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Letters

Wednesday, 2nd April 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Less is more

Sir: In The Spectator’s Notes (29 March), Charles Moore condemns the phrase ‘any time soon’ on the grounds that the word ‘soon’ is sturdy enough to stand on its own. But his paragraph starts off with the phrase, ‘More and more people’.

Is ‘more and more’ a greater number than ‘more’?

Edward Hurworth
Chislehurst, Kent

Obama’s snake-oil

Sir: Matthew Parris (Another voice, 29 March) defends Barack Obama’s speech on race very well. But surely we ought to resist the core of Mr Obama’s case?

The Reverend Wright said some horribly stupid things, and Mr Obama rightly distances himself from them. Mr Obama was on half-decent territory when he said that black and white ‘bitterness and bias’ are sort of equivalent. (Though he might have stressed that one is indulged and the other isn’t.) Still, we don’t have to accept Mr Obama’s insistence that he be allowed to build a case on ‘the black experience’.

Suppose a BNP (or a Labour or even a Tory) speaker argued that while he’ll renounce any strongly racist utterance, he can’t altogether renounce nastiness among working-class people, and not only because there is nastiness among upper-class people, but more because it’s all part of the white working-class collective thing.

Mr Obama says he can’t renounce the ‘black community’, warts and all. Wouldn’t we say that this is the curse of identity politics? I have a nasty feeling that Mr Obama’s speech is the cleverest sort of snake-oil — the kind that has queues of intellectuals lining up to endorse it.

Richard D. North
Fellow, The Social Affairs Unit, London W1

Life and death issue

Sir: May I be allowed a single comment on the gracious article concerning myself (‘A holy man tipped to lead the nation’s Catholics’, 22 March)? Towards its end, in response to a question as to whether I would ever leave my monastery, I am credited with the words: ‘Yes, I think it is time to leave. I can’t stay there forever...’ I find no trace of these words in the recording I made of the interview. Certainly they do not express my mind. As a Benedictine with a vow of stability, I cherish the intention of living and dying in my own community, and have my heart firmly set on the plot in our cemetery which awaits me. For a monk, this is not a minor matter.

Dom Hugh Gilbert, OSB
Pluscarden Abbey, Moray