Clemency suggests

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Letters

Wednesday, 9th April 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Crowded isle

Sir: You spell out the complexities of the immigration issue clearly in your leading article of 5 April, but the overriding problem, the nettle that simply has to be grasped, is its effect on the overall size of our island’s population. At more than 60 million it is already uncomfortably large, but a projection of its present growth trend puts it at more than 85 million by 2081!

So where on earth is it going to end? Courageous decisions will have to be made by those political leaders whose love of this country is genuine. It is no good depending on those who have a visceral distaste for our nation state and what it represents, and who would be only too glad to see it subsumed in a larger ‘multicultural’ entity — which is, I fear, the mindset of the Labour party.

Christopher Arthur

Durham

Stuck in the mud

Sir: I read Simon Nixon’s article on banking regulation with great interest (‘A crisis of credibility’, 5 April). And as someone who spent well over 30 years working in Whitehall, I found his comments on the destruction of the Civil Service depressingly true.

I agree that it was in Nigel Lawson’s time that the rot at the Treasury started. But the real damage has been done during the past ten years. The thoroughbreds and workhorses have been turned out, and replaced with prancing show ponies. It is no wonder then that when the carriage of state gets stuck in the mud there is nothing adequate to help pull it out. To be fair, this is not something confined to the public sector. In the private sector, too, those with expertise and experience have been driven out. All of which has made no small contribution to the current malaise.

Ian Holt

Beaumont, Carlisle, Cumbria

Women make good Apostles

Sir: How good it was to read Paul Johnson’s piece on Mary Magdalen, and the absurdity of barring women from the priesthood simply because they are female (And another thing, 29 March). One of the chief reasons given for this bar is the fact that Jesus chose only men as his disciples; his chosen followers were not only all males, but also circumcised orthodox Jews, which is no longer, as I understand it, a necessary qualification for the Christian priesthood.

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