A nuclear Iran
Sir: Should there be any doubt, following James Forsyth’s article (‘What to do about Iran and the bomb’, 20 June), that the Iranian government intends to build atomic weapons, it is answered by the forest of anti-aircraft weapons protecting their uranium enrichment plant at Nantaz.
When in the area two weeks ago I saw battery after battery of anti-aircraft weapons, manned, every kilometre in from 25 kilometres from the plant along the route they have assumed a foreign air strike would come, and more on the exit. The plant itself is protected by an impressive paraphernalia of watch-towers, wire and berms. Peaceful atomic work does not require such protection.
Nantaz symbolises the current Iranian tragedy. The ageing theocratic leadership is totally out of tune with the mass of young people — 70 per cent of the population are under 30 — who are proud of their country, respect their religion, but want to join the world, not be isolated in a pariah land. They, particularly the women, are fed up with being dictated to about how they must behave by elders with no experience of life outside Iran. They heard president Obama’s speech in Cairo. It gave them hope. None told me they see atomic weapons as the passport to that hope.
Sir Kenneth Warren
Cranbrook, Kent
Sir: James Forsyth wants both to help Iran’s modernisers and to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. He should note the US defence secretary’s recent statement that ‘Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.’ Substitute the Middle East for the Korean peninsula and Israel for North Korea, and, hey presto, you have a formula for Iran’s complete and verifiable co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation.
Yugo Kovach
Twickenham, Middlesex
A better borough
Sir: Alan Page’s assessment of life in Hammersmith & Fulham (Letters, 13 June) could not be further from the truth. Mr Page fails to state that his council tax bill, which he describes as ‘extraordinary’, is the only one in the country that has fallen by 3 per cent in each of the last three years.
In return, Mr Page is served by a council that is putting more bobbies on the beat, continuing with weekly dual refuse and recycling collections when many of our counterparts are cutting back, and spending hundreds of millions of pounds on state schools that were good enough for Tony Blair and David Cameron’s children.
The ‘vast organisational structure’ that Mr Page describes has slashed its head count by 18 per cent or 950 full-time equivalent employees, cut spending by £7 million or 4 per cent in cash terms, and its PR budget is less than it was ten years ago. The truth of the matter is that Mr Page really does receive an ‘extraordinary’ deal from Hammersmith & Fulham Council — one that millions of other Londoners can only dream of.
Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh
Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council, London W6
Strange times
Sir: Perhaps I am in a small minority as someone who subscribes to both the New Statesman and The Spectator (as well as reading both the Guardian and the Telegraph) and certainly I am used to reading and enjoying a variety of often polarised views. This week I was a little surprised, however, to find that the editorial comment in the New Statesman advocated the election to the Speaker’s chair of the Tory MP John Bercow, while The Spectator’s Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes) appeared to endorse the Labour MP Frank Field for the same post. Admittedly, both of these MPs can be seen as mavericks, as modern party politicians go, but it does provide further evidence that we are living in strange times indeed.
Jon Stubbings
London N3
About Charles and Chelsea
Sir: You have got the wrong end of the stick about Prince Charles and the Chelsea Barracks scheme (Leading article, 20 June). If the Prince had made public representations to the local planning committee, using the conventional procedures, he would have joined many well-organised local opponents and would probably have scuppered the scheme that way.
He chose not to do that, presumably because he didn’t want to embarrass his Qatari friends. Imagine, then, that your boss, or one of your clients, received a personal letter from the Prince asking them to sack you and replace you with someone from his own circle. You wouldn’t like it, would you? The way he went about this was by any standards quite improper, not to say ungentlemanly, and to my mind also cowardly and somewhat bullying.
Timothy Brittain-Catlin
Broadstairs, Kent
Remembering Waterloo
Sir: Matthew Parris was absolutely right in commenting on our concepts of what is ‘a long time’ (Another Voice, 6 June). When I was an infant (and so unfortunately unable to remember it myself), I was introduced to an old lady who could remember how, when she was a child, her grandfather would sit her on his knee and tell her about his experiences at the Battle of Waterloo. I am now 53.
Lt Col NJ Ridout
Tbilisi, Georgia
Deny me my detectives?
Sir: The ‘secondary pornography’ arising from reportage of sex trials, which allows ‘millions’ to read about them while concealing ‘their feelings of unhealthy interest in the cloak of self-righteous anger’ (The Spectator’s Notes, 20 June), could equally apply to those of us who enjoy whodunits. Miss Marple, like many other investigators, rarely denied me essential and satisfactory details of how those who were murdered met their sticky ends. Should I seek help?
Robert Vincent
Wildhern, Hampshire
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