The Spectator

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki writes that ‘under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them’. Our poll today shows that the response of the British people to the terror emergency has been robust and clear-sighted. While many in the political and media elite have offered only hand-wringing, point-scoring and a feeble enthusiasm to blame the West for everything, the voters themselves grasp the scale of the threat and the need for a firm response.

A new Holocaust From Lucy MandelstamSir: Melanie Phillips’s mention of the ‘annual hate-fest’ on the streets of London filled me with despair (‘Hezbollah cells await Iran’s orders’, 5 August). Last month I celebrated my 80th birthday. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to live so long. I survived four years in Vienna under Nazi rule, and three years in concentration camps. After the end of the war I was a refugee for three years, spending those years mostly in displaced persons’ camps in Europe and Cyprus, finally coming to Israel. I had hoped to live out the rest of my life in relative peace. It was not to be.

Hezbollah and genocide From Lord KalmsSir: William Hague’s usual good sense has deserted him. Criticising Israel for being disproportionate without serious consideration of the alternatives merely mouths the buzzwords of the ignorant armchair critic. Think again, William, for whom you speak. How do you deal with the Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, who is committed to Israel’s total destruction (not a single Jew to remain alive in Israel) and who rains thousands of rockets on Israel, keeping the population in shelters, devastating industry, kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers within Israeli territory? Hezbollah combines a unique and dangerous formula: a terrorist organisation ensconced within a large area of the independent but incompetent nation state of Lebanon.

Lebanon: who’s to blame? From Nicholas MillmanSir: It was refreshing to read your editorial (22 July) after a week of witnessing the rest of the British media sadly misrepresent the Middle East crisis. In typical fashion Hezbollah has manipulated the journalists on the ground to the point where, for example, Channel 4 News must now be considered an effective extension of Hezbollah propaganda. The constant talk here of a ‘disproportionate’ response by Israel is baffling. A gang of nasty thugs, with only a tenuous claim to represent a sovereign state, violate the border of a neighbouring sovereign state and kidnap her soldiers.

Cameron on crime From Oliver Letwin MPSir: Your leading article ‘Love isn’t all you need’ (15 July) misses the point of David Cameron’s speech on the causes of crime (indeed, it gives the impression that you did not read the speech very closely). David’s speech focused from the very beginning on the fear and suffering caused by crime and disorder; the no-go zones our town centres become on a Friday or Saturday night; and the damage done by vandalism and graffiti. But — more importantly — it looked beyond the usual hand-wringing and hasty gimmicks of Labour’s approach to consider how we solve these problems for the long term. It is now 13 years since Tony Blair first pledged to be both tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

Elite electorates From Alan HallSir: I was amused by your leading article this week (1 July), criticising New Labour for treating ‘the highest office of government’ as if it were ‘the captaincy of its own team’. You affect to be shocked that the debate on who should succeed Tony Blair is not being conducted, so to speak, in open forum — or perhaps at the Court of St James’s — where the Queen’s loyal subjects might be invited to contribute their own pennyworth of opinion. But since when was the leadership of a political party (in or out of office) anything more than a matter for the party itself to decide?

Prison doesn’t work From Peter J.M. WayneSir: That not one but two highly indignant letters to the editor (24 June) should have been occasioned by my humanitarian concerns about children in prison (Books, 17 June) is a sad and disturbing reflection of the cruel and punitive mood that dominates the whole stagnant debate about crime and punishment. Of course Mrs Jettubreck should expect to be able to walk the streets near her home unmolested. But merely to throw these troubled youngsters into jail — a temporary respite at best — at such a critical and impressionable age will only serve to heighten their sense of alienation.Yes, they need taking in hand, but not by the older, already contaminated prisoners they will meet inside.

Age of innocence? From Mrs Sam JettubreckSir: Having lived in the same street for many years and seen the area gradually taken over by feral youths, I wonder what Peter J.M. Wayne might suggest I do to stem the rising tide of crime in my street? ‘These are children ...for goodness sake,’ wrote Wayne in his review of David Fraser’s A Land Fit for Criminals (Books, 17 June). So that makes their vile insults, burglary and aggression to the community acceptable? When a 14-year-old boy next throws a brick at my windows, and smashes glass in the nearby park so that my grandchildren cut their feet, or when next I am confronted, taunted, spat at or abused, I’ll just remember their age, shall I? Is that supposed to console me?

Al-Bashir’s immunity From Ralph Blumenau Sir: Peter Oborne’s powerful piece about the ethnic cleansing in Darfur and eastern Chad (‘Darfur’s terrible export’, 10 June) has only one strange omission. Here, as in almost all media reports, we are told that ‘the Sudanese government’ is actively helping the murderous Janjaweed, but the dictator who heads that government, Omar Hasan Ahmed al-Bashir, is not named. It is as if one had never referred to the crimes of Saddam Hussein, but only to those of ‘the Iraqi government’. Why is al-Bashir being given this cloak of relative anonymity by our media?

Schools for success From Barnaby Lenon Sir: Robert Yates rightly explains that grammar schools were the path to academic success and a good job for clever working-class children in the period 1935 to 1975 (‘Grammar schools are liberal, Mr Cameron’, 3 June). To these should be added the many direct-grant schools, independent schools that charged fees but took clever children from low-income homes on local authority grants. They were the most successful schools in Britain academically and of course had children from a wide range of social backgrounds. For example, in south London, a relatively low-income area, these included such schools as Dulwich College, Eltham College and the Whitgift Foundation schools.