Making the gesture in such circumstances never made light of the evils of fascism. Hitler has long been a cartoon joke figure, as in the words sung to the tune of Colonel Bogey, at least in part because that is one way of dealing with such an aberration. The problem is more with those who felt the need to publish the picture, the reaction to the publication of the picture, the fact that the palace felt any need to respond, the calls for further investigations into past royal and aristocratic links to the Third Reich and the minor surge of pious political correctness generated by the expressed horror that anybody could ever do such a thing.
It was in 1933, well before Hitler's regime reached its full, unthinkable height. I am reminded of 1979 at Lancaster University when, in our college, we had a very likeable student from Zimbabwe who was a big supporter of Robert Mugabe and, for all I know, he still might be. But the prevailing correctness of the blase, know-all campus Marxists, whose doctrines were as complete, with as much chapter and verse to be quoted verbatim as any religion, were very much in favour of proletarian regime change in other countries at the time. I don't know if, with hindsight, any of them would now admit that they might have been wrong.
But, oh dear. Continuing my recent theme on our new age of orthodoxy, it seems more difficult than ever to avoid threats from one kind of orthodoxy or another. If one can't be accused of being a Nazi, one needs to be devoted to finding Nazism where there is none.
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Which, very circuitously, leads to the debate on the BBC.
I was surprised that the very first thing I heard that David Cameron had done in his new post of Conservative Prime Minister, as opposed to Coalition Prime Minister, was announce the appointment of a known anti-BBC chairman to the review of the BBC.
With so many of the great and good appearing in the media in defence of the BBC, it isn't necessary for me to defend it here. It does an awful lot of bad things in pursuit of ratings to justify its existence to philistines like the businessmen of the Conservative think-tank but Top Gear, for example, is very good business and, allegedly 'innovative' and 'cutting edge', the sort of thing that commercial media would be too lazy or unimaginative to produce. But that, of course, is betting with David Attenborough and the like.
In Not the Nine O'Clock News, thirty-odd years ago, the old feedback show Points of View was satirized with a host of increasingly fawning letters to the BBC along the lines of,
WELL DONE, the BBC. I'd willing sell my house to pay the licence fee. Keep up the good work.
And, yes, it is worth twice as much, I don't know how much more, just as it is except that the current debate rarely mentions Radio 3 and its sponsorship of the Proms as the most important of all the reasons.
As I understand it, the licence fee for over 75's won't be re-instated but it will be paid by the BBC out of subscriptions from under 75's.
So. let's see if that works for the government's wages. Tell you what, lads, we could make a saving by us not paying you but you can pay for yourselves. It doesn't work, does it.
It's always been a dubious claim that the BBC has a left-wing bias but one can see how Michael Gove or George Osborne think so because, like the old campus Marxists above, they naturally regard anybody who is not with them as being against them. I have the same doubts about The Independent actually being 'independent'. Is there such a thing as independence in such circumstances. One person's objectivity is surely only what others see as their subjectivity. It takes much more post-structuralism than there is space for here to go beyond the prison cell of subjectivity.
But, during the last General Election campaign, Jeremy Paxman, employed by the BBC for many years, interviewed Ed Miliband and was conceited enough to think he'd given the Labour leader a hard time and, microphones still on, asked a little bit too solicitously, Are you alright, Ed.
It was gauche, slanted and very naughty television by a Conservative doyen of the BBC who was touted as a possible candidate of theirs for London Mayor.
Because the BBC still broadcasts an invaluable and impressive range of Proms on television, all of them on radio and a tremendous variety of programmes across all their stations and hasn't yet completely filled its schedules with The Dragon's Den, programmes about making money out of antiques or property, doesn't mean it is left-wing.
I don't know what left-wing means any more anyway. Perhaps it is just anything that doesn't fulfil the remit of mercantile orthodoxy.
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But the great attraction of horse racing is not the all-powerful market forces of the betting market. By all means, it's a fine thing if an interest can pay its way rather than cost money but, as has been noted by John Francome inter alia, the only way to make a small fortune out of horse racing is to start with a big one.
I like a horse to believe in, not necessarily to follow blindly, but a career to watch to see where it gets to.
The New One, At Fisher's Cross and Silviniaco Conti have been big heroes in recent seasons but may have gone beyond their peaks by now so I'll be interested to see where Penglai Pavilion can get to.
Attention was drawn to him here just before he made his hurdle debut at Hexham a month ago. It stretched credibility that he could be allowed to go off at 2/1 but he won by quite some way with the also-rans apparently spread across Northumberland like an archipelago.
Yesterday at Newton Abbot, giving away the penalty for that win, he left another group of novices at various intervals behind him throughout Devon. Novice hurdles at Hexham and Newton Abbot in the summer are certainly not the prizes that make a horse into a legend but it will be of interest to see if this potential star can progress from flat track bully into classier races when the proper jump racing starts.
What I like about horse racing is when I've lumped on the one that's gone well clear and I've covered it with a bit each way at 10/1 with the one following him home at a respectful distance. But it really isn't about the money.
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What it's really about is the admirable caring and, we could call it 'customer service', demonstrated by a man called Nigel, from the Sue Ryder charity shop I bought my bookcases from recently.It was a shame that when I put the shelves in, it turned out that one small peg was missing and I used a screw to put in under one corner of one shelf. Not the end of the world and I had forgotten all about it.
But then on Saturday I found an envelope through my door that contained a postcard with the missing peg sellotaped to it, signed by Nigel, who had gone to the trouble of looking up who had bought the bookcases and delivering that tiny part. The white behind it on the picture is the width of a postcard.
He could have picked it up off the floor, thought it wasn't worth bothering with and seen how far he could flick it with his old Subbuteo finger but he didn't. He made a diversion next time he was in the area and put it through the door.
Thanks, Nigel, whoever you are. Top man. Should be in charge of reviewing the BBC.
