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Letters

Wednesday, 4th June 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Poppy appeal

Sir: Fraser Nelson’s article accurately outlines the urgent need to implement an alternative counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan (‘The precarious peace in Helmand’, 28 May). Helmand province now cultivates half of Afghanistan’s opium in a country which accounts for 93 per cent of the global illegal opium market. A significant element of the current approach to countering burgeoning opium production levels — forced poppy crop eradication — has proven disastrous. Instead of providing economic stability, heavy-handed policies analogous to the US-sponsored ‘War on Drugs’ approach in Colombia have undermined reconstruction efforts and failed to re-engage with local communities. Consequently, farmers are being driven further into the Taleban’s grasp and the country’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen.

Licensing the cultivation of poppy under a village-based ‘poppy for medicine’ development scheme, in order to produce essential medicines such as morphine, would eliminate dangerous links between the Taleban and local farmers. This in turn would provide secure livelihoods for the three million people dependent upon opium production to survive. Not only would economic power shift, but the increased morphine production would benefit some 80 per cent of the world’s population suffering from a lack of effective pain relief. A realistic solution to break this vicious cycle is drastically needed — not only to control Afghanistan’s opium crisis, but also to remove one of the main impediments to the success of the international community’s mission in the country.

Paul Burton
Director of Policy Analysis, The Senlis Council,
London WC1

The original Homer?

Sir: Reading about Jeremy Clarke’s Homer Simpson talking bottle opener (Low life, 31 May) has not quite made me rush out and buy one, but I am pleased to discover that Homer is heard yelling, ‘Don’t mind if I dooo!’ That’s almost exactly Colonel Chinstrap’s catchphrase from It’s That Man Again. Only a day or two earlier I’d been listening on BBC7 to a 1945 episode of that show and been amused to hear Tommy Handley’s battleaxe secretary, played by Diana Morrison, utter an exasperated ‘Doh!’ before slamming the famous ITMA door. I hope that the harmless drudges at the OED are aware that what is popularly regarded as a Simpsonian interjection predates the cartoon by more than half a century. Now I’m off in search of a Chinstrap bottle opener.

Keith Norman
Oxford

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Robert Vincent

June 6th, 2008 11:04am

BUREAUCRATIC NIGHTMARE
As a one-time engineer, soldier, copywriter and publicist,
having found myself the executor of several wills, I realised too late that I'd entered the wrong profession and could have made much more money as a solicitor. The staggering inefficiency and mistakes I encountered among some of them served to make me wonder how they justified their fees.
I thanked God for their clerks.