Letters

Family problems Sir: One can’t help but admire Iain Duncan Smith’s determination to rethink conventional ideas on social policy (‘Gang War’, 20 August). However, it’s not clear what action he has in store for the ‘120,000 families who cause the greatest problems’. The Family Intervention Project that he inherited from New Labour is, if the Department for Education website is to be believed, still in place — despite rather meagre evidence for its efficacy. Originally it was touted as a measure to move problem families into secure housing where their behaviour could be closely monitored. Yet when we examined this programme last year, we found that nearly all the scheme’s participants remained in the same housing.

Violent by nature Sir: Amongst the sociological why-oh-why-ery trying to explain the motivation of the rioters, the simplest explanation has been overlooked: human nature is utterly violent and wicked. Conservatism — the heir of Christianity in this respect — realises this. Recent work on violence in hunter-gatherer societies has demolished sociological explanations of violence: it is not society that makes people violent but our nature, evolved over the last 100,000 years. Forty per cent of Rousseau’s ‘noble savages’ in primitive hunter-gatherer societies die at the hands of another. We are all descended from successful rapists.

Press complaint Sir: Charles Moore’s comments on the PCC last week (The Spectator’s Notes, 6 August) contained several significant inaccuracies. Lord Wakeham didn’t leave the chairmanship of the commission as a result of criticisms from the Telegraph that he wasn’t handling complaints impartially. He stood down, as a matter of honour, after he was tangentially implicated in the Enron debacle. Fleet Street does not pay the lion’s share of the chairman’s salary which, in fact, comes out of funding provided by the national, local and provincial newspapers and the magazines industry on a proportionate basis. The appointment of Wakeham’s successor Sir Christopher Meyer was not arranged by News International and Associated Newspapers.

Spectator readers respond to recent articles REASONS TO DISLIKE THE WEALTHY Sir: There is much good sense in what Tim Montgomerie writes (‘Afraid of being right’, 30 July), but if his views are to triumph, those who support them need to understand that the people of Great Britain do not hate the wealth-creators because they are rich, but because they are so often and so obviously greedy, selfish and unpleasant, and because they now experience so little pressure within their own circles to behave any better. R.S. Foster Sheffield THE CASE FOR HANDBALL Sir: Andrew Gilligan (‘A gold medal for idiocy’, 30 July) clearly has some strong views about the London Olympics, but his decision to pick handball as an example to mock was a poor one.

The right path Sir: I have always had the greatest respect for Matthew Parris’s incisive comments. However, in his latest column (23 July), he misreads Tory supporters. The Conservative Home survey was statistically accurate. The views expressed were those of thousands of voters and reflect their opinions on ‘U-turn Cameron’. The most frequent comment about him is ‘we do not know what he stands for and if we did, he will change it when he wants’. That is why he did not win the 2010 election, in which he should have wiped the floor with the Labour party. No doubt support could have been found for 10 more ‘pet hates’ from participants. However Nos 1 to 10 were quite sufficient to reflect the majority views of many voters.

Spectator readers respond to recent articles Selective indignation Sir: People are — quite correctly — very offended by the phone-hacking antics of the News of the World journalists and editors. But did any of these (now) horrendously affronted guardians of the rights of individual privacy give the slightest damn when similarly disgusting reporters were so gleefully reporting the (hacked) private conversations of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles? No sensible person condones the actions of the News of the World, or of its editors and journalists. But I, for one, do not find their actions nearly as sickening as the revoltingly selective indignation with which we are now being so continuously bombarded.

No defending the tabloids Sir: Toby Young (Status anxiety, 9 July) suggests that we are only shocked by tabloid phone-hacking scandals because we are ignorant of the ways of tabloid journalism. He seems then to equate phone-hacking hacks with ‘these Fleet Street foot soldiers’ who are busy protecting us from becoming French (shudder) — i.e. even more corrupt. What? Are all the foot soldiers also hackers?

Back at Black Sir: With one exception, Conrad Black’s article (‘I’ll be back’, 2 July) is a succession of inaccuracies and outright lies. Among the most blatant is his assertion that he received a payment of $6 million in compensation for libel from Richard Breeden and the Special Committee which investigated and reported the frauds which Black perpetuated and for which a Chicago jury found him guilty. Not only did Black not receive any apology or payment from Breeden, but Breeden and his committee issued a statement last week stating they adhere to their original conclusions. Indeed, all the American courts, including the Supreme court, upheld the jury’s verdict that Black is dishonest.

Child benefit? No thanks! Sir: I was particularly struck by Melanie McDonagh (‘What women want’, 25 June) trotting out the same old complaint about the ‘cloth-eared’ decision to take child benefit off families in the higher tax bracket. How and why have we got ourselves into a situation where even middle-class journalists think that they should be clients of the state? I was glad when the government saw sense and discontinued my child tax credit. Why should the government automatically give me money I don’t need, when my hard-earned taxes could be much better spent elsewhere?

Gove’s moves Sir: If Michael Gove (‘On the edge of his seat’, 18 June) really wants to do something about exams, then he would bring back O-levels in place of GCSEs. But that would entail denouncing the Prime Minister who made the change, formerly the education secretary who closed more grammar schools than were left at the end of her tenure. Can you name her? I think you can. David Lindsay County Durham Sir: Michael Gove has no answer for how to revive the fortunes of the Conservative party in Scotland: ‘I don’t think there is any single thing that can be done.’ But might I suggest that better Tory candidates — like, say, Mr Gove himself — running north of the border would help?

Missions impossible Sir: I hesitate to challenge Sherard Cowper-Coles’s concerns about our military chiefs (‘Who’s in command?’, 11 June), but it seems to me that they have a good reason for overplaying their hand with the politicians. The reality is that our armed forces are at best a third of the size they need to be to do the things that the politicians ask of them, and they have been criminally underfunded for well over 30 years.

Folly in Libya Sir: Congratulations to Andrew Gilligan and Hugo Rifkind (‘Oh, what a silly war’, 4 June) . You’ve shown exactly what the allied effort in Libya is — an expensive exercise in futility and a farce. Almost nobody outside a narrow band within the political-media class can see the point of having singled out the regime of Gaddafi, hitherto a man with whom we could business, as the Middle East despotism that we had to tackle. Even those who profess support for the war are uncertain about what we are trying to achieve. Yet here we are, stuck in a conflict that we can’t afford and probably don’t even want to win.

Clarity? New Labour? Sir: I read with growing disbelief your leader ‘Lost Labour’ (14 May), but I now realise that it must have been intended as joke. ‘The tragedy of the Labour years was that so many good ideas were mooted…’; ‘The New Labour years can now be regarded as… a moment of clarity…’ You can’t be serious. Blair did indeed talk fervently about welfare reform. He talked fervently about many things, such as fictitious WMDs capable of striking within 45 minutes or the elimination of poverty not only in this country but in Africa and indeed everywhere. One of his favourite fervent words was ‘reform’, which for him meant to wreck what is in place and working.

The full Scottish Sir: Iain Martin (‘How to save the Union’, 14 May) has an excellent appreciation of the issues, bar one: what Scotland seeks is a return to statehood such as other nations have. The lack is grievous. Scotland does not have representation in important international bodies. We lack a commissioner in the European Commission and both diplomatic and consular services worldwide. Fishing is not within our control. England, anticipating events, recently gerrymandered the sea boundaries, tilting them northeastward, to her advantage in oil and gas. There is more to independence than separation from England. Helen C. Bovey Edinburgh Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 14 May) claims that most English people are apathetic about Scots independence.

Parting could be sweet Sir: Your leader (‘Disunited Kingdom’, 7 May) omitted to mention that if Scotland becomes independent, tens of thousands of British government jobs will be moved to England, and as many again from the private sector will invigorate our northern cities, as the financial organisations now based in Edinburgh will have to move their operations to be based in the country in which most of their business is transacted. Obviously, the Shetland Islands will have to be given the option of independence from both England and Scotland, which they will undoubtedly accept, and the North Sea oil fields will then be divided between the three countries according to international law.

The Queen and I Sir: I did not expect Andrew Roberts (‘The meaning of a marriage’, 23/30 April), to agree with my New York Review of Books article on the royal family but, since he quoted from it, I would have thought he might have read it all the way through. True, the piece begins by setting out the reasons why one might have assumed these to be ‘anxious times for the House of Windsor’, from austerity to the Duke of York’s travails.

Rubio for President? Sir: Richard Littlejohn’s idea of a President Rubio (‘Who will fight Obama?’, 16 April) is little more than wishful thinking. The Florida senator is at most a lukewarm conservative, which will become increasingly obvious over his six-year term. (Obama is only the second man in 50 years to go directly from Senate to White House — it’s a difficult path because legislative service forces a politician to commit his views to the record.) Littlejohn is impressed that Rubio could draw a crowd of 5,000 in his home state, yet there are a half-dozen other Republicans with at least as much pull — including figures such as Palin, Bachmann and Trump, whom Littlejohn rightly discounts.

Short memories Sir: Matt Cavanagh’s razor-sharp analysis (‘Operation Amnesia’, 9 April) chimes with the anecdotal evidence borne by friends returning from Afghanistan. But it is not just the soldiers who have made mistakes. Their political masters bear primary responsibility for initiating, in the first place, the unfunded strategic overstretch which goes beyond Afghanistan. The result is that our Armed Forces are now unable to respond effectively to new, unexpected (and potentially more serious) crises such as the ones which have erupted recently in the Maghreb and the Middle East — as well as the ones which are surely yet to come. We seem to be suffering from strategic, as well as operational, amnesia.

Expensive manners Sir: Ivor Roberts says that Oxford University is ‘taking the very best, whatever their background’ — and is not to blame if state schools no longer produce the very best (‘Oxford under siege’, 2 April). And yet studies have found that state-school pupils perform better at Oxford than their privately educated peers, relative to GCSE results. When his university is admitting as many state-school duds as private ones, we’ll know that its admissions tutors are no longer swayed by expensive manners at interview. For now, that remains open to doubt. Benjamin Rockbird London SE15 Cuts tactics Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 2 April) quotes the late, great Auberon Waugh on cuts.