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Letters

Wednesday, 16th July 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Rod for our backs

Sir: Each week, Rod Liddle’s column reminds me of the little girl of whom it was written that she hiked up her skirt to show she wasn’t wearing knickers. In the absence of a parent, or in Mr Liddle’s case an editor, one can only look away in embarrassment. So usually I have a quick look at the first paragraph and turn the page. Last week (Liddle Britain, 12 July) he compared a fat woman with ‘26 Ethiopians, if you put them in a blender, added some bleach’ etc… and her food with ‘an approximation of Shami Chakrabarti’s face’.

I glanced at his last sentence in which Mr Liddle suggested fat people should be kicked. I suppose this includes Winston Churchill.

Jonathan Mirsky

London W11

Sir: Rod Liddle is right about obesity. I am prepared to believe some people put on weight more easily than others. I am not prepared to believe that people are powerless to stop themselves becoming fat. Consume fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight; consume more than you burn and you gain weight. That is the reason you never see photos of fat concentration camp inmates — output exceeds intake.

I am about ten pounds heavier than I would like to be — nothing to do with genes, just lack of self-discipline and a liking for rather more chocolate than is wise.

M. Tinney

Via email

Persuasive argument

Sir: The problem with calling the initial Islamic campaign ‘unprovoked’ (Letters, 12 July) is that many events in late antiquity — and modern times — were also unprovoked. The Magyar settlement in what is today Hungary in the tenth century ad was unprovoked. Not many today assert that the Hungarians should be driven back to central Asia.

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Roger Dickinson

July 17th, 2008 3:46pm

Is it too much to ask that some remedy be found for the recent flaws in the delivery of the Crossword? Some of us go to the Spectator on line every week mainly to enjoy the Crossword, and, although I also enjoy other parts of your paper, these do not seem to be nearly so often subject to the garbling, or, sometimes, non-delivery, that the Crossword has started to suffer from.

Gil

July 18th, 2008 8:35am

M. Tinney's letter(albeit by email) is in disgusting bad taste and the Spectator should not have published it. I refer to the allusion to concentration camp victims.

Alexander Tomsky

July 22nd, 2008 7:32am

Sir: Your otherwise excellent editorial (19.08)unfortunately repeats the most popular myth of unsuccessful politicians that speculators are partly responsible for oil prices.However they do not own real oil. Every barrel they buy in the futures markets they sell back again before the contract ends They only raise the price of"paper barrels" like all betting. The high futures may lead someone to hoard oil today in order to sell later. No evidence has so far surfaced.
Yours faithfully,
Alexander Tomsky Prague, The Czech Republic

Paul Carter

July 23rd, 2008 1:27pm

Sir; Matthew Parris' article this week (My A to Z of Scare Stories) has one notable omission - the issue of Climate. Perhaps Mr. Parris does not know if it should be included under 'G' for Global Warming (or for that matter 'G' for Global Cooling as has been the case for some years) or 'C' for Climate Change. Or perhaps he thinks that it is a settled issue, unlike unlike myself and many others, and not a scare at all.

Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Brown bets the farm

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR) was one of the most arresting political events of modern times.

Diary

Hardeep Singh Kohli

Social networking: surely that has to be a tautology?

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

In his speech announcing his Pre-Budget Report, Alistair Darling said that he was going to put up the top rate of income tax to 45 per cent from 2011, because he wanted the burden to be borne by ‘those who have done best out of the growth of the past decade’.