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Letters

Wednesday, 30th April 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Pregnant with meaning

Sir: There is yet another use of the phrase ‘going forward’ which Dot Wordsworth neglected to mention in her wonderfully entertaining recent column (Mind your language, 12 April). It is one that my wife learned in 1960 when she went to visit her aunt and uncle in Buwalasi, a small hilltop village in Uganda. Her uncle taught at the nearby theological college and her aunt ran a small informal clinic from their house. She was also heavily pregnant with her first child, much to the delight of the villagers, who constantly congratulated her on the fact that she was ‘going forward’.

My wife returned to Canada before the birth took place, but her uncle was informed that contractions were beginning when the houseboy came down the hill to the college and stated, ‘Sebo, Madame wishes to produce.’

James P. Carley
Toronto, Canada

Dover and out

Sir: Alex James’s navigation is even worse than Father John Thackray thinks (Letters, 26 April). Mr James thinks he can cross from Cap de la Hague to the white cliffs of Dover in a light aircraft in ten minutes. Since Cap de la Hague is on the Cherbourg peninsula, far to the southwest, he must be confusing it with Cap Gris Nez, which is about 22 miles from Dover.

Nicholas O’Brien
Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire

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Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Diary

Penny Smith

Penny Smith gives a rundown of her week

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The Spectator on reforming the NHS

Glasgow East is Brown’s dirty little secret: a hideous, costly social experiment gone wrong

Fraser Nelson

Glasgow East symbolises — as few other places in Britain can — the fact that the problem Labour faces is not just lack of leadership but lack of mission. What is to be seen in this constituency encapsulates and dramatises Labour’s abject failures to comprehend, let alone tackle, the nature of the poverty which grips our council estates.
For all the latest on the Glasgow East by-election, visit Coffee House