British social policy defined

An idiocy wrapped in a lunacy wrapped in an absurdity, to produce misery and squalor

Dalrymple writes:

A tax on knowledge is a terrible thing, but a tax on ignorance, prejudice, evasion and half-truth is worse. That is what every British household with a television must pay, for the privilege of having the earnest but frivolous lucubrations of the BBC purveyed to it, whether it wants them or not.

This poll tax — or licence fee, as it is known — is the equivalent of nearly $200 per household a year, and is thus worth evading. Unfortunately, it costs nearly three times as much to catch evaders as the licence fees would have raised if paid. One proposal is to halve the licence fee for single mothers. Dalrymple comments:

In other words, we should subsidise a subsidy, in the name of a universal right to misinformation and trashy entertainment (and at the same time confer yet another incentive for single parenthood).

In the name of God, desist!

Anish Kapoor, writes Dalrymple, is

one of those many modern artists who would add considerably to the beauty of the world by desisting from their activities.

On the question of publicly-funded art, Dalrymple’s view is that

if we must have it, as seems to be inevitable, let us at least have as little and cheap as possible.

Exposed: the Saatchi trash-art warehouse blaze arsonist

Indicative of deep egotism and irredeemable trashiness of mind

Transgressive art and architecture critic and occasional performance artist Theodore Dalrymple unmasked as Saatchi trash-art warehouse blaze arsonist

Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (Tracey Emin R.A., 1995) has been lost in a warehouse fire along with a large number of other contemporary works owned by Charles Saatchi, the advertising tycoon. The fire, writes Dalrymple,

does not seem to have resulted in any national mourning in England. Indeed, there was speculation that a transgressive art critic, or even performance artist, might have sparked the fire.

Even those

who would normally recoil at the thought of burning a used pulp fiction paperback were not deeply upset.