The Spectator

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.

For those who are fed up with the guff-filled platitudes of European diplomacy, there was something magnificent in the remarks of M. Chirac about British cuisine. Not since Edith Cresson said that most British men were poofters, or since a Scandinavian environment minister called John Selwyn Gummer a drittsekk, or scumbag, has there been so refreshing a breach of protocol. According to the French President, the British are not to be trusted, because their cooking is exceeded in filthiness only by Finland’s. He found haggis disgusting, and thinks that the British have contributed nothing to European agriculture except mad cow disease. This is not the time to quarrel with the substance of what he said, but to salute the spirit in which he said it.

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.

If this Labour government deserves to be remembered for anything at all, it will be for the systematic stamping out of freedoms that have been enjoyed in this country for centuries. Smoking in public is now all but certain to be banned. Habeas corpus has been curtailed by Charles Clarke’s grotesque ‘control orders’. This week in Parliament, Labour simultaneously announced the abridgement of the right to trial by jury, and forced through an almost mediaeval erosion of free speech, in the form of the ban on incitement to ‘religious hatred’. This is a contemptibly bad measure, which has nothing to do with the needs of criminal justice, and everything to do with politics.

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.

When Ruth Kelly became Education Secretary last December, one of her female colleagues, angry at having been passed over for promotion, denounced her as a ‘cow’ who insisted on skipping Commons debates in order to spend time with her young children. In fact, in her dedication to family life, Ms Kelly seemed a refreshing change from the archetypal Blair Babe who views motherhood as a kind of lazy option for those women who lack the talent to run a small government department. But perhaps the strain of rushing home every evening to read Topsy and Tim is proving too much. This week Ruth Kelly announced that she wishes schools to extend their opening hours from six and a half hours a day to ten or eleven.

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.