Search results for ""Author Peter Hitchens""

There are few subjects these days that cause parents more stress than the education of their children. In his new book, Peter Hitchens describes the misjudgements made by politicians over the years that have led to the increase of class distinction and privilege in our education system. This is of course the opposite of what was intended, especially by former Minister of Education Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher, her successor in that role, who closed down many more Grammar Schools than Williams. Given that the cost of private secondary education is now in the region of £50,000 a year and the cream of Comprehensive Schools are now oversubscribed (William Ellis, Camden School for Girls, The Oratory, Cardinal Vaughan), parents are spending thousands on private tutoring and fee-paying prep schools in order to get their children into these academically excellent schools. Meanwhile hypocritical Labour politicians like Diane Abbott send their children to expensive private day schools. So, what alternatives – if any – are there? Peter Hitchens argues that in trying to bring about an educational system which is egalitarian, the politicians have created a system which is the exact opposite. And what’s more, it is a system riddled with anomalies - Sixth Form Colleges select pupils on ability at the age of 15, which rules out any child who does not have major educational backing from home (heavy involvement by working parents or private tutors, for example) and academies also are selective, though they pretend not to be. This is an in-depth look at the British education system and what will happen if things don’t change radically.

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'It's fair to say that Peter Hitchens remains one of the most misrepresented figures in the British media... Hitchens is in reality one of the most thought-provoking and intelligent commentators on life in contemporary Britain' -- Neil Clark, Spectator From identification cards to how we protect our property, public debate rages over what our basic human rights are, and how they are to be protected.In this trenchant and provocative book Peter Hitchens sets out to show that popular views of these hotly contested issues - from crime and punishment to so-called 'soft drugs' - are based on mistaken beliefs, massaged figures and cheap slogans. His powerful and counter-intuitive conclusions make challenging reading for those on both the Left and the Right and are essential reading for all concerned with creating a lawful and peaceful society.The Abolition of Liberty argues that because of the misdemeanours of the few, the liberty of the many is seriously jeopardized.'The issues Hitchens is addressing are important and his willingness to challenge shibboleths is often illuminating ... he is rightly scathing about attempts to deal with crime by raising the conviction rate.' -- John Willman, Financial Times'It is a pleasure to read a lucid polemic by a man who is so obviously more interested in the welfare of the common man than in the approbation of his peers' Theodore Dalrymple, Sunday Telegraph'[This book] should not be ignored... there are several pressing challenges to liberals and the left in particular.' -- Jonathan Freedland, Guardian

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The struggle between the main political parties has been reduced to an unpopularity contest, in which voters hold their noses and sigh as they trudge to the polls. Peter Hitchens explains how and why British politics has sunk to this dreary level - the takeover of the parties and the media by conventional left-wing dogmas which then call themselves 'the centre ground'. The Tory party under David Cameron has become a pale-blue twin of New Labour, offering change without alteration. Hitchens, a former Lobby reporter, examines and mocks the flock mentality of most Westminster journalists, explains how unattributable lunches guide coverage and why so many reporters - once slavish admirers of Labour - now follow the Tory line. This updated edition of Hitchens's The Broken Compass (2009) features a brand new introduction. In an excoriating analysis, Hitchens examines the Tory Party's record in government and opposition, dismissing it as a failure on all fronts but one - the ability to win office without principle. The one thing it certainly isn't is conservative.

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Peter Hitchens lost faith as a teenager. But eventually finding atheism barren, he came by a logical process to his current affiliation to an unmodernised belief in Christianity. Hitchens describes his return from the far political left. Familiar with British left-wing politics, it was travelling in the Communist bloc that first undermined and replaced his leftism, a process virtually completed when he became a newspaper's resident Moscow correspondent in 1990, just before the collapse of the Communist Party. He became convinced of certain propositions. That modern western social democratic politics is a form of false religion in which people try to substitute a social conscience for an individual one. That utopianism is actively dangerous. That liberty and law are attainable human objectives which are also the good by-products of Christian faith. Faith is the best antidote to utopianism, dismissing the dangerous idea of earthly perfection, discouraging people from acting as if they were God, encouraging people to act in the belief that there is a God and an ordered, purposeful universe, governed by an unalterable law.

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Was World War II really the `Good War'? In the years since the declaration of peace in 1945 many myths have sprung up around the conflict in the victorious nations. In this book, Peter Hitchens deconstructs the many fables which have become associated with the narrative of the `Good War'. Whilst not criticising or doubting the need for war against Nazi Germany at some stage, Hitchens does query whether September 1939 was the right moment, or the independence of Poland the right issue. He points out that in the summer of 1939 Britain and France were wholly unprepared for a major European war and that this quickly became apparent in the conflict that ensued. He also rejects the retroactive claim that Britain went to war in 1939 to save the Jewish population of Europe. On the contrary, the beginning and intensification of war made it easier for Germany to begin the policy of mass murder in secret as well as closing most escape routes. In a provocative, but deeply-researched book, Hitchens questions the most common assumptions surrounding World War II, turning on its head the myth of Britain's role in a `Good War'.

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There are few subjects these days that cause parents more stress than the education of their children. In his new book, Peter Hitchens describes the misjudgements made by politicians over the years that have led to the increase of class distinction and privilege in our education system. This is of course the opposite of what was intended, especially by former Minister of Education Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher, her successor in that role, who closed down many more Grammar Schools than Williams. Given that the cost of private secondary education is now in the region of £50,000 a year and the cream of Comprehensive Schools are now oversubscribed (William Ellis, Camden School for Girls, The Oratory, Cardinal Vaughan), parents are spending thousands on private tutoring and fee-paying prep schools in order to get their children into these academically excellent schools. Meanwhile hypocritical Labour politicians like Diane Abbott send their children to expensive private day schools. So, what alternatives – if any – are there? Peter Hitchens argues that in trying to bring about an educational system which is egalitarian, the politicians have created a system which is the exact opposite. And what’s more, it is a system riddled with anomalies - Sixth Form Colleges select pupils on ability at the age of 15, which rules out any child who does not have major educational backing from home (heavy involvement by working parents or private tutors, for example) and academies also are selective, though they pretend not to be. This is an in-depth look at the British education system and what will happen if things don’t change radically.

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How do you tell that a country has died? In this devastating, pessimistic, though critically-timed revised edition of his classic book, Peter Hitchens describes and regrets the abolition of Britain. In the years since Peter Hitchens first wrote The Abolition of Britain, he argues, there has been an acceleration in the decay of society and culture. Fewer people read; universities have become less and less free; more churches are closing; language has become more homogenised; the city skyline is emblematic of the triumph of Mammon; the monarchy is merely hanging on and immigration is at an unprecedented and unsustainable level, a fact accepted even by those who first welcomed its growth. Hitchens, a former revolutionary Marxist, is amazed and amused by the way in which the nominal Conservative Party has now embraced culturally and socially revolutionary ideas, especially about the family, sexual politics and education, which he would have thought ambitious in his days as a 1960s Trotskyist. As he writes, ‘my only concern now is to ensure that others, in some unimaginable future, will be able to find at least one voice which will explain to them how one of the fairest, kindest civilisations ever to have existed on earth … should in so short a time have wasted its birthright and thrown away its gifts’.

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