Letters

28 February 2009

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

The moral of the story

Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 14 February) asks where the moral is in Slumdog Millionaire. Isn’t it in the hero’s truthfulness and faithfulness and a cracking good love story?

The fact that he wins the money is irrelevant — even he doesn’t care any more — as he takes a guess at the question, knowing that he has won the girl.

Ben Bradshaw
House of Commons,
London SW1

Transferable experience

Sir: Lord Young (‘Health’n’safety everywhere — except in the banking system’, 14 February) says that when the Financial Services Authority was set up in 1997 ‘everyone who knew about bank supervision stayed with the bank; the FSA had to recruit new staff.’ In fact, when I left the Bank of England to establish the new authority, the supervision divisions came with me to the promised land of Canary Wharf — some 450 people in all. Many of them are still there.

Howard Davies
Director, London School of Economics
London WC2

Two tribes

Sir: Quentin Willson might have been converted to football (‘The zeal of the football convert’, 21 February), but how dull his experience was. The last time I went to a game in Ipswich we away fans adjourned to a nearby pub for a consoling pint (we’d lost). Instead of the ‘gestures of gentility’ he observed, we had to dive for cover when a brick was hurled through the window by Ipswich supporters. Then they invaded the pub. The place was ravaged: not a table or chair left unflattened, blood and beer mingling on the floor, one unconscious fan leaning against the bar. Happily, he was one of theirs. Which is the more ‘authentic footballing experience’?

Richard Holledge
London W14