great lines on liberty:
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”
Now, there’s a manifesto. Go, Dave!
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Read recent columns by Libby Purves here