It took place in the Curium, the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheatre. Under the stars of a Mediterranean sky, recorded music from the Albert Hall filled the night air.

The audience were troops from the local British base, with a few tourists. Everyone stood for the final chorus of Rule Britannia and shook hands with their neighbours. I have rarely witnessed a more moving occasion.

Doubtless, the Culture Minister, Margaret Hodge, would have found the whole thing distasteful. Last week, she attacked the Proms as being "still a long way from demonstrating that people from all backgrounds feel at ease in being part". The Government "had a right to expect that arts organisations would make audiences representative".

What is it about the Left that makes them hate their own country and its culture? George Orwell had people like Hodge weighed up when he wrote: "In Left-wing circles it is always felt there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet pudding."

These types, said Orwell, "would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than of stealing from a poor box".

For a start, Hodge is totally wrong about the Proms. The last night, with its Rule Britannia and fancy hats, is not typical. There are more than 60 concerts with orchestras from all the parts of the world, playing music by composers from Austria, Germany, Norway, France, America, Poland and Italy. British composers form only a small percentage of the music.

Moreover, unlike the football matches, where you have to pay a fortune for a ticket, you can go to the Proms for as little as £5. It is as democratic as any cultural event can be, and expanding it to include Proms in the Park makes it even more so. To pack the Royal Albert Hall week after week is a cultural triumph.

It is not the first time this multi-millionairess's arrogance has brought her into the spotlight. Back in the 1990s, when she was leader of the extremist Islington Council, which did untold harm in London, a social worker told her manager that there was widespread sexual abuse of children in the council's care homes.

Hodge dismissed the evidence. When the London Evening Standard provided extensive evidence of the abuse, she described it as "a sensationalist piece of gutter journalism". Eventually, an independent inquiry found that the council had indeed failed to investigate the allegations. One fact that emerged was that no attempt was made to check the credentials of any of the care home staff when they were appointed if they were gay, on the grounds that such an investigation would be "judgmental".

Hodge still hadn't learnt any lesson. When Tony Blair, incredibly, appointed her as the first Minister for Children, a former Islington inmate protested. For years, from the age of 10, he had been at the mercy of the paedophile boss of his children's home, a man described by the police as "a brutal sexual abuser".

Hodge wrote privately to the BBC, describing the man as "extremely disturbed", implying that his evidence should be ignored. She was compelled to apologise in the High Court and pay damages to the wronged man.

Gordon Brown inherited this woman but, if he has any sense, he will get rid of her from his Government. With such lack of judgment, she is clearly unfit to be a Minister of the Crown, least of all Culture Minister.



LABOUR is forever finding new ways of dumbing down education. The latest move is the attempt to send 50 per cent of youngsters to university, even if they are totally unsuitable, is to pay bonuses worth up to £1,000 to universities for every student they accept with lower qualifications.

They will receive the cash premiums for taking students with D and E grades at A-level, and are being told to spend the money on remedial classes to help them to cope with degree-level studies.

Unsurprisingly, the drop-rate continues to rise, particularly in the new universities. A Commons committee says that £800m spent over the past five years to stop students dropping out has had virtually no impact.

Meanwhile, good universities are being penalised for having high retention rates. So Oxford and Cambridge have had the amount of money they receive to retain students, and recruit more working-class students, cut by nearly a half. At Oxford, fewer than one in 200 students drop out.

The chief executive of one of Britain's top companies, asked how many graduates a year they took on, replied: "Not many. Most of the graduates we hire are in very specific areas such as computers. As for the rest, we'd rather employ school leavers and train them up. Too many degrees aren't worth anything."

What a tribute to Labour's system of higher education.