Letters

Scotch myth Andrew Neil’s lament at the decline of the so-called ‘Tartan Raj’ (‘The last days of the Tartan Raj’, 20 August) is a Scottish view of what, to the rest of the country, is a non-phenomenon. Englanders aren’t looking jealously over their shoulders at Scottish success, and never have done. Gordon Brown will be a wildly unpopular leader, not because he is Scottish, or Scotland-educated, but because he is surly and tax-happy, more concerned with shafting his ‘Scot-lite’ boss than doing his own job. Brown might resent Oxbridge, but Oxbridge is broadly indifferent to him. If the Raj was really as all-powerful as Neil suggests, then why didn’t it do anything to arrest the decline in elite education in Scotland and elsewhere?

Comments on Don’t blame religion by Theo Hobson 15/08/05It is not the belief in an afterlife that is the problem, it is the absolute belief in God, the Fuhrer or the working class or whatever else. Once you have that belief it is a short step to being willing to kill those who are not part of the group. George Bush’s ‘if you are not with us you are against us’ attitude is the basis of all religious violence and oppression through the ages. The current spate of Islamic violence is not an odd aberration. This is what the religious do, and have done, for thousands of years. Jeff Tyler What a load of waffle!

Our ‘decadent’ society As Conservative MPs elected at this year’s general election we represent a new generation unencumbered by the political baggage of the past. In this spirit we enthusiastically endorse the rejection articulated by John Hayes (‘Muslims are right about Britain’, 6 August) of the liberal establishment’s assumptions about our society. For too long politicians of the centre and centre-Left — including some who curiously wear the badge of Conservatism — have ignored the common-sense opinions of the hard-working, patriotic majority of Britons who retain their belief in traditional values.

The evil of Hiroshima Andrew Kenny’s article on the blessedness of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima had an unpleasant whiff of 1945 propaganda (‘Giving thanks for Hiroshima’, 30 July). He seems to base his views on his own visits to Hiroshima in modern times, and on the opinions of British people who in 1945 were fed the lie that unless the bomb had been dropped, the war would have continued with great loss of life. A more dispassionate historical understanding suggests that the reason the Americans dropped the bomb when they did was to prevent the Russians entering and dominating the Pacific theatre of war. It had nothing to do with the blustering rhetoric of Japanese army officers saying they would force everyone to fight on to the end.

After the bombs Words of condemnation are not enough. Here are a couple of suggestions about how to act after the bombings of last week. First, we must fight back by stepping up the war in Iraq. If the insurgents win, it will embolden terrorists throughout the Middle East, since it will demonstrate that the most powerful nations on earth cannot stop a relatively small number of radical Muslims. But if we win, it will cause the Middle East itself to turn towards representative government and Western values. Nothing is more important for future world security. Second, we must encourage Muslims in this country to stand up for freedom. What about a new wristband campaign — Make Terrorism History — that would cost them little to join and would isolate dissenters?

The war will be won It is nonsense to suggest, as Michael Wolff tried last week (‘The nation wobbles’, 2 July), that the war in Iraq is almost lost. Terrorists are certainly doing their best to destroy the hopes of Iraq. But the resistance to them is strong. Mr Wolff dismisses the fact that eight million people defied the terrorists in January to vote as merely a ‘high moment of triumphalism’. So much for the freest election ever held in the Arab world. He claims that the Sunni 30 per cent of the country who did not vote are now ‘supporting an insurgency against both the occupiers and the rest of the nation’. That is untrue. The Sunnis are split. Some have sided with the Sunni terrorists who want to murder the Shia majority of Iraq.

Second-hand smoke Rod Liddle makes a living out of being controversial, but to do so with effect he should also be accurate with his facts (‘My right to cough up blood’, 25 June). His article suggests that people who complain about passive smoking are being melodramatic. But there is an absolute proven link between second-hand smoking and lung cancer. He could ask the Department of Health’s own officials or he could ask the families we deal with whose children have died as a result of someone else’s selfishness. Fifty-odd non-smoking bar workers die from second-hand smoking-related illness each year. And if Rod Liddle knew that this figure is higher than the annual occupational death rate for the police force, he too might reconsider his opposition to a ban.

Sixth sense Anthony Seldon is quite right about exams (‘More exams, less education’, 18 June). A-levels since 2000 have encouraged hoop-jumping, no more so than in his own subject, history. But he is wrong to be so resigned about AS-levels; contrary to assumptions made by leaders in the overwhelming majority of schools, there is no need to submit pupils to these exams at 17, which has created the tyrannical sequence of 16, 17, 18+ exams which he so deplores. At Radley we have used our independence to avoid AS-levels at 17; we do all the exams, AS and A2, at 18+ as if they were the old A-levels. Our boys have an old-fashioned Lower Sixth summer term to spread themselves intellectually and to play their games.

Let them smoke dope Eric Ellis is way way off in his piece (‘The whingers of Oz’, 11 June). Why are the Australians angry? I would think it’s because the 20-year sentence passed on Schapelle Corby for smuggling marijuana is savage. No doubt Eric Ellis has never smoked any marijuana, but it is a harmless and pleasant plant that, like a couple of cocktails, makes you feel relaxed and, unlike them, quiet. Why is the stuff still illegal? I assume it’s the power of the alcohol lobby (commerce being behind most things). Alcohol has damaged and killed friends of mine, but I’ve never known anyone harmed by the weed, whose relaxing pleasure I have enjoyed for 40 years, and tobacco (now another demonised natural thing) for 50 years.

Good value Ross Clark says that NHS Trusts are ‘stuffed with local worthies drawing generous salaries and pensions’. I object. Like all other non-executive directors of NHS Trusts, I received last year just over £6,500, and no pension whatever, for my part-time work (‘The worst of both worlds’, 4 June). As a daily rate this works out as a fraction of what I could be earning in my (non-medical) profession. Chairmen, who are non-executive, receive, I think, around £20,000 for what is nigh-on a full-time job. I don’t think the most aggressive critic of the present system could describe this as generous. I certainly feel, anyway, that I offer better value for money to the NHS than the smoke and mirrors of PFI which he correctly exposes.

ID charade You seem to believe that Conservatives have spent the last four years ‘standing up for local and national democracy, and against the tendency of the government to centralise power’ (Leading article, 28 May). But thanks to the efforts of both main parties there is little now left of local government to defend. The Heath government did its best to wreck the planning system while Margaret Thatcher nationalised the business rate — the greatest seizure of assets since the dissolution of the monastic houses. With their financial independence now lost, Major sought to abolish county councils altogether, but the good judge he appointed refused to play ball, and was sacked.

More prisoners, less crime Douglas Hurd pointed out that the prison population increased from 44,000 in the 1980s to over 75,000 today (‘Does prison really work?’, 14 May). If ‘“prison works” in reducing crime,’ he says, ‘then obviously a sensational increase in the number of prisoners should produce a sensational reduction in crime. But it hasn’t.’ Actually, it has. A casual glance at the crime figures, available to anyone who goes to the trouble of looking at the Home Office website, would have revealed to the distinguished former home secretary that crime began to fall by rather a lot soon after the prison population increased. The prison population was about 45,600 when Michael Howard became home secretary in 1993.

Tories must be less strident Simon Heffer tells us that what the Conservative party now needs, above all, is ‘stability’ (‘The way ahead for Conservatives’, 7 May). But it cannot have escaped his notice that the level of success we have enjoyed in the last decade has been all too ‘stable’, and that this is in no small part down to the influence of those who, like him, insist on seeing modernisation as an evil. Whilst Heffer and his friends resist change, Mr Blair is left grinning ever more manically. Mr Heffer gives him the ammunition to paint politics as a choice between those who believe the vulnerable should be helped, and those who would rather ignore them.

Made in Britain ‘Today, the Mother of Parliaments has lost half its power, with Brussels making half of British laws,’ says Anthony Browne (‘Parliament of eunuchs’, 30 April). My Conservative opponent in Rotherham goes further. His election address says that 70 per cent of UK law is now made in Brussels. The truth is more modest. According to the House of Commons Library — an impartial all-party outfit — in a report produced in March, less than 9 per cent of UK law originates in Brussels.

China is still a tyranny As usual Mark Steyn makes some good points, this time in his piece on globalisation (‘The sovereign individual’, 16 April). But he is mistaken in his praise of China, ‘the dynamic, advanced, first-world economy’. The Telegraph, for which Mr Steyn also writes, summed up China’s rulers in its leader of 16 April as ‘the tyrants in Beijing’ who have threatened all their neighbours and now are signalling a possible invasion of Taiwan. Is China really the inspiration for ‘sovereign individuals’ that Mr Steyn suggests? The rule of law there exists largely for the protection of the state, not, equally, to protect the individual from the state and to ensure justice.