Letters

What the result says Sir: John O’Sullivan (‘Obama’s hollow victory,’ 10 November) says that after President Obama’s re-election, ‘America looks a less naturally conservative country, more a centre-left one.’ But we ought to consider what John O’Sullivan thinks of as left and right, conservative and unconservative; what Americans think; and what most of us British readers think. For most of this year, Obama has been, as Michael Lind observed in an earlier edition of the Spectator (‘All Right Now’, 8 September), the sensible conservative choice. Where Mitt Romney aligned himself with the forces of ideological radicalism and Tea Party craziness, Obama stood for moderation and calm.

Votes of no confidence Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 27 October) rightly drew attention to the importance of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections and the arrogance of Lord Blair in suggesting they should be boycotted. However, he did not comment upon the fact that none of the literature admits which voting system is being used. After some research I find that it is in fact the Supplementary Vote system. This is a shortened version of the Alternative Vote (AV) system recently rejected by the electorate by referendum. Jan Pointer (Mrs) Hutton, Essex Sir: Matthew Parris (3 November) suggests that people of his age are not necessarily more switched on to the issues facing voters than are teenagers.

Objections to gay marriage Sir: Hugo Rifkind (27 October) thinks that religious objections to gay marriage can be ignored because Christians have no right to impose their beliefs on others. He sees nothing illiberal, though, in a small number of progressives seeking to force their new definition of marriage on the rest of us. Our government is threatening to misappropriate a word which owes its value to centuries of mainly Christian tradition in this country. Those many of us who stand in that tradition, both in and out of the Church, protest that the government has no right to do so. James McEvoy Chertsey, Surrey Sir: On gay marriage Hugo Rifkind (27 October) overlooks the Dot Wordsworth argument.

The toxic centre-ground Sir: I found it hard to be convinced by Matthew Parris’s claim (‘The centre holds’, 20 October) that David Cameron has ‘brilliantly understood’ that old ‘nasty party’ problem. It is held by the soft wet left of the Conservative party that Mrs Thatcher’s party was that ‘toxic’ nasty party. However, the figures suggest the opposite. She won her first election as leader in 1979 with 13.7 million votes, her second in 1983 with 13.0 million and her third with in 1987 with 13.8 million. In the afterglow of Thatcherism without the poll tax, John Major scored a record 14.2 million. That master politician Tony Blair managed 13.5 million in 1997, but by his third victory that had fallen to 9.

Testing faith Sir: I can sympathise with Melissa Kite’s concern over her friend’s apparently unconsidered marital conversion (‘Till faith do us part’, 13 October), but I wonder whether her panic at the idea of thousands of secular or nominal Christians converting for love is justified. Yes, it is easy to become a Muslim, while an adult wishing to convert to Christianity or Judaism must demonstrate knowledge and commitment before full acceptance into the new faith community. Sometimes those who convert too hastily or when under pressure come to regret it later.

The views of Sentamu Sir: I wonder if Archbishop Sentamu is really the best candidate for Canterbury as you suggest (Leading article, 6 October). Cutting up his dog collar on live television in protest against President Mugabe was a splendid gesture; but how exactly has it helped anyone in Zimbabwe? He is wrong in any case about gay marriage. It is absolutely within the remit of the state to redefine what in the first instance is a civil contract. Religious groups may make rules on the subject for their own members, but they surely have no right to bind those who don’t share their belief. Tim Hudson West Sussex Debating genius Sir: I was amused by the article about the Beatles in last week’s issue (‘Was Lennon really a genius?’, 6 October).

On Israel and Iran Sir: Your leading article (‘Israel Alone’, 29 September) implies that there is consensus among Israelis that Iran must be attacked. This is far from the case. There is vigorous internal debate, with opposition MPs, a judge, and senior military and intelligence officials publicly denouncing Netanyahu’s calls for a strike. Padraic Rohan Istanbul Sir: Your leading article correctly states that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a destabilising and undesirable entity. The elephant in the room that your item ignores is that there is a nation in the region, Israel, which decades ago clandestinely developed and tested such a weapon and has subsequently manufactured a substantial nuclear device stockpile.

Bureaucratic excesses Sir: Your otherwise excellent leader on the billions wasted by Department for International Development (22 September) fails to mention the duplication and excesses in the department and its parent Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Around the world there are only three classes of country: those whose money we want, those who need our money and those to whom we are indifferent, at least financially. In the first group we need embassies or high commissions but no DfID, in the second we need DfID but no FCO, and in the third we need neither. It is absurd to send aid to India, for example, a country richer than ours. It offends the Indians and implies we know how India should be run better than they do.

Criminals on the net Sir: Nick Cohen (‘Nowhere to hide’, 15 September) raises interesting points about the double-edged nature of the internet. The web has brought us massive communications benefits. However it also affords criminals the same. It is this that concerns me, rather than Mr Cohen’s claim that it will allow, through our Communications Data Bill, the government to monitor people’s every move. This is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bill. Its purpose is to update powers law enforcement bodies already have, making them relevant to the 21st century. It cannot make sense to enable police to investigate crimes conducted using a mobile phone but not give them powers to investigate crimes conducted over the internet.

For richer, for poorer? Sir: Liza Mundy (‘The richer sex’, 8 September) concludes that ‘history has shown that human beings are above all adaptable’, and should therefore adapt to women earning more than men. Her article appears to be mostly about women who are already married and I think this is probably true of married couples — they will adapt. As for the ‘partner’ brigade, I think the inequality will prove to be just another excuse for an easy break-up. Michael Holden Lewes Sir: As a 17-year-old girl, I’d like to congratulate Liza Mundy on her refreshing, well-balanced piece. I was heartened by the idea that more men will embrace a domestic role, wielding blowtorches for the crème brûlée and so on.

Save our salmon Sir: On a Winston Churchill scholarship to discover what other North Atlantic host countries were doing for beleaguered salmon numbers in the 1990s, I found that the Canadian government considered hydroelectric schemes far less green than wind farms (‘Something’s fishy’, 1 September). The Canadian experience was that hydro units minced fish, interfered with the movement of migratory species, and often produced electricity in amounts well below original specification targets. On return to the UK, I looked closely at ‘my’ Scottish river, Carron Kyle of Sutherland. Water is abstracted from headwaters to feed turbines in a neighbouring catchment.

A place for sport Sir: Many of us in the education world are baffled by the political furore over school sports fields. Harris Federation runs 13 academies, largely in tight urban spaces. All manage to deliver outstanding sports lessons. Why? Because of the skill of our sports teachers and the vision of our sponsor, Lord Harris of Peckham, who once dreamt of becoming a professional footballer. Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich has sport as a subject specialism but almost no outside space of its own. Bizarrely, in 2008 Southwark Council would only provide planning permission to build the school on condition that we would not use the park opposite for sport. Our local MP, Harriet Harman, has not helped our efforts to get this reversed.

State of the Union Sir: One did not expect Iain Martin (‘Unionist Gold’, 11 August), a former editor of the Scotsman, to turn up in the Spectator, still arguing against Scottish nationalism and promoting the union. So that is what the Olympics are about — waving the Union flag. Not for itself. We do not rejoice in other countries’ golds, only in those of Team GB. Ah well, I said farewell to the Scotsman and will do the same to the Spectator if we cannot have a slightly higher standard of debate. How about: why is it beneficial for all countries except Scotland, one of the oldest nations, to be nation states? Helen C.

Beware the drones Sir: Well said, Daniel Suarez (‘Drone warfare is coming,’4 August). These flying killing machines we call drones are a menace to humanity. We had better wake up to the threat they pose before it’s too late. Anybody with a cursory knowledge of pop culture can tell you what happens when automatons develop the intelligence to make ‘kill decisions’. The consequences are not pretty. (If you need reminding, watch the Matrix, or Terminator.) But it seems our cleverest engineers — and the people in power who pay them — are either unfazed by such concerns or nerdily eager to turn fantasy into reality. Perhaps, in fact, the trouble is that people are too quick to think of fighting robots as existing within the realm of science fiction.

Midwife crisis Sir: All Leah McLaren has to do is wait and see if she still wants a hospital birth after antenatal care from her home-birth midwife (‘Bullied by the NHS’, 28 July). Our helpline is deluged with calls from women who, having experienced a first birth in hospital, have booked a home birth for the second. Towards the end of pregnancy, they are told that the community midwives are fully booked, or they are given a spurious or exaggerated medical reason for going in. I hope she is with a team of midwives who are able to support her eventual choice.

Divisive he stands Sir: Finally, a western European publication questions whether Barack Obama can be re-elected (‘No he can’t’, 21 July). Before Jacob Heilbrunn’s article I have seen nothing save lame re-writings of pieces from the New York and Washington media, which is still in thrall to Obama.  Heilbrunn’s analysis is compelling: the President’s campaign is one of divisiveness, pitting supposedly forlorn and disaffected separate constituencies against ‘capitalism’. Sadly, this has been a traditional tactic of left-wing candidates in the US for a long time (e.g., John Edwards’s ‘Two Americas’) but now it has been turned into a high form by the President’s re-election team.

Beyond a boundary Sir: This is the first time that I have been really annoyed by an article in your magazine. Your leader ‘The Tories are back’ (14 July) concludes by stating that the redrawing of constituency boundaries is a piece of blatant gerrymandering. But the present boundaries are grossly unfair to the Conservatives. When Tony Blair and Labour won the 2005 election the party gained 35.3 per cent of the vote and won 356 seats. When David Cameron and the Tories gained 36.1 per cent of the vote in 2010 they won only 307 seats — hence the coalition. The present constituencies do not provide a fair and level playing field. The article’s suggestion of gerrymandering is offensive and, more importantly, ill-informed.

What went wrong Sir: I hope our Prime Minister read your editorial (7 July) on why as a country we have been engulfed in such a profound financial upheaval. Many months into this crisis, we’ve still heard no coherent account from our political leaders as to what went wrong, just a bit of populist banker-bashing and some strange metaphors about the need for big bazookas. No leader refers to those countries, Australia and Canada to the fore, who got their response to the crisis right. Jonathan Campbell-James Dubai Legal fiction Sir: Rod Liddle (‘The rule of lawyers’, 30 June) is entirely right in his view that judges are no better suited to adjudicate on contentious political controversies than the rest of us.

China and Tibet Sir: Clarissa Tan poses the question: ‘What happens to people who do not have the joy of being Chinese?’ (‘China’s civilising mission’, 30 June). China’s handling of Tibet provides the answer. After 60 years of occupation, torture, intimidation and repression continue unabated. Tibetans are now doing the only thing they can to draw attention to their plight — setting themselves on fire.  If conditions are so desperate that, against all the precepts of Buddhist teachings on nonviolence and the sanctity of human life, citizens are driven to taking their own lives through self immolation, it hardly supports China’s claim to represent a ‘civilising mission’.

Hunting for real Tories Sir: It is interesting to note that more than 10 per cent (four) of the 39 Tory MPs who comprise the Free Enterprise Group, which your correspondent James Forsyth assures us is full of young radicals determined to lead a fightback from the Tory right (‘Next right’, 23 June), are committed to keeping the ban on fox-hunting. How can you be a right-wing Tory and be anti-hunting? If this is the best that the Tory right has to offer, then Ukip must be looking good. Peter Holt Wellington, Telford Debt is the problem Sir: Your leading article is misconceived (‘Summit of arrogance’, 23 June).