Letters

Sir: ‘Find me a person who stopped voting Conservative last week because of David Cameron’s vague, half-arsed, lacklustre stance on gay marriage. Go on. I dare you… I’ll settle for just one of them instead…Anyone?’ (Hugo Rifkind, 12 May). Well, there’s me for a start: for the first time ever (I have voted at every election since I was old enough, and I am now over 70) I spoiled my ballot paper for this reason; and I’m not the only one who thinks that the preservation of marriage as normally understood (one man and one woman)...

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Letters

Sir: It was with a rising sense of disbelief that I read Polly Toynbee’s review of Ferdinand Mount’s The New Few (Books, 5 May). There’s an oligarchy in this country all right, but what Ms Toynbee fails to realise is that she is a member. For every overpaid plutocrat, there are any number of privileged people like herself who find lucrative employment ‘representing the disadvantaged’. They remind me of nothing so much as the old squirearchy, who used to visit their cottagers to do good works.
I would not like to suggest that it is actually in...

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Letters

Sir: Having examined Rupert Murdoch’s dealings with successive governments, Tom Bower (‘Dangerous liaisons’, 28 April) wearily concludes: ‘Blaming the businessman for exploiting politicians’ follies is akin to blaming whales for eating sardines.’ Does the conservative doctrine of personal responsibility extend to media moguls? Or is that, as Leona Helmsley said of paying taxes, just for the little people?
Robin Peters
Nottingham

Sir: Taki describes Bahrain as ‘a hellhole’ (High life, 28 April) and characterises the unrest there as being, essentially, the inevitable result of the deprivation of the Shia...

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Letters

Sir: Tristram Hunt’s argument (‘Gove’s Paradox’, 21 April) seems convincing. At first glance, economic liberalism does appear at odds with social conservatism. However, one cannot exist without the other, as Thomas Hobbes realised over 300 years ago. Without a social contract based upon shared values and common interests, anarchy would ensue, making it impossible to trade freely and conduct economic affairs. Nothing suppresses freedom as much as chaos, fear and poverty. Social conservatism and economic liberalism are therefore, and paradoxically, two sides of the same coin.
Hunt conveniently ignores Labour’s more profound, irreconcilable contradiction borne out...

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Letters

Sir: As Neil O’Brien (‘Planet London’, 14 April) rightly says, London is New York, Washington and LA rolled into one, which is unhealthy for our national politics. So I have a serious suggestion. If the House of Lords is going to be reformed in the next year, part of the reform should be to move it out of London to a city in the Midlands or the North, perhaps next to the relocated BBC in MediaCity in Salford Quays. Half our national politicians would then assemble well away from ‘Planet London.’ The public purse would make a net...

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Letters

Sir: Douglas Davis’s article on the plight of Arab Christians (‘Out of the east’, 7 April) raised a very important issue. What a shame he cynically exploited their misery to perform a clumsy character assassination on Muslims generally. Conjuring sensational phrases like ‘judenrein’ to raise the spectre of 1930s German fascism, was not only utterly irrelevant; it reminded the reader of Mr Davis’s highly partial agenda.

He doesn’t mention, for instance, that the Syrian Christian community’s plight is bound up with their perceived tactical support for the repressive Assad regime. It’s indisputably tragic, but it is not...

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