Letters

Christian values Sir: I have no inside track on the organisational perils of the Pope’s visit described by Damian Thompson (‘Spinning the Pope’, 5 June) though, as a career civil servant, I am more inclined to the cock-up than to the conspiracy theory of government and see no reason why Church affairs should be any different. The issue about whether the Pope should address himself while in Britain to global issues rather than to specifically Roman Catholic preoccupations is more germane. There are still millions of Catholic faithful in the UK. But there are even more millions of non-Catholics and non-Christians for whom the Pope’s relevance, other than as a VIP, is a case waiting to be made.

Don’t bring it home Sir: Charles Moore is right when he questions the benefit of holding the 2018 World Cup in England (The Spectator’s Notes, 29 May), but he doesn’t go quite far enough. Given the mindless, violent and xenophobic behaviour of many English football ‘fans’ since England won the 1966 World Cup, one can only hope that we don’t host the 2018 World Cup and that England are sent home at an early stage from South Africa in the imminent games. If England wins, we can expect another three generations of boorish and misplaced patriotism.

What matters most Sir: In last week’s Spectator there was an interesting section where writers and thinkers were invited to advise the new Prime Minister what his administration should urgently address (‘What the new government must do first’, 8 May). Defence was not included but surely with a war in Afghanistan, an uncertain world and a defence budget under extreme pressure, it should be. A foreign policy-led strategic defence review is the first priority, and a view taken as to what sort of country we want to be. We are clearly not a superpower but we have a seat on the Security Council and are a leading member of Nato and other international organisations and have an important position in Europe. Do we want to be an onlooker like some European countries?

Unreasonable rationality Sir: I fully agree with the blunt but accurate observations of Melanie Phillips in her piece ‘Welcome to the Age of Irrationality’ (1 May). It is a good measure of the Western mind’s fall into murky confusion, and witless denial, that words like ‘rational’ and ‘secular’ have become prone to a transformation of their authentic meaning. But two points made by Phillips trouble me. Is it really reasonable to saddle ‘the left’ with ‘distortions, fabrications and bullying’ in the same breath as she lauds ‘the right’ for their ‘attempt to uphold truth, reality and liberty’?

Making it work Sir: Your leading article (24 April) tells us that: ‘A hung parliament would be a disaster. Coalitions do not work in Westminster’s adversarial system.’ Can’t you see that the adversarial system, with its focus on doing down the opposition rather than on working collegially to decide what might be best for the nation, is exactly what we are sick of? If our voting preferences result in a coalition then we’ll expect our elected representatives to damn well make it work. If they let it become a disaster we may choose not to vote for any of them ever again.

Delingpole’s victims Sir: In his most recent column (You know it makes sense, 17 April), James Delingpole suggests that ‘even as the wall is pushed on top of’ me by anti-gay Islamists, I ‘will be squealing with [my] last breath that it’s all the fault of Western imperialism and white heterosexist Islamophobia.’ I found this slightly odd, since I am so critical of Islamic fundamentalists that I have received a substantial number of death threats from them.

Tea parties began here Sir: Daniel McCarthy is right that the tea party is ‘a symbol of colonial rebellion’ (‘The trouble with tea parties’, 10 April). But where does he suppose the rebels drew their inspiration from? The American patriots of 1773 didn’t see themselves as revolutionaries, but as conservatives. In their minds, all they were asking for was what they had always assumed to be their birthright as freeborn Englishmen. Part of that birthright was liberty from unjust, arbitrary or punitive taxation. The proposition that taxes ought not to be levied except by elected representatives would have been every bit as popular in contemporary Great Britain as in the thirteen colonies.

Read vs Parris Sir: I found it difficult to contain my derisive laughter at the ludicrous vapourings of Piers Paul Read in your Easter issue debate. The idea of the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings as the bulwark against the forces of evil set to overwhelm us is too risible to be borne.

More summer time Sir: Why do well-meaning international bodies like the Worldwide Fund for Nature, who instigated the big switch-off for one ‘Earth Hour’ of darkness on Saturday night, not come out instead publicly to support Daylight Saving in this country? Maintaining our clocks on British Summer Time from last October until 28 March would have saved at least one hour of electricity every day of the week — rather than one hyped-up day in the year achieved by the Earth Hour. And would not the application of Daylight Saving in the future eliminate the need for building one extra nuclear power station to meet the fatuous waste of energy created by turning our clocks back one hour every autumn?

Rural matters Sir: Alexander Waugh’s reference to planning officers asking impertinent questions about sexuality (‘The countryside under attack’, 20 March) reveals but a glimpse of the crackpot behaviour considered normal by these people. Last autumn, I went to an event sponsored by CABE, the government architecture quango, in which someone was brought in to lecture the audience, mainly council planners or diversity officers, on the importance of ‘inclusive planning’. This apparently requires councils to analyse the supposed different needs of people according to their race, religion or sexual identity, and to ensure that plans for public spaces are designed accordingly.

The cunning Mandelbrown Sir: David Cameron and his gallant band do not seem to realise that they no longer face the clumsy and clunky Gordon Brown, but a new political hybrid — Peter Mandelbrown. The outward form may still be as lumpy and leaden as ever, but that merely serves as concealment for the hybrid’s cunning in thought and speech, its nimbleness in deceptive manoeuvre, and the lethally poisonous fangs, which it sinks into its victims’ reputations. Unless David Cameron now hunts down Mandelbrown without mercy, then the monster will surely get him — and the rest of us thereafter. Correlli Barnett CBE Norwich Commonsense solutions Sir: The Spectator Manifesto is a welcome blast of concentrated common sense.

Not cricket Sir: Many a cricket follower (‘Cricket’s foreign legion’, 6 March) would join Peter Oborne in denouncing the growth of South African mercenaries entering our domestic game. As a county cricket spectator, I have always enjoyed scouting for new talent for our national team. It gave me great pleasure to watch an emerging Michael Vaughan score a double century at Scarborough in the early days of his career, and see Graeme Swann spin-bowling for Northamptonshire: both of them with obvious England potential. Somehow it is not quite the same these days, as we survey the array of journeyman players.

Scientists must engage more Sir: Arguments over nuclear energy, stolen emails from the University of East Anglia and allegations about flawed climate data have indeed split the green movement (‘The global warming guerrillas’, 6 February). But sceptics mustn’t get too excited. The revelations alter nothing. The centuries-old climate science behind the greenhouse effect of gases, such as carbon dioxide, is indisput-able. The world is still warming and humanity is still mostly to blame. ‘Climategate’ should not be seen as a lapse in climate science but a failure to implement the rigorous procedures that ensure only substantiated evidence is published.

When war is a crime Sir: Andrew Gilligan’s trenchant indictment of Blair (‘How can we punish Blair?’, 30 January) includes the mitigating claim that: ‘For all the cries that he is a “war criminal”, the Nuremberg Principles make clear that war crimes relate largely to atrocities committed in the course of combat or aggression. The act of war is not itself a war crime.’ This is incorrect. Count One of the Indictment at Nuremberg, read out on 20 November 1945, includes these words: ‘The common plan or conspiracy embraced the commission of Crimes against Peace in that the defendants planned, prepared, initiated and waged wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.

For richer, for poorer Sir: Ferdinand Mount’s article (‘David Cameron should honour his marriage vow’, 23 January) is not entirely accurate. After noting that Geoffrey Howe was unable to persuade Margaret Thatcher to agree to the introduction of transferable tax allowances between married couples, he writes: ‘Nigel Lawson after him argued the same, with no better luck.’ In fact, I announced the introduction of transferable allowances in my 1988 Budget, and it was duly implemented in 1990. The full story may be found on pages 881 to 887 of my memoirs, The View from No. 11. Nigel Lawson London SW1 Sir: Well done to Ferdinand Mount and The Spectator for standing up for marriage.

Hastings’s battle Sir: Max Hastings, one of the shrewdest and well-informed writers about defence, is right (‘The military’s last stand’, 16 January). There is a good case for increasing the defence budget, but no British government is likely to do so unless there is a dramatic deterioration in the international situation. Budgets are likely to be cut, but our defence forces can and should continue to be important for our country’s security, reputation and influence. The forces are crying out for a Strategic Defence Review and the longer one is delayed the more will be the uncertainty and wasted defence money.