Don’t go Dutch
Sir: The Dutch postal service was privatised, you say, ‘with no perceived damage to the services they offer’ (Leading article, 28 February). You would not say that if you lived here. Firstly, deliveries: there is one a day, which arrives at absolutely random times but is usually around 3 p.m. — even here in the centre of the capital. Nobody seems to ever receive any post at all on Mondays. Most weeks I receive items clearly addressed to somebody else. Secondly, prices: we pay 39p, and that’s only up to 20g (Royal Mail: 36p up to 100g). Put more than two pages into your envelope and it will cost you double. There is no second-class option. Thirdly, the recent British furore over surcharging large letters made us chuckle too, since they have been doing that to us here for years.
And as for post office closures, TNT Post recently announced plans to close every post office in the entire country. Yes: every single one.
The privatised Dutch postal service clearly shows what not to do. Look and learn.
David Jones
Amsterdam, Netherlands
On the wrong track
Sir: Ross Clark’s article ‘Big bonuses in the public sector’ (21 February) contained several inaccuracies.
Firstly, Railtrack ceased to exist over six years ago. Network Rail has been the sole owner and manager of Britain’s railway network and infrastructure since 3 October 2002.
Secondly, Network Rail is not in the public sector but a private company, limited by guarantee. We do not have shareholders; instead we are accountable to members, who have no economic interest in the company. Network Rail is a ‘not-for-profit’ organisation, or more accurately, a ‘not-for-dividend’ company which means that all profits generated by the company are invested back into the railways in order to deliver a safe, reliable and efficient railway for Britain.
On the bonus issue, bonuses are only paid for success — there are no rewards for failure. Success is measured on improving services for passengers through better train punctuality, more reliable rail infrastructure and reducing costs for the taxpayer. Today passenger numbers are at a 60-year high; punctuality, at almost 91 per cent of trains on time, is at record levels; passenger satisfaction, at 83 per cent, has never been greater; costs have been slashed; and there is now no safer way to travel than by train.
Kevin Groves
Head of Media, Network Rail, London N1
Heads it is
Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 21 February) quotes a headline ‘Bishops back Christian in school religion row’. This reminds me of a tabloid headline when Tom King was Minister for Northern Ireland: ‘Loyalists punch and kick King’.
Surely inadvertent.
Ken Wortelhock
Devonport, New Zealand
Neglected composers
Sir: Congratulations to Robin Holloway for drawing our attention to the neglected English composers of the 18th and 19th centuries (Music, 28 February). However, I would like to suggest that they were not merely ‘charming wayside bloom[s]’. To give a few examples: Charles Dibdin was the first person to perform on the piano in public when he accompanied an Arne song in 1767, Philip Hayes being the first to write a concerto for the instrument. Thomas Linley was described by Mozart as ‘a true genius’, whilst George Pinto anticipated Romanticism by several decades. Mozart said that Thomas Attwood ‘partakes more of my style than any scholar I ever had’, and it was the same composer who conducted the premiere of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture in 1832. As soon as one scratches beneath the surface, one realises that the comparative obscurity of these composers and their era is hardly deserved.
Nicholas Dixon
London E11
Sack the Scots
Sir: If anyone has written a better rant than Jeremy Clarke’s Low Life column (21 February) please show me. Having read Clarke’s masterpiece, I felt calmer, knowing that there is at least one other person in the country who feels similarly depressed about the outcome of the last 11 years. In 410 ad, the Barbarians successfully sacked Rome. Is it too much of an exaggeration to say that 1,600 years later, the Scottish-dominated Labour party have embarked on a similar mission — to destroy the British way of life? Happily, the outcome will be different; the Scots will be repelled — and it cannot come soon enough — at the next general election.
Andrew Hamilton
East Lothian, Scotland
From extreme to extreme
Sir: Tim Shipman writes that ‘The US believes that if there is to be a repeat of 9/11, it is most likely to be carried out by British Muslim terrorists’ (‘The CIA now has to spy on Britain’, 28 February). There is an historic precedent for the current British free rein to extremism, as well as a precedent for the British suddenly and dramatically waking up and then going, if anything, too far in the correct direction.
The precedent is provided by the end of appeasement of the Nazis. This came about with Churchill’s order to ‘Collar the lot’ — ‘the lot’ meaning everyone who had come from Germany, including Jewish refugees. So Jews who had managed to flee from Germany to Britain to save their lives suddenly found themselves interned as enemy aliens — and their right to remain in Britain at all, let alone to consider themselves Britons, hung in the balance for quite a time.
Shipman reports that ‘the CIA is now running its own agent networks on an unprecedented scale in the British Pakistani community’. That community should take note of the appeasement precedent. After all, the British authorities of the time treated the innocent majority roughly because they had finally realised that they had treated the guilty minority far too leniently for far too long.
Osman Streater
London NW3
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