Prepare for coalition
From William MacDougall
Sir: I hope Fraser Nelson is mistaken in his talk of a ‘Lib Dem Test’ for Tory policies (‘Cameron’s secret plan’, 29 April). Of course the party should not be frightened of coalition; after all, it has been in coalition for much of its history (with Irish parties, or Liberal and Labour splinter groups). But the way to prepare is to have stronger, not weaker, policies. If we are already voting to ban parental interviews, where would we compromise on education — on banning the remaining grammar schools? No, to prepare for coalition with the Lib Dems (or Labour) we should have more extreme policies, e.g., a grammar school in every town, so that we can compromise on a grammar school in every second town.
William MacDougall
London N6
PC Beeb
From Colin Broughton
Sir: Rod Liddle is right in suggesting that the fiction of the BBC’s impartiality should be addressed by more openness (‘BBC staff’s views should be open’, 29 April). The bias of the BBC is far from ‘gentle’. On the contrary, its all-pervasive political correctness reaches from news reports and current affairs programmes into every nook and cranny of its output, including the plotlines and characters to be found in the soaps. This amounts to a blatant manipulation of truth, in which reality is presented in a warm glow of leftist wishful thinking.
However, Rod Liddle doesn’t go far enough. Rather than simply letting individuals in the BBC express their real opinions, which — given the natural leftism of the humanities and sociology graduates who go into the media and, in particular, the BBC — is not going to much widen the ideological spectrum, why not get rid of the organisation altogether? There might have been an argument for what is effectively a state-run broadcasting system once, but in an era of many TV and radio channels it is as anachronistic as any other state-owned industry post-Thatcher. Individual channels could then adopt overt political stances, like the print media.
Colin Broughton
Theydon Bois, Essex
Fascists are socialists
From Frederick Forsyth
Sir: Lord Tebbit (Letters, 29 April) is quite right to rebuke idle journalism which relentlessly repeats untruths instead of analysing the meaning of the words and phrases it uses. It is a matter of record, not opinion, that fascism, Nazism and communism all sprang from the womb of socialism. All three are revolutionary creeds, the exact antithesis of conservatism, which is anti-revolutionary.
Thus if you move to the right of the Conservative party, you will not be in the company of the BNP but more likely with the American Republican neocons. If you go left of Labour, you meet both communism and BNP-style fascism.
Frederick Forsyth
Hertford
Lions and donkeys
From Sir Simon Day
Sir: I was most interested by the article by Lord Ashcroft to mark the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Cross (‘Conspicuous bravery celebrated’, 22 April), as I too have had a lifelong fascination with this great award.
I well remember, as a National Service naval rating serving in HMS Theseus, flagship of the Training Squadron, being inspected by Captain Anthony (Crap) Miers (later Rear-Admiral) — who had been awarded the VC for outstanding bravery for entering Corfu harbour in a submarine and destroying a couple of Italian supply ships — and being mesmerised by that magnificent symbol of bravery pinned to his chest.
In the Zulu wars, not only were 11 VCs awarded at Rorke’s Drift, but three more (two posthumously) were given at Isandlwana and Fugitive’s Drift. It has been suggested that this proliferation of awards, though undoubtedly deserved, was facilitated by the guilt of Disraeli’s government, which eventually fell due to the total incompetence of those in charge of the civil administration, such as Sir Bartle Frere, and the army, led by Lord Chelmsford.
Sir Simon Day
Ivybridge, Devon
Freudian quip
From William Oddie
Sir: Roger Scruton (‘An unhappy birthday to Sigmund the Fraud’, 29 April) could have quoted G.K. Chesterton, who prophetically warned against most of the heresies of the last century, and also saw through Freud in much the same way that Professor Scruton has:
The ignorant pronounce it Frood,
To cavil or applaud.
The well-informed pronounce it Froyd
But I pronounce it Fraud.
William Oddie
Oxford
Little Americans
From Steve Spurrell
Sir: Allow me to clear up Jason Boatright’s misunderstanding about the ‘strange criticisms’ Europeans so often make of Americans (Letters, 22 April). There is far more to experience around the world than there is in any one country. You could not make a pilgrimage to your chosen holy city in America, be it the Vatican or Mecca. You could not visit the Great Pyramids or the Taj Mahal. In fact, you could not see a single building that has stood for more than 500 years.
Could you experience the beauty of the Greek islands, which helped inspire mythology that is as popular today as Shakespeare? Could you witness the festivals surrounding the monsoon on the Ganges river? Or the recently passed Thai new year? In fact, could you have a single personal experience of a culture other than your own? I think not.
It is precisely this ‘we have everything we need in our country (except oil)’ mentality, along with the naive belief that ‘quaint towns in somewhat foreign places’ are all pretty much alike, that causes such resentment among so many people in a world which we do, believe it or not, all have to share.
Steve Spurrell
By email
Still alive
From Timothy Williams
Sir: Frederic Raphael writes: ‘Papon was tried and condemned for war crimes only as an old man, in the late 1990s, and died in prison’ (Books, 29 April).
Maurice Papon is still alive; he was released from jail on 18 September 2002, after serving less than three years of his ten-year sentence.
Timothy Williams
Guadeloupe
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