The Spectator

The first bureaucrat David Cameron described bureaucrats in the Civil Service as ‘the enemy within’ and vowed to get their backs off business. It has been a very long battle. The term ‘bureaucracy’ was coined by the French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712–1759). Son of a wealthy merchant in St Malo, Vincent spent many years as a bureaucrat himself, as intendent of commerce and honorary adviser to the grand conseil. It was in his work that he became appalled by the regulations concerning the sale of cloth, which ran to four volumes, and took new entrants to the trade several years to learn. State offices were not created, he observed, to serve the public interest; rather the public interest was created to justify the offices.

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers' Wall. For those who haven't come across the Wall before, it's a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn't libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you'll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there's no need to stay 'on topic' – which means you'll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There's also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything's fair game – from political stories in your local paper, to chat about the latest football results.

How Hamas won Sir: John R. Bradley writes, in support of his argument that free elections in Arab countries are likely to bring Islamists to power (‘Arabian nightmare’, 26 February): ‘Democracy came to Gaza and the Islamist group Hamas took power.’ He fails to consider the background to Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian general election of 2006 and subsequent takeover of Gaza. In 1996, the Palestinians’ first general election was won overwhelmingly by Fatah. It is true that Hamas refused to participate, but the high turnout and vote for Fatah indicate that Hamas would have done poorly, at a time when Palestinians believed they were going to gain their own state.

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers' Wall. For those who haven't come across the Wall before, it's a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn't libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you'll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there's no need to stay 'on topic' – which means you'll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There's also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything's fair game – from political stories in your local paper, to chat about the latest football results.

Question the sceptics Sir: Let’s set aside the fact that the article by Matt Ridley and Nicholas Lewis, ‘Breaking the Ice’ (19 February) — to which you oddly gave cover prominence — was outstandingly the most boring thing I have come across in The Spectator for over 30 years. What, exactly, is the point of this self-confessed ‘group of amateurs’? I am not a scientist, but I was for some while responsible for developing Conservative party policy on climate change. Nerdy quibbles about the extent or location of melting ice in Antarctica don’t get us very far.

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers' Wall. For those who haven't come across the Wall before, it's a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn't libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you'll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there's no need to stay 'on topic' – which means you'll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There's also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything's fair game – from political stories in your local paper, to chat about the latest football results.

The army’s example Sir: Ross Clark and Martin Vander Weyer have hit the nail on the head again with their customary precision (‘Councils of Despair’ and Any Other Business, 12 February). The only aspect of ‘best practice’ that seems to have thrived in the public sector is eye-watering levels of remuneration for top management. I certainly hold no brief for fat cat bankers, but at least they do not pretend to be ‘delivering’ public services — they do what they do to make money for their shareholders and for themselves. If they fail to perform, they are sacked. There are some parts of the public sector which have been mercifully unscathed by modern management fads. The British military is one of these.