Richard Ingrams's Week: Defenders of the sanctity of human life grow weaker

It was Trotsky who referred scornfully to "the Papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life". And it would be nice to think that such sentiments, only too typical of ruthless and bloodthirsty revolutionaries, have no place in the civilised world we live in today.

But, unfortunately, this is not the case. Though they might not express it as brutally as Trotsky, the majority of those who subscribed to what they call liberal opinion would no longer accept the view that human life was necessarily sacred or should be preserved whatever the costs.

No one seemed to mind too much this week when the Government suppressed a House of Commons debate on a motion that sought to tighten up the abortion law.

And the sanctity of human life had nothing to do with it. As there are almost 200,000 abortions every year, the Government is aware that if many of those unwanted babies were allowed to live, it would involve the state with a great deal of extra expense.

At the other end of human life there are growing demands from the euthanasia lobbyists, and those such as Lady Warnock, who would like assisted suicide to be legalised.

The media are already sympathetic to that campaign, particularly when there are plenty of tear-jerking stories to be got out of it. But the Government and the medical authorities are unlikely to turn a deaf ear to the Warnocks of this world.

As with those unwanted babies, the care of elderly disabled people is an expensive business. Euthanasia – with, of course, all kinds of necessary safeguards – could well be acceptable in the changed world we live in – a world in which there are fewer and fewer Papists or Quakers to babble about it in protest.

Insolence of the Bullingdon crowd

After the famous one featuring David Cameron and Boris Johnson, another picture of Oxford's exclusive Bullingdon Club has come to light. This time it is the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, who has his head encircled with a red ring, along with his former friend, the banker Nathaniel Rothschild.

The picture shows about 15 young men in all and the funny thing about it is that not one of them is smiling. It is almost as if the photographer had told them, "Now come along, gentlemen – a nice haughty expression. Let's see a bit of arrogance, that's nice. That's lovely. Hold it."

If these young men had looked like any other gang of undergraduates who were posing for a group photo, they might have been larking around and making funny faces and maybe none of us would be all that interested. But it is because none of them are behaving like that that the picture has an immediate and striking impact. Like it or not, they, all of them, look self-assured and even insolent.

When the Cameron picture was first published in a book, the Tories took steps to suppress it – rather in the spirit of Stalinist Russia when photographs were doctored to remove "non-persons". It will be interesting to see if the same sort of thing happens with the Osborne photo. Because it is likely that the Tory spin doctors realise that it is more damaging to Osborne than any revelations about Russian oligarchs. There are too many people around who believe, rightly or wrongly, that once a stuck-up toff, always a stuck-up toff.

Let’s blame the Scots as darkness falls on British Summer Time

I used to be one of only a very few voices crying in the wilderness in favour of keeping British Summer Time throughout the year.

But now there are all sorts of people who think it would be a good idea not to put the clocks back which is what we will have to do tomorrow.

The police force, the road research laboratories, all kinds of environmental lobby groups are nowadays in favour of adopting European time, with consequently lighter evenings. There would, they argue, be less crime, fewer traffic accidents: we would save on our energy bills and thanks to that extra hour we would all be much fitter.

But I'm afraid it's not going to happen – at least not in my lifetime. And the people to blame are the Scots and all those of our politicians who rely on their votes.

The Scots argue, correctly, that their mornings would be much darker in the north and that in some places it wouldn't get light till about 10am. That argument always weighed heavily with the Tories whose support in Scotland has been in a slow decline for many years.

But now the Labour Party is in the same boat with more and more of their voters defecting to the SNP. The last thing they want is to do anything that might make the situation even worse.

The only hope we have is for an eventual triumph of the SNP. Scotland can then be independent; we can have our year-round BST, and the Scots and Mr Alex Salmond can have his own British Scottish Time if that is what they all want.