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Letters

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Sir: In Leo McKinstry’s article, he puts the blame (as we all would) at the point where the result disagrees with his wishes. That happens to be the new planning ombudsman, but anomalies of the type he writes about happen at many different levels. Here in our small town, for example, someone applied for permission to open a take-away right on the busiest road-junction in the town. A petition urging the planning authority not to allow the shop was signed by many local people, worried that customers ‘just popping in’ for a take-away would park at the junction, making the traffic problem worse than it is already. The town council discussed the application and unanimously recommended rejection. But the planning authority, which is the district council, whose offices are ten miles away, passed it without visiting the site, apparently because all the planning requirements were fulfilled by the application and no objection was raised by the highways department of the county council, whose offices are 18 miles away.

‘Local empowerment’ denied once again. But this time the villain was not the Labour government but a Conservative-dominated district council. Until local empowerment has real teeth, it cannot be expected to bite.

Ian Baird
Framlingham, Suffolk

Apostrophic faith
Sir: Suffering from a condition verging on OCD when it comes to usage of the apostrophe, I am compelled to write in defence of St Thomas’ Hospital to Dot Wordsworth’s suggestion (Mind your language, 31 March) that it misuses this notoriously difficult punctuation mark. I was taught at grammar school in 1973 that there are two correct options for using the possessive apostrophe for singular nouns ending in s, depending on personal preference; thus Thomas’s and Thomas’ are equally acceptable. This is backed up by Wikipedia (using the possessive apostrophe with singular nouns ending in s or z). Correctpunctuation.co.uk agrees, although it goes further, to say that when using a possessive apostrophe with religious or ancient names ending in s, the ’s option should not be used. So, no need for an expensive sign change for the hospital, I believe.

Claire Keeling
London EC3

Sir: Perhaps Dot Wordsworth or another knowledgeable person can solve this problem. Travelling on the underground, I pass Barons Court and Earl’s Court. Earl’s Court has a possessive apostrophe, but Barons Court does not. Does this mean that the Barons have gone a-courting?

Thinking about this profound problem helps pass the time.

Anne Wotana Kaye
London SW13

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Haldane

June 12th, 2008 12:09pm

How strange. All the comments that managed to get posted concerning d'Ancona's interview were negative.Yet here, given pride of place, is a letter praising his clarity of mind. I should say so!

Once again

June 12th, 2008 2:45pm

Dalrymple brutish? What rubbish. Put brutishness in its correct context here. If young scantily clad, drunken women dress like sluts, then so be it - they will be brutally regarded, brutally treated and brutally described as sluts. There is no "nice" word for scantily clad, drunks in public places.

Diary

Rani Singh

I’ve just emerged from the gym, winding down after a day’s writing, when my son Sukhraj calls, alerting me to sudden news of explosions and fatalities in Mumbai.