This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

It is grimly funny to listen to leaders and supporters of a supposedly ‘Conservative’ party using the word ‘unelected’ as a form of abuse. I know the Chancellor is peeved that he failed in his dismally planned and badly executed attempt to make a lot of poorly paid people worse off. But I think that he and his media toadies speak from the heart when they rage against the House of Lords.

I suspect that David Cameron and George Osborne are thoughtless and fashionable republicans, who can think of no good reason to keep the Queen – though at the moment they dare not admit this. It’s not that they actively want to set up a guillotine in Trafalgar Square. It’s just that they wouldn’t waste any tears if the Crown were abolished. Knowing little and caring little about the past, they see no merit in it.

Real conservatives are in favour of all kinds of unelected power and authority.

As well as the Monarchy, there’s the Church, the judges, not to mention the chiefs of the Armed Forces, parents, privately owned media companies, the BBC, school heads – and the thousands of strivers who have won the freedom to hire and fire through hard work and business success.

Democracy plays little part in these things, and a good thing too. To say that you are an elected politician in modern Britain isn’t much of a boast.

It means mainly that you have been picked by a narrow selection committee of politically active careerists and fixers to stand in a safe seat. Backstairs-crawlers, flatterers and obedient conformists naturally do well in this process.

These days it also means that you have been approved by some secretive group of whisperers clustered round the party leadership, who can also remove you if you show any signs of independence.

And we see the results in the Commons every Wednesday, when the backbenchers of both main parties show all the wit and independence of football hooligans, braying mindless applause for their own leaders, and equally mindless abuse for the other side. And then they humiliate themselves by asking tame, planted questions handed to them by the whips.

These whips have power over them because they, not the voters, are their real employers. They can give them well-paid jobs if they are obedient and get them deselected if they cause too much trouble.

That is why the House of Commons was so useless over the tax-credit row, and why the Lords, for all their faults, spoke for the people. Any proper conservative would have known that all along.

No blood, no gore... but truly terrifying

So often I want to watch a film or a TV series, and hesitate to do so because of the violence. I expect I will eventually go to see the new Bond movie, though I shall hide behind something during the eyeball-squeezing bit. And I’m not sure I can face the new Jekyll And Hyde.

Above: Deborah Kerr in the 1961 film 'The Innocents'

I suspect there are millions like me, who’d watch more willingly if we were spared grisly scenes. I enjoy being frightened by films, but not by explicit gore.

The most terrifying thing I ever saw in a cinema, thanks to the carefully built-up drama, was in the ancient black-and-white film The Innocents, based on Henry James’s The Turn Of The Screw. My skin actually crawled with horror. But it was just a woman in black, her pale face filled with despair and grief, glimpsed across a lake in broad daylight.

Fighting to get into my own country

As our population climbs towards 70 million thanks to unrestricted immigration, it gets steadily harder and nastier to get back into my own country. I sometimes think the ‘Border Force’ work on the principle that if normal British people want strict frontier controls, then they can jolly well have them, hot and strong, and serve them right.

While alleged Syrians (whose passports have somehow vanished) leap unhindered from the backs of lorries all over the Home Counties, and vanish promptly into the low-wage workforce, actual documented British citizens must queue for ages to pass through poorly manned passport control.

There, we have no more right to enter the country than a Lithuanian retired secret policeman. And we are treated with unjustified suspicion. On Thursday a ‘Border Force’ person wearing pseudo-military shoulder insignia glowered at my wholly valid passport before asking me where I had come from, which is my business, not theirs.

Above, migrants moving north in Denmark

I have a Chinese friend who bravely resists his own country’s arrogant authorities by challenging such officiousness. And in tribute to him, I replied politely that I was not obliged to answer such questions.

My decision to behave like a free Englishman rather than a potential suspect caused a startling amount of shock, tooth-sucking and frowning, and led to the appearance of a supervisor who told me I should learn the law (as it happens, I have done, and the question was not justified). I said he could detain me if he liked, but he didn’t.

I wonder how many illegal migrants fanned out across the country while I and others were subjected to the stone-faced, suspicious inefficiency of the Border Force? Should I take my holidays by lorry in future, if I want to be treated with respect and courtesy by officials whose salaries are paid by my taxes and yours?

At last, the clocks of Britain are telling the truth again. Noon is at noon, dusk falls at the proper time and I can see my garden in daylight before I leave for work. Enjoy it while it lasts. The Eurofanatics still want us on Berlin Time all year round.

The Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Suzette Davenport, says she wouldn’t ride a bicycle in London because the roads are too dangerous

Police put us on the road to ruin

The Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Suzette Davenport, says she wouldn’t ride a bicycle in London because the roads are too dangerous.

Ms Davenport is the National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman on roads. I ride a bike in London (and in many other places, too) so I feel justified in assuring her the danger to cyclists is real, and largely the fault of the police.

My readers will know that the police long ago abandoned foot patrols (despite repeatedly claiming that this non-existent ‘beat’ is threatened by cuts). But my observations as a cyclist all over the country suggest to me that they have also stopped patrolling the roads by car. Since cameras became common, police patrols have become a rarity. The result is plain to see – much more risky driving, many more lights jumped, zebra crossings ignored, blatant speeding on suburban roads, far more generally rude and inconsiderate behaviour, and a return of the drink-driving that had been greatly reduced by the breathalyser.

It’s all made even worse by the growing number of drivers who have taken illegal drugs, whose possession Ms Davenport and her colleagues do so little to discourage.

If she and her fellow officers did their job, it would be safe for her – and millions of others – to ride a bike. And this healthy, clean and quiet form of transport would become normal, as it is in Holland, rather than the choice of eccentrics like me, or of self-righteous, lawless fanatics in Lycra.



