St James School, Twickenham

The second half is here, and includes interviews with both the headmaster of the school and some of the boys themselves. It is non-embeddable - if that's a real term.

Obviously this school will have declined greatly since this news report was made in 1996. (The modern school's website is here.) The Socialists came to power in this country over eleven years ago. They abolished corporal punishment in all schools, and with it went proper discipline, and I have no doubt that St James Independent School for Boys is now the same sort of chaotic hell-hole as the one where I was "educated". What is more, with a progressive Tory Party in opposition, patiently and quite complacently just waiting to take over once the Socialists are eventually deposed from office, there is now no possibility that discipline and moral and educational standards will be ever restored in this country in our life time.

Traditional morality, which depended on discipline, virtue, self-sacrifice, and above all rationality, has now been abolished in public life and replaced by a "new" morality (which has in fact been around since Jeremy Bentham). This new morality values only pleasure and can see no use for pain, or suffering, or indeed poverty in the overall economy of human wellbeing. It was for this very reason incidentally - and irrespective of what Gerald Warner and a thousand other class warriors on either side may say - that the Blair Government forced through its "ban" on foxhunting. And until that leftwing totem to the modern morality is torn down once again there will be no true discipline in schools and no real possibility of restoring traditional morality in this country, whether it be in schools, in the home, in the Church, or indeed in public life.

What is most interesting, of course, is that for the last ten years the people of this country have been basically insulated from the results of their own moral decay by unprecendented material wealth and prosperity. The time is coming now, however, when "old fashioned" values, such as respect, hierarchy, discipline and morality - which means doing the right thing, not what feels nice and is easy - will be more important than they've been for over a decade.

Then we'll see!