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Thursday 20 November 2008

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Letters

Wednesday, 28th May 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Nevertheless, it might have helped her case if Ms Macdonald had at least given the impression of having seen more than one or two episodes herself, since every example she cited of real women’s concerns that the series had supposedly failed to address had, in fact, been covered at length in the plotlines. For example, the absence of any ‘lamentation on the lack of men’ (subject of numerous episodes, including one where Carrie takes an evening class on how to meet men, and Miranda notes that ‘now they’re dying on us’); that ‘the biological clock was a barely perceptible tick’ (try the infertility/adoption storyline underpinning much of the final series, or indeed Carrie’s dilemma in the climactic final episodes); or that ‘the women never, ever, bought a self-help book’ (wrong: self-help gets the treatment in at least two episodes).

Television doesn’t always have to serve up grim realism in order to make its point, but Sex and the City managed to cover an impressive array of issues affecting the modern woman, and do so with verve and wit. But why let the facts get in the way of a good article?

Neil O’Connor
Sheffield, Yorkshire

Hazy memories

Sir: Certainly many of the anachronisms in Foyle’s War were non-verbal (Letters, 24 May), perhaps the most glaring being the virtual absence from the screen of smouldering Woodbines or any other brand of cigarette (non-filtered, of course) which were universally popular at the time.

A more realistic depiction of mid-20th-century mores can be found in Mad Men, set in the New York advertising world at the beginning of the 1960s. Here, 90 per cent of the characters smoke 90 per cent of the time, and a permanent tobacco haze permeates every office building, restaurant, bar and bedroom.

Lord Monson
London W8

The test of society

Sir: As I read your last editorial (‘Here’s what we call progress’, 24 May) and Rod Liddle’s piece (‘One day, abortions will appal us all’, 24 May) upon how future generations may look back on the current abortion law with incredulity, I remembered a quotation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘The test of society is what it does for its children.’

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A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.