Letters

Listen and learn Sir: We’re going to have to get used to cuts, says Kate Chisholm (Arts, 28 March), while criticising the axing of the last children’s programme on the BBC’s mainstream networks as a cut too far. Last year a meagre £1.6 million of the £460 million the BBC spent on its radio services went on programming for children. For years BBC executives have justified this neglect by saying that children don’t want radio but only TV and pop music. But do we remove fresh fruit juice and green vegetables because children prefer burgers and pop?

Bloody rude Sir: Michael Portillo (‘The view from Basra’, 28 March) accuses the British army of arrogance and, effectively, of incompetence. He says we’ve been humiliated. This may accord with his new television persona, but it is still disingenuous, apart from being bloody rude. It is his own political class that has been shown up — shamed, shown treacherous and craven — by reducing the British army again and again, until it could fit into Wembley stadium, but still expecting it to undertake counter-insurgency work. The army has always maintained, in its advice to the politicians, that counter-insurgency in Basra would require a full infantry division.

No progressive Sir: David Cameron’s article last week (‘It is not enough for Labour to lose this election’) mentioned the post-bureaucratic age ten times. Mr Cameron loves this phrase because it was coined by a progressive — Al Gore’s former speechwriter Andrei Cherney. And as the April date for Mr Cameron’s proposed £5 billion cuts to welfare, skills and charities draws near, he’s clearly hoping that endless use of nice slogans will keep his progressive credentials in check. The slogans however mask the reality. The Conservatives continue to advocate for unregulated markets in public services when no one is even arguing for them any more in the private sector.

Art for money’s sake Sir: It is hardly surprising that Olivia Cole (‘How to put children off art’, 14 March) found so many schoolchildren in the National Gallery and that they seemed to be learning little about art from their visits. The Gallery, like other public bodies, has a funding agreement with its sponsor department, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The agreement for the current financial year is not on the Gallery’s website but for 2007/8 it was set a target for the number of children aged 15 and under visiting the Gallery in ‘organised educational sessions’, of 105,000, which it exceeded. There is no target for the benefit that the children gain from these visits.

No axis of evil Sir: Melanie Phillips’s article (‘Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists’, 7 March) contains untruthful statements about me. I have never said that I wish Israel, in her words, ‘to be destroyed’ or to ‘disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa’. I have never believed this and categorically reject any position that threatens the integrity of Israel as a sovereign nation. I have, however, spoken out against Holocaust denial as well as religious extremism. Far from seeking to ‘appease radical Islam’, I have criticised Islamist attacks against Christians in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan.

Don’t go Dutch Sir: The Dutch postal service was privatised, you say, ‘with no perceived damage to the services they offer’ (Leading article, 28 February). You would not say that if you lived here. Firstly, deliveries: there is one a day, which arrives at absolutely random times but is usually around 3 p.m. — even here in the centre of the capital. Nobody seems to ever receive any post at all on Mondays. Most weeks I receive items clearly addressed to somebody else. Secondly, prices: we pay 39p, and that’s only up to 20g (Royal Mail: 36p up to 100g). Put more than two pages into your envelope and it will cost you double. There is no second-class option.

Bonus issue Sir: Ross Clark (‘Big bonuses in the public sector’, 21 February) summed up the challenge we face. The Institute of Fiscal Studies figure Clark quotes of a 12 per cent premium on public compared to private sector pay should be drilled into all taxpayers’ heads the way Mrs Thatcher used to hit Neil Kinnock with figures. At a recent Conservative event, a member of the public suggested a riposte to Gordon Brown’s lame attempt to blame the current economic crisis all on the bankers: a blanket 30 per cent pay-cut for all public sector staff being paid over £150,000 and a 20 per cent cut for those on over £100,000. This would turn the ‘Cedric Brown fat cat’ pre-1997 Blair campaign back on Brown and his BBC cronies.

Hidden behind Smith Sir: Matthew Parris (Another Voice, 14 February) correctly emphasised the cyclical pattern of economic markets in an optimistic tone that heralded a future recovery. As is almost always the case, writers from Adam Smith onwards are given the credit for the exposition of market theory. However, it was Josiah Tucker (1713-1799), an Oxford-educated cleric, who first articulated such principles in his A brief essay on the advantages and disadvantages, which respectively attend France and Great Britain, published in 1749. Although Tucker firmly advocated free trade, he recommended prudent intervention by government in terms of legislation designed to ensure effective commerce for the benefit of society. It is known that Adam Smith owned a copy of A Brief Essay.

Solidarity with the strikers Sir: As a member of the English working class I write to express my approval of and agreement with Rod Liddle’s article (‘Would the working class vote Labour now?, 7 February). I would compare the action of the strikers with those of the shipyard workers of Gdansk in 1980 whose actions exposed to the world the falseness of the Polish Communist Party’s claim to protect the class it purported to represent. These strikers have shown up New Labour’s pretence that it cares about British workers. Peter Mandelson’s performance was eerily reminiscent of the party hacks who were wheeled out to attack Solidarity.

A failure of fairness Sir: Rod Liddle’s defence of the BBC (Liddle Britain, 31 January) does not stack up. Of course people with close connections to Palestinians, those fully aware of their sufferings and traumas, were in the forefront of calling for the BBC to air the charity’s appeal. How could it be otherwise? Yet for good reason, the BBC’s decision united Fleet Street left and right, triggered criticism of the Corporation from Cabinet ministers as well as the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and inspired probably the largest number of MPs in living memory to sign a motion regarding Palestine. This appeal was not about being pro one side or the other.

Israel fuels anti-Semitism Sir: I am a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and have participated in every one of the national demonstrations against Israel’s brutal onslaught against Gaza. I have never heard the slogans ‘Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas’ and ‘Death to the Jews’ that Douglas Davis (‘The terrible warning of a Holocaust survivor’, 24 January) claims are being chanted on these marches. I know that the stewards have strict orders to clamp down on any expression of anti-Semitism. Like the majority of the demonstrators, I am not a supporter of Hamas.

Islam and the Nazis Sir: Charles Moore touches on an important point when he ascribes a Nazi–Hamas continuum of interests (The Spectator’s Notes, 17 January). While helping Europe Minister Denis MacShane write his recently published book, Globalising Hatred — The New Anti-Semitism, I was numbed by the depths of the relationship between radical Islam and the Nazis, an association that, inexplicably, has been hugely under-reported. Arguably the most important source material I came across was a slim volume entitled Icon of Evil which, complete with official documents and photos, charts the mutual regard, indeed affection, between the two creeds, never so clearly underscored as in the correspondence between Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Selective facts Sir: Matt Ridley’s article on Darwin’s vision (‘Natural selection explains everything’, 10 January) omits one simple but very important fact, namely that Darwin did not originate natural selection. How do we know? Simple — both he and Alfred Russel Wallace gave the credit to Patrick Matthew and Charles Wells. Darwin even described Matthew’s version of natural selection as ‘precisely’ the same as his own, which appeared some 20 years later. These facts will doubtless be conveniently lost in this year’s Darwinfest of hype.

A coherent story Sir: Douglas Murray says (‘Studying Islam made me an atheist’, 3 January) that what killed the Bible was not Darwin but ‘German biblical criticism... the scholarship on lost texts, discoveries of added-to texts and edited texts’. It’s a pity he didn’t pursue his investigation further and discover that those dated theories proposed by the ‘higher critics’ now have no scholarly standing. Over the second half of the 20th century they were steadily demolished. Historical and textual research has changed the picture completely.

Labour’s carrot and stick Sir: The Spectator is right (Leading article, 13 December) to call not just for ‘benefit claimants actually to do something for their handouts’, but for a significant increase in the income tax threshold. There is little sense — or fairness — in trying to push people off benefits and into work if they are worse off in work than on benefits. In any case, there is something absurd in telling a man (or a single mother) that they are simultaneously poor enough to need benefits and rich enough to pay income tax. The government’s proposed measures to alleviate the economic mess they have helped to create will have a significant future cost in the burden of debt they will incur.

Why did Gatland resign? Sir: The uproar over the strange case of Maria Gatland McGuire seems almost incomprehensible from a Belfast perspective. At the beginning of December she was compelled to resign as the cabinet member for education on Croydon council when it was revealed that she was also Maria McGuire, who famously was involved with the IRA leadership in 1971–72. Maria McGuire is the author of an interesting book, To Take Arms — A Year in the Provisional IRA, published in 1973. The book makes clear that she has made a radical break with the IRA’s violent campaign. It seems that the final straw came on 21 July 1972, Bloody Friday, when at least 22 car bombs were detonated in Belfast, killing 11 people and injuring 130.

Silence over Mumbai Sir: If Britain is still a safe haven for Lashkar-e-Taiba and Deobandi sympathisers (‘The global force behind Mumbai’s agony in our midst’, 6 December), this must place a big question mark on the government’s policy of dealing with home-grown terrorism. The current policy seems to rest on two assumptions: namely that home-grown terrorism can be contained by propping up moderate representatives of the community to which terrorists belong; and that where a community contains both moderates and terrorists, they are implacably opposed to one another. Both of these assumptions have been undermined by the Muslim community’s failure to demonstrate its collective anger about the carnage in Mumbai.

Nancy and the Keynesians Sir: Nancy Dell’Olio is a Keynesian (‘John Maynard Keynes, my hero’, 29 November), but if Keynes were alive today, he would be revising his doctrine. In the 1930s government expenditure was a much smaller proportion of GDP than it is today. So was the tax take. Then, with the private sector devastated by the slump, increasing government expenditure was the strongest lever to change sentiment and reflate the economy. Now, both the private and the public sectors are crippled with debt. Increasing government expenditure threatens the nation’s credit-rating, and tweaking VAT to encourage people to spend is at odds with people’s desperate desire to save.

Diplomatic bag Sir: Michael Nicholson’s story of a boat-owner finding contraband aboard from the previous owner (Letters, 22 November) reminded me of being compromised in Paris. As leader of a teenage school party, I suspected one or more of them of being in possession. As staff we searched suitcases and bedrooms with fingertip detail and found nothing for most of the trawl. I had warned the party in advance of the impending swoop and fully expected this outcome. But you can never guarantee no surprises, and we did find a stash of the substance tied in a waterproof bag, deep inside one toilet cistern. We dispatched the culprit home on the next Eurostar but that left me with the goods. What should one do?

The problem with Pakistan Sir: It is preposterous that Elliot Wilson pleads for the bailing out of Pakistan (‘Britain can’t afford a failed Pakistan’, 15 November). The country is not facing a natural disaster; its economic meltdown is self-inflicted — it insisted on acquiring nuclear weapons and cosying up to Islamic terrorism. Pakistan, both politically and economically, has always been a failed state. Ever since its inception in 1947, it chose to subsist on foreign handouts: first through the security structure of seato and cento and then by becoming a front-line state against communism and terrorism. It never bothered to learn the art of earning its living through strategic planning, economic reforms and investment in higher education.